SRL Archive - Misc. Links and Programs

From the website

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer network based digital currency. Peer-to-peer (P2P) means that there is no central authority to issue new money or keep track of transactions. Instead, these tasks are managed collectively by the nodes of the network.

Advantages:

• Transfer money easily through the Internet, without having to trust middlemen.
• Third parties can’t prevent or control your transactions.
• Bitcoin transactions are practically free, whereas credit cards and online payment systems typically cost 1-5% per transaction plus various other merchant fees up to hundreds of dollars.
• Be safe from the instability caused by fractional reserve banking and bad policies of central banks. The limited inflation of the Bitcoin system’s money supply is distributed evenly (by CPU power) throughout the network, not monopolized by the banks.

Bitcoin is an open source project created by Satoshi Nakamoto, and is currently in beta development stage. Bitcoin development is hosted at SourceForge.

Screenshots:




Latest Version

Discuss.

EDIT: For those with compute enabled video cards, there are OpenCL and CUDA clients on the Bitcoin forums. With these, you can easily get 20-30x the hashrate of a CPU!

i don't know what this is?
is this real money to be used for public and private debts? Is this like a free paypal?

Quite, but there are no paypal-style refund scams to worry about! Once you have the money, you know it's yours.

Additionally, it is completely anonymous and is P2P based so you can use it for whatever nefarious means you like and there is no way to shut it down!

EDIT: Hah, system won't let me rep you :p

Wouldn't this greatly favor the seller? I mean its a great idea– just would it not be easier to scam people through this? Send them a damaged item for some bitcoin, and once you have it… vanish?

Someone please debunk me :(

That's what middlemen are for. Think of it as cash for the web.

But you're right; without a middleman, buying actual goods from an unknown seller is a bad idea.

I read about this like a month ago. Seems interesting but there are some flaws to it and I don't think it'll go anywhere personally.

Better way to buy drugs?

I've worked with it a bit. Pretty nice idea, but I doubt it will go far.

Also, it isn't fully anonymous, you bootstrap with other peers.

how do you get money onto it? connects to your bank account?

Isn't it possible to use some kind of Sybil-like attack to trick the system in having more money than you actually have? P2P sounds kinda fishy to me for this kind of stuff..
edit: aha, computational problems. Still I wouldn't trust anything to this kind of stuff :p

From: Markus
Isn't it possible to use some kind of Sybil-like attack to trick the system in having more money than you actually have? P2P sounds kinda fishy to me for this kind of stuff..
edit: aha, computational problems. Still I wouldn't trust anything to this kind of stuff :p

Yeah, me neither…

How is the money transfered? Is it linked to your bank or what?
Also I agree with Wizzup? and Markus, seems a bit off

From: Brain
how do you get money onto it? connects to your bank account?

It's a currency. To get it, you'd have to buy it with a different currency/goods.

Of course, if it catches on, there will be services that will allow you to connect to a bank account, etc, etc.

EDIT: And nope, no sybil attacks here.

so you buy fake money from a website to send to people online so they can send it to people online?
How do you cash out? They send you real money for your fake money?

Sure, if we're talking simple wikipedia style. Note that there is no central organization with control over the currency. That's what makes it special - nobody can track how much money you have or what you do with it.

From: Smartzkid
Sure, if we're talking simple wikipedia style. Note that there is no central organization with control over the currency. That's what makes it special - nobody can track how much money you have or what you do with it.

but… it's value-less…

From: TomTuff
but… it's value-less…

I guess u can redeem for real $?

From: noidea
I guess u can redeem for real $?

not according to what has been said in the thread.

google before just saying it's not in the thread next time?
http://www.bitcoin.org/trade

From: TomTuff
but… it's value-less…

The public's confidence in a currency is what gives it value.

From: Smartzkid
The public's confidence in a currency is what gives it value.

I don't have very much confidence in this currency, so it has no value to me - oh well, i'm not trying to be facetious - I probably won't use this regardless.

From: TomTuff
I don't have very much confidence in this currency, so it has no value to me - oh well, i'm not trying to be facetious - I probably won't use this regardless.

Just btw, facetious means sarcastic.

From: TomTuff
I don't have very much confidence in this currency, so it has no value to me - oh well, i'm not trying to be facetious - I probably won't use this regardless.

This is precisely why I like it so much! It makes for a great micropayment currency - you can say "wow, that was a nice post!" and send someone some bitcoins as a way to say thanks without having to cringe at spending 'real' money to do so. Think of it as Flattr without the monthly fee.

