It's posts like this that make it almost impossible to tell whether it's the work of an ultra-troll, or someone that's been paying so little attention to the situation that it's almost unbelievable.

Copy a system that was already in place? gtfo. You're either trolling for a rise, or you're just completely clueless.

Far too many more powerful people who will be taking that role? Bitcoin's trading value may tank, it may be regulated out of existence, etc., but you just clearly don't understand the bitcoin model.

There's got to be an award out there for you. Something along the lines of, "Most Terrible Forum Poster of all Time."

Please, please - gtfo.

Fair enough.

I hope you make money doing your thing. And that's sincere.

I wish I could only actually know what parts (if any) of these stories are true.

Really do.

I'm thinking that you need some education on the subject of mining and its economics in general, but be more specific - how are you defining "pointless"?

Bitstamp and Coinbase, I'd say. I like Coinbase.

But adoption is wedded to new people buying bitcoin on the exchanges, because we can't all mine. As we're seeing, merchants adopting bitcoin is actually the easy part, contrary to what many people believed previously. Getting new people to trade their fiat for bitcoin is the hard part.

Buying bitcoin = adoption. And more people buying bitcoin = a price increase in bitcoin.

That's why I think that when we "sell" the idea of bitcoin to noobs, we need to sell it as an investment and not just a revolutionary technology/currency.

That's completely false. Yes, there's a century's worth of past stock market trading data to suggest that a larger volume makes for a more stable market.

Agreed. It's quite the rant.

OP - sounds like you're a hodler, so check back in a few months.

You can certainly go with scrypt mining, Revolution.

You also don't have to start out with 4 m/hash. Technically, breaking even is completely scalable - it's equally difficult, no matter how much hashing power you buy originally (all other things being equal). So you could start off smaller (which means less risk in dollars spent) and then add more GPU power if you do break even.

Just some thoughts.

No one can answer this question. It's a risk either way. You have to make the decision for yourself one way or the other to mine or to not mine.

The real question is, if you mine, is your counterpart out there who will enter the trading "market" that will buy the coins you're bringing to market?

This really belongs in the altcoin mining section, but what the hell.


$1000+ if you're very lucky, and part of that luck includes the trading price of bitcoin going back up. Because you have to cash out in bitcoin.



No, I don't think so. That was true a month ago, but probably not now. There will probably be a flood of used hardware that will be flowing into ebay soon that is going to lower that figure.

Whenever I read your username, I read it as "banal t. coin." Banal seems so fitting for you.


Absolutely hilarious!

The panic hodl - works every time.

This is essentially what the bitcoin model aims to combat - monetary inflation.

It would devalue the coins of previous holders. Who would want to buy it on the exchanges if each purchase devalues as the next block reward is found?

Show us the proof of your sources.

 
But the elephant in the room is, why the f*** would someone trade fiat for bitcoin (which incurs an exchange fee) merely to turn around and spend it on a good? It's rhetorical - you just wouldn't do this. It's not even a one-for-one transaction; it's a loss for that consumer because of the exchange fee. Someone will surely chime in about lower transaction fees lowering the cost of goods in a world where bitcoin merchant adoption is widespread. But that just isn't a tenable argument, because it's not enough of a reason for the average person to exchange his trusty fiat for bitcoin. It probably is for us, because we get it. But the average person just won't.

The only reason *for the average person* to buy bitcoin at present is speculation that it will prove itself as a good store of value; aka, be an investment. Whether that is measured against fiat, or buying power, it doesn't matter.


It's the epitome of a bubble.

It doesn't matter if there is one person mining, 100, 1,000,000, or 10,000,000. The same amount of bitcoins are "supplied;" 25 bitcoins every ten minutes (with the obvious caveat of the rising difficulty bumping that number slightly higher than the block target, etc.). Somebody gets them.

The cost of mining equipment in total doesn't really matter. If there is an increasing amount of miners such that the difficulty continues to rise, it encourages hoarding - that much we already know. This aids indirectly in scarcity. But the amount of hardware invested into mining equipment does not drive the price of bitcoin up.


The minute that speculators stop buying bitcoin on the exchanges at the current price is the minute bitcoin's price declines. And when bitcoin's price declines, the prospective new buyer's cash doesn't flow into the buy side of the market. Because afterall, nobody wants bitcoin if bitcoin can't prove itself as a competent store of value.

New cash flowing into the exchanges is what will drive bitcoin's trading value up. Not the increasing sum total of the value of mining hardware.

+1, odolvlobo.

Well said.

So, just because something is scarce, it puts a gun to the head of a potential bitcoin purchaser, drives them to log on to create an account on an exchange, and purchase bitcoin at ever increasingly-higher amounts?

Increased network hashrate does not fuel a demand for bitcoin.

Pools provide an entry point to miners of any size - small, medium, or large. But they're especially an entry point to small/medium sized miners.

A given pool doesn't have to be "big." There could be lots of small pools or a few big pools, and the effect would be the same. Except that in the scenario where there are only a few big pools, a smaller number of people (the pool operators) have a large amount of bitcoin that they've collected through pool fees.

So I suppose it would be correct to say that many small pools decreases risk to the network. But I think any worry about this is unnecessary.