Greetings all

[just a man]

I found out about Bitcoin on the Keisser Report, I think it's a fascinating idea.

Some silly questions;

if Amazoin or someone decided to use a few of their many datacedntres just to generate bitcoins, what's to stop them cornering the market?

And what would 10 bitcoins buy me, how many British pounds for instance, could I buy with a bitcoin?

I kind of get it but these are a couple of click-point questions I have.

Merry Birthday of the Unconquored Sun to all.

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[Timo Y]

if Amazoin or someone decided to use a few of their many datacedntres just to generate bitcoins, what's to stop them cornering the market?

Anyone who owns a large proportion of Bitcoins (say, more than 1 million) could in theory corner the market.  

But that would be a one-off.  My estimate is that you could permanently crash the price by selling 1 million BTC at once.  But then you would no longer own 1 million BTC, and the price would eventually creep back up
as more users join. Somebody actually did try to crash the market by dumping 30,000 BTC back in September. They failed - the price went back to the original almost immediately.
 
Also, no matter how many datacenters you fire up, you can at most generate 7200 BTC per day. That is hardcoded into the protocol. So, to get hold of 1 million BTC, Amazon would not only need to fire up the equivalent of several supercomputer clusters, but keep them running for several months. Even a large company like Amazon would have to justify that kind of investment to its shareholders.  They wouldn't do it for frivolous reasons.

And what would 10 bitcoins buy me, how many British pounds for instance, could I buy with a bitcoin?

There price of Bitcoin is free floating. Currently it's trading at approx. USD 0.25 / Bitcoin.

[Cryptoman]

I found out about Bitcoin on the Keisser Report, I think it's a fascinating idea.

Do you have a link?  We've been trying to keep track of Bitcoin exposure in the media.

[just a man]

There price of Bitcoin is free floating. Currently it's trading at approx. USD 0.25 / Bitcoin.

4 BTC for $1? Not bad. There should be a currency convertion displayed on the website so people can see what the days exchange rate is for dollars, pounds and Euro's etc, or for gold. Then if people work up the courage to actually transact a big amount of stuff with BTC, then BTC might actually become trusted as somewhere to store money.... or am I wrong?

[just a man]

I found out about Bitcoin on the Keisser Report, I think it's a fascinating idea.

Do you have a link?  We've been trying to keep track of Bitcoin exposure in the media.

Here you go, Bitcoin's mentioned about halfway through near the end of the interview with Stacy Herbert, it referse to an article on website: newsfor.me.

http://rt.com/programs/keiser-report/stock-market-riots-crisis/

[grondilu]

I found out about Bitcoin on the Keisser Report, I think it's a fascinating idea.

Do you have a link?  We've been trying to keep track of Bitcoin exposure in the media.

Here you go, Bitcoin's mentioned about halfway through near the end of the interview with Stacy Herbert, it referse to an article on website: newsfor.me.

http://rt.com/programs/keiser-report/stock-market-riots-crisis/

OMG it's true :

<< Max and Stacy talk about stock market riots, p2p currencies and the banking solvency crisis. In the second half, Max talks to Mike Maloney of goldsilver.com about currency crises, China's gold and the silver market. >>

I love this guy.  I haven't been following him for a long time but I'm glad he's one of the first to talk about P2P currencies.

PS.    Just listened to Stacy Herbert talking about bitcoin.  That's great !  Stacy Herbert and Max Keiser are, with others such as Peter Schiff, Marc Faber, Jim Rogers, some of the guys I was listening to every day during the crisis.  I'm glad they get interested in bitcoin !

[casascius]

I found out about Bitcoin on the Keisser Report, I think it's a fascinating idea.

Do you have a link?  We've been trying to keep track of Bitcoin exposure in the media.

Here you go, Bitcoin's mentioned about halfway through near the end of the interview with Stacy Herbert, it referse to an article on website: newsfor.me.

http://rt.com/programs/keiser-report/stock-market-riots-crisis/

Time offset of mention of bitcoin: 12:00

[caveden]

4 BTC for $1? Not bad. There should be a currency convertion displayed on the website so people can see what the days exchange rate is for dollars, pounds and Euro's etc, or for gold. Then if people work up the courage to actually transact a big amount of stuff with BTC, then BTC might actually become trusted as somewhere to store money.... or am I wrong?

It doesn't make much sense having the rate on bitcoin.org because there is no "official rate". There are different exchanges, from cash-in-the-mail to credit cards, and prices floats freely on them.

If you want a good summary of bitcoin data there is http://bitcoinwatch.com

[caveden]

By the way, this is the first time I open bitcoin watch and I see a lower than 6 block per hour average...

[sandos]

Christmas, people travelling and turning computers off?

[just a man]

Bitcoins and virtual machines, does running virtual machines with virtual cores mean you can get more free bitcoins with one server?

I know the free bitcoins aren't the point of this, just a resource fee, but curious how it all works.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

Bitcoins and virtual machines, does running virtual machines with virtual cores mean you can get more free bitcoins with one server?

No. Only the total computational power of all your computers/servers/cores count. It doesn't matter if you split the power into 2 computers/cores, 1000 computers or do everything on a single ultra-powerful machine.

[grondilu]

Please notice that having a huge CPU power isn't enough for conering the market.  Even if you can generate ALL bitcoins in present and future, there are still the bitcoins of the past in circulation.  You'll have to buy them with some other currency.

You should also be aware of the difficulties related to a corner of ANY market.  Sometimes, success in this domain equals failure.  It seems paradoxical, but it was quite well illustrated by the Hunt brother's attempt to corner silver a few decades ago.

I'm pretty sure one of these days bitcoins will be confronted to such a corner attempt, probably with the same result.

[just a man]

Thanks for this information.

So regsrds to total computing power, this means the more powerful your processor, the more a share of the bitcoins you get when it's your processor that solved the block, correct?

Newbie's eh, and their tedius questions.

[caveden]

Unless you're talking about a generation pool, whenever you generate a block you get all the reward for that block, not a "share". The reward are the new coins (current 50 per block, until block 210.000) and the transaction fees.
The more computing power you have, the more hashes per second you can try, what increases the chances of finding the good hash and generating a block.