So this is a payment method ?

From: tom99
So this is a payment method ?

Bitcoins are probably worth less than a Zimbabwe dollar, so not really.

As previously posted, bitcoins are accepted by a small number of companies for services and products.

Bitcoins are a currency/commodity and can be easily sent to another person using the official client's built in payment system.

hmmm, does SRL accept Bitcoin donations? Eh?

I'm sure it could be arranged! Wouldn't it be super though, if we could get Wizzup to use bitcoin, then we could donate very easily!

From: Smartzkid
I'm sure it could be arranged! Wouldn't it be super though, if we could get Wizzup to use bitcoin, then we could donate very easily!

It would be wonderful!
but it depends if bandwidth can be payed for in bitcoins?

Bitcoins can go < - > USD/EUR through a few trading sites

From: Smartzkid
Bitcoins can go < - > USD/EUR through a few trading sites

that. is. awesome

Wizzup, please? :)

OMG

I can buy porn with Bitcoin!

Adult

[show/hide]
Bitcoin XXX, amateur sex video downloads
Talk Sugar, phone sex, live chat, live cam shows
Pretty Justine, photos for adults
Bitcoin Sex Toys
chainedgirls.com

I'm so jumping on this bandwagon.

From: Jason2gs
OMG

I can buy porn with Bitcoin!
I'm so jumping on this bandwagon.

Made me lol =)

reading through this again I still don't understand the appeal….is it just breaking your money down into like…hundreths of a cent? And I find it really easy to just donate with paypal, and I'm sure the recipient appreciates actual currency, which can be used to buy other things than bondage porn (which I'm sure wizzup? loves, it just doesn't help the site).

so…is this just like funny money or what? still so confused

The appeal is that no government controls it and transactions are completely anonymous.

it just seems like some yahoo in canada controls it! who divvies out the coins?! just seems like kids collecting rocks to trade more rocks for, or bondage porn, but you need lots of rocks for that.
I'll just stop posting, I'm obviously not the target audience I guess…

The coins are given out at a constant rate to people who compute proofs of work on their computers.

They cannot, however, be taken away without access to the owner's private key, which is (hopefully) securely stored on their computer.

While it is not a traditional 'brick and mortar' currency, the proof of work that represents each coin represents value. Same as a dollar bill - it doesn't have value in and of itself, it is people's confidence that gives it value. With bitcoins, this confidence is in the proof of work of each coin and the security of the system as a whole.

It still seems kind of silly, but I can understand the appeal of it.

Though, with a value of about a half a penny, it's evidently a very time-consuming process to make even a minuscule amount of the titular currency.

Also, if what I read is correct, it was amazingly easy to acquire BTC when the system first started. After time, it gets harder and harder. Logic tells me that those who started out at the very beginning would hold a sort of monopoly on it. (Or, in other words, implies that there's some inevitable higher/lower class in it.)

To some extent, yes. However, it isn't as bad as it might seem. All along, people have been spending their bitcoins and spreading their wealth. For example, at one point someone bought two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins. The person who sold those pizzas has probably bought a couple of things, and so on. While some of the early adopters certainly hold more bitcoins than others, the wealth should have evened out 'enough' by the time bitcoins reach the next stages of adoption.

It's also worth noting that bitcoins are worth roughly 1/3 of a dollar if you go by current exchange rates. If you look more carefully though, you will find that recent bitcoin -> gold auctions value one bitcoin at closer to 75 cents.

E: Yes, you are correct. Unless a person is getting their electricity for free (or using their PC to generate heat), creating bitcoins does not generate much profit. However, there are rumors of a FPGA based bitcoin miner that could be profitable.

Look into a title called "a lodging of a wayfaring men," explains it quite well and it's a nice read.

To people that are saying "but it's not cash, it's digital," your current bank balance is digital, heck… there's only 7% of currency that's actually in circulation (printed), rest is digital. And to think of it, that means that 93% is… debt?

From: Feroc1ty
Look into a title called "a lodging of a wayfaring men," explains it quite well and it's a nice read.

To people that are saying "but it's not cash, it's digital," your current bank balance is digital, heck… there's only 7% of currency that's actually in circulation (printed), rest is digital. And to think of it, that means that 93% is… debt?

It's all debt.

The argument against it isn't that it's 'digital.' It's that it's ostensibly worthless.

