The Bitcoin/Crypto Thread

[Copper]

That sounds reasonable.

[jon-nyc]

I was thinking I should buy a a few BTC just to force myself to pay attention

[LuFins Dad]

What’s the lowest you can invest into Bitcoin? I know it doesn’t take much for some of the smaller coins…

[LuFins Dad]

I have thought about going in with Luke to set up some mining from his dorm… Free electricity…

[Klaus]

I don't think there's a lower limit on how much you can invest.

I'm using a broker where I pay 0.2% of the volume as fee. No fixed costs. I can buy Bitcoin for 0.01 Euro and would pay 0.0002 Euro fees.

[Klaus]

@lufins-dad said in The Bitcoin/Crypto Thread:

I have thought about going in with Luke to set up some mining from his dorm… Free electricity…

Forget about it. These days, you need special very sophisticated hardware ("Bitcoin ASIC", something like this) for mining. Even a $5K GPU doesn't cut it anymore these days. And even then you need to participate in "mining pools" to ever mine anything.

[Klaus]

One thing I don't quite understand:

There are numerous companies that offer cloud mining in places where energy is cheap, such as this one in Norway. If it is profitable to mine bitcoin in that location, why the hell would a company rent the equipment to someone else instead of making the profit itself?

[taiwan_girl]

I just dont understand the value of bitcoin and other crypto money.

If that was all that I had, I think it would be pretty difficult to survive on a day to day basis.

fill the car with petrol? hmmmm
go to a restaurant or grocery to eat? hmmmmm
Pay my insurance? hmmmm
Go visit a doctor or dentist? hmmmm
etc

To my uneducated mind in this, it seems like the Holland tulip craze. People bidding up the price on something that does not have a real value behind it.

Educate me!!!

[George K]

@taiwan_girl said in The Bitcoin/Crypto Thread:

it seems like the Holland tulip craze. People bidding up the price on something that does not have a real value behind it.

That's my understanding as well.

[Axtremus]

@Klaus, you sure you want to get into Bitcoin now?
Elon Musk just got out of accepting Bitcoin as payment for Tesla vehicles.
Maybe try Dogecoin?

[89th]

@lufins-dad said in The Bitcoin/Crypto Thread:

What’s the lowest you can invest into Bitcoin? I know it doesn’t take much for some of the smaller coins…

Sign up on Coinbase.com and you get free $5 in Bitcoin.

[89th]

I have some cash invested in a few coins. I wanted to get some exposure without risking too much. My main coin is Ethereum (used as a platform for many other coins, also is the core for NFTs which I see as a legit digital solution), although Bitcoin is obviously the main coin out there. I have a little stake in about 5 other coins, in case any of them take off. My real retirement plan though is the SHIB coin (aka a doge wannabe). I bought 4 million of those coins (for like $180) so if it can just get to a dollar, I’ll be rich.

[Klaus]

@george-k said in The Bitcoin/Crypto Thread:

@taiwan_girl said in The Bitcoin/Crypto Thread:

it seems like the Holland tulip craze. People bidding up the price on something that does not have a real value behind it.

That's my understanding as well.

But US dollar and other fiat currencies have no value behind it either.

[mark]

@89th said in The Bitcoin/Crypto Thread:

@lufins-dad said in The Bitcoin/Crypto Thread:

What’s the lowest you can invest into Bitcoin? I know it doesn’t take much for some of the smaller coins…

Sign up on Coinbase.com and you get free $5 in Bitcoin.

I signed up and got my $5.00 in Bitcoin.

It immediately fell to $4.92. lol

[Copper]

I just tried to sign up.

I got through most of it, but they didn't like my paypal. No reason, they just said it doesn't work - try again.

[Klaus]

I found this article, which explains what it would take a central authority to take over Bitcoin, interesting.

https://braiins.com/blog/how-much-would-it-cost-to-51-attack-bitcoin

I wondered if Jeff Bezos could take over Bitcoin if he'd use the whole Amazon cloud computing stuff exclusively for that purpose. From what I understand, it wouldn't work since normal computers, even many of them, and even millions of modern graphics cards, are too slow to compete with the special mining hardware.

Also, even if a central authority would control Bitcoin for a while with a 51% attack, the damage would be somewhat limited:

An attacker that controls more than 50% of the network's computing power can, for the time that he is in control, exclude and modify the ordering of transactions. This allows him to:

Reverse transactions that he sends while he's in control. This has the potential to double-spend transactions that previously had already been seen in the block chain, affecting all coins that share a history with the reversed transaction
Reverse confirmations for any transaction that had previously been seen in the block chain while he’s in control.
Prevent some or all transactions from gaining any confirmations
Prevent some or all other miners from mining any valid blocks
The attacker can't:

Reverse other people's transactions without their cooperation (unless their coin history has been affected by a double-spend)
Prevent transactions from being sent at all (they'll show as 0/unconfirmed)
Change the number of coins generated per block
Create coins out of thin air
Send coins that never belonged to him

[Klaus]

Also, you'd need to command a lot of energy, in addition to somehow getting hold of enough hardware:

that would put the electricity capacity needed to power all those ASICs at ~4.4 GW of power.

4.4 Jigawatts! Great Scott!

[Klaus]

After looking into it a bit more, I must say that I'm quite impressed how sophisticated the idea of Bitcoin is. The way the mining/proof of work idea interacts with the distributed blockchain trust idea is genius.

[taiwan_girl]

@klaus said in The Bitcoin/Crypto Thread:

@george-k said in The Bitcoin/Crypto Thread:

@taiwan_girl said in The Bitcoin/Crypto Thread:

it seems like the Holland tulip craze. People bidding up the price on something that does not have a real value behind it.

That's my understanding as well.

But US dollar and other fiat currencies have no value behind it either.

I think yes and no.

There is pretty much zero chance that the US government will say that US dollars are not acceptable. To me, that means that it has some value and will continue to have some value. I know that next week, next year, next century, I can go into a store and buy something with US dollars.

But look at China, they recently pretty much said the opposite about crypto currency. Maybe I had the equivalent of $1 MM USD in crypto and live in China. All of sudden, I cannot use it. To me, that means that it has no real value.

[Klaus]

@taiwan_girl said in The Bitcoin/Crypto Thread:

There is pretty much zero chance that the US government will say that US dollars are not acceptable. To me, that means that it has some value and will continue to have some value. I know that next week, next year, next century, I can go into a store and buy something with US dollars.

I don't disagree with what you wrote, but there's a non-zero risk of hyperinflation and a non-zero risk of countries/systems disappearing.

I agree that it may very well be the case that Bitcoin ceases to exist, but one can be certain that there can be no inflation - except for the completely predictable mining until 2140 or so -, that it will survive the downfall of countries, and that there is no (known) way of manipulation.

I've only invested an amount of money where I won't cry when it's gone. It's certainly a quite risky endeavour at this point. But I do also see a lot of opportunity in the idea. When you look at the more advanced crypto currency concepts such as "smart contracts", then it gets really interesting (Ethereum is a first step in that direction). It certainly has the potential to transform the way we do business.