Ironically, despite the worthlessness of it, it's subject to inevitable, progressive inflation. Due to the nature of it being more difficult to acquire over time. (In less than a year, it's gone up in value roughly 100x. Can't wait to see where it'll be by 2012.)

Edit: Smartz, what happened in July?

http://www.google.com/trends?q=bitcoin&ctab=0&geo=all&date=ytd&sort=0

https://www.bitcoinmarket.com/ (Max, look back at July.)

So, basically, coins are generated at a certain rate amongst the people who contribute with CPU power. (Very slow rate so you won't get rich or anything?). But what if I set a botnetwork up, in which all the computers will contribute CPU for my "Wallet"? I could get rich (in terms of Bitcoins), fast?

What about bitcoins disappearing? (People whose harddisk crashed, formatted, etc..)

EDIT: Read all the technical details, very cool project! (@My own questions: the more CPU is contributed, the slower cash will be generated. And there are online "wallet" managers (yes this defeats the purpose of the system kinda, but it's definitely useful).

From: Jason2gs
Smartz, what happened in July?

Slashdotted.

From: mastaraymond
Wwhat if I set a botnetwork up, in which all the computers will contribute CPU for my "Wallet"? I could get rich (in terms of Bitcoins), fast?

Yep. Though you can't make much just contributing CPU cycles anymore. Nowadays, it's GPUs that matter. (ATI 5xxx GPUs, specifically)

What about bitcoins disappearing? (People whose harddisk crashed, formatted, etc..)

It's happened. I've read some weird theories on the implications of this, but my opinion is that the quantity lost is so few that it won't matter in the end.

From: Smartzkid
Slashdotted.



Yep. Though you can't make much just contributing CPU cycles anymore. Nowadays, it's GPUs that matter. (ATI 5xxx GPUs, specifically)



It's happened. I've read some weird theories on the implications of this, but my opinion is that the quantity lost is so few that it won't matter in the end.

Wouldn't matter really, if you just have enough CPUs contributing to some pooled mining service, you might get some coins out of it. Although it seems that "generating" money is kinda out of the question now-a-days.

Banks would estimate the amount of money lost and compensate that with fresh prints, shouldn't BitCoins do something alike?

A quick search of the forums turned up a couple threads. Apparently their term for this phenomenon is natural deflation.

http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=111.0
http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=245.0
http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=198.0

E: Check out the hashes/sec of the entire network

From: Smartzkid
A quick search of the forums turned up a couple threads. Apparently their term for this phenomenon is natural deflation.

http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=111.0
http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=245.0
http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=198.0

E: Check out the hashes/sec of the entire network

Quite a waste of CPU if you look at it, could be used for far more useful purposes

The hash generation is a necessary evil to create the block chain. This is what keeps Bitcoin secure - the cryptological proofs of work. One doesn't need to run a bitcoin miner to use it as a currency.

A good watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um63OQz3bjo

From: Smartzkid
Some good propoganda:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um63OQz3bjo

Great! So, ill invest my electricity (money) in bitcoins and then i cant pay my rent because my landlord says "what the fuck is a bitcoin?" I can't buy anything with them because they are not a legal tender, which i could force someone to take using the law, but hey maybe i can try and buy more graphics cards on newegg and newegg will say "what the fuck is a bitcoin?" If i took my bitcoins to any real currency exchange they wouldn't give me shit.

but at least the video says
"[look] you [can buy all this shit but we're not going to tell you where]"
"several currency exchanges exist where you can trade your bitcoins for dollars" Its the other way around; the sites feed off the hype, sell bitcoins, and then the people are stuck with them.
"Bitcoins are a great way for small businesses and freelancers to get noticed" wtf?

I can't wait until i go to Defcon and see a presentation on how to exploit bitcoins.

From: blackfire553
Great! So, ill invest my electricity (money) in bitcoins and then i cant pay my rent because my landlord says "what the fuck is a bitcoin?" I can't buy anything with them because they are not a legal tender, which i could force someone to take using the law, but hey maybe i can try and buy more graphics cards on newegg and newegg will say "what the fuck is a bitcoin?" If i took my bitcoins to any real currency exchange they wouldn't give me shit.

but at least the video says
"[look] you [can buy all this shit but we're not going to tell you where]"
"several currency exchanges exist where you can trade your bitcoins for dollars" Its the other way around; the sites feed off the hype, sell bitcoins, and then the people are stuck with them.
"Bitcoins are a great way for small businesses and freelancers to get noticed" wtf?

I can't wait until i go to Defcon and see a presentation on how to exploit bitcoins.

Please do some research before bashing bitcoins…

Bitcoins recently took a massive spike in popularity because of the recent media coverage, Gawker's article, concerning the black market they are being used for. Now that they have been established as a currency that is acceptable to use people are now accepting them for products.

If you would've done a minimal amount of research, before bashing them, you would have found out by now that mtgox.com, tradehill.com, bitmarket.eu are exchange markets for the currency. They use Dwolla, wire transfers, and other ways to transfer money to the website so bitcoins can be bought/sold.

Currently the price at the time of posting is $19.50 per 1 bitcoin. With the supposed increase in difficulty mining them the price will more than likely jump tomorrow.

The way people mine bitcoins is the same way people attempt to crack passwords. using CPUs (Now pointless) and using Graphics cards(GPUs). The way this happens is when a person/pool mines a specific block they receive a reward. Currently the reward is 50 bitcoins and will decrease to 25 bitcoins in 2012 or when 210,000 blocks have been mined.

Now solo mining is becoming a bit obsolete unless you have the GPUs to generate ~3-4 GHashs/s which takes quite a few GPUs, but the reward can be 50 bitcoins to yourself meaning you make $975@$19.50 per BTC. Most people now are doing pool mining which is the recommended way to mine bitcoins. A pool of miners mining blocks is a lot more efficient than solo mining as you can average more return(rewards(BTC)) than solo mining, in layman's terms, that means you get more bang for your buck.

The reason right now for the volatile price change is that people are still getting accustomed to where bitcoins are going to go and also you have the get rich quick kids that just want profit. After this settles down then the real market will blossom and the price will stay steady with price spikes every now and then when the difficulty rises and price declines when people get worried.

To put it in other words look at gold prices. couple decades ago prices where on the decline and people sold all the gold they owned. Now the price is sky high because it's one of the usable currencies that will be used when/if the dollar collapses.

More info about bitcoins:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade - Useful ways to use bitcoins and what markets are open/accepting bitcoins as a currency.
https://forum.bitcoin.org/ - The official forums.
http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoin - Reddit's bitcoin subreddit.
https://mtgox.com - Biggest market exchange for bitcoins.
https://bitmarket.eu - European trading market for bitcoins. (Registration is currently closed, possibly due to backlog of money transfer requests)
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page - The main Bitcoin wiki page.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Category:Mining - How mining bitcoins works.

If you have any other questions feel free to send me a PM. I'm no superstar DJ on the subject of Bitcoins as I've only been researching them since Friday when the "Black Friday of Bitcoins" happened.

You can buy anything with Bitcoins. I'm going to setup a miner at my house and then buy stuff or invest in it until the price goes up and then sell. :)

From: Ron
You can buy anything with Bitcoins. I'm going to setup a miner at my house and then buy stuff or invest in it until the price goes up and then sell. :)

I suggest looking at this to find the best setup for a mining rig. If you already have everything and just need to upgrade your GPU then look over this to see what the average Mhash/s you'll be getting with the card your going to purchase.

I just snapped up a Sapphire 5830HD from Newegg for $109 which averages about 311 Mhash/s with overclocking.

Good luck. :sasmokin:

Anyone else pull off a nice profit from Bitcoins?

Just stopping by to dig up an old thread :P

From: Smartzkid
Anyone else pull off a nice profit from Bitcoins?

Just stopping by to dig up an old thread :P

Yeah the profit was good :)
Sold all of mine when I was seeing reports about the bit coin on CNN and Fox News
Prices have dipped since those reports came out since everyone cashed in (well the smart ones)

From: Smartzkid
Anyone else pull off a nice profit from Bitcoins?

Just stopping by to dig up an old thread :P

Yep. Sold 4.5 bitcoins for about $230 each.

Not personally, but my brother had a little rig in the shed pulling in about 1.5 BTC a week. He earned a few hundred pound from it, and he doesn't pay for electricity as he's renting.

Not worth the electricity cost I think, the money is mined out of it already for the most part. If you are planning to mine, do it in a minepool so you get a steady amount of profit, thats what I did atleast.

Aye, there definitely isn't any more easy money in mining. I made a pretty decent profit - bought a tablet and some computer bits.

Gratz to all who came out on top :)