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 Replies: 17 / Views: 3,647 |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1454 Posts |
Full disclosure: I know virtually nothing about bitcoins. What I've gleaned from a few threads over the years is that they have some monetary value, perhaps akin to a gift card redeemable for a set amount of money, goods, or services from vendors who support this particular form of exchange? I'm not at all certain this is the correct interpretation, but hopefully someone with more knowledge on the subject can explain it better? The one I found below comes loaded with "10 bitcoins", which tells me nothing at all. Whatever it's actual value is, the one you can find on the link below is currently going for $1500+, with less than an hour to go and the reserve hasn't been met. I believe the post said that there were only 500 minted. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Gold-and-Si...em232df17289 |
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
4944 Posts |
I have no real idea what bitcoins are, other then a "virtual currency". Apparently though, 1 bitcoin is worth $100+ USD http://preev.com/btc/usd |
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
4944 Posts |
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Bedrock of the Community
13014 Posts |
I wont personally touch bitcoin. Theyre supposed to be some untracable money system that operates independent of governments and theyve had wide value swings. From what I know it sounds like a pyramid scheme, and considering the type of money it is theres pretty much a 0 percent chance they arent being used to finance drug operations and probably terrorism. Hackers have pillaged the accounts stealing millions from people before as well. If people like them they like them, I dont trust them at all
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3670 Posts |
Also you may note a story posted here a year or two back about a fellow who had huge amount of bit-coins stolen from his account.... In this day and age it is as simple as one allowing their password to fall in wrong hand and you can LITERALLY try and log into ebay and paypal one day and find yourself locked out, store taken over, new items listed, pay pal empty etc.., as I know for a fact a member here mentioned exactly that above happened to him a few years back. An this is a bit off subject, but ebay would not give him the persons name as it was intrusion of their privacy rights lol, wow now that is audacity and proves they care only about bottom line profit like all corps and everyone is expendable..... I had always thought them to just be digi currency, kind of similar to that money in pay pal you often never see and touch and only continue to trade..... This listing was for actual coin, not much to look at but they bid it up to 1500 plus and still no reserve from seller with zero feedback lol...... It said its...."loaded and un-circ" So "loaded" must mean this coin has a digital amount of currency on it in say in access of 1500 would it not, as mentioned above 1 bit coin is equal to 100 bucks? Edited by Silverhawk74
08/10/2013 01:16 am
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Pillar of the Community
United States
807 Posts |
Basically, the "physical" Bitcoins are tokens with one-time-use codes. Each transaction (roughly speaking) has a unique ID number, so you can assign a sum of BTC to a certain number, then mark that number on a physical object. Once it's used, however, its BTC value is gone.
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Pillar of the Community
1153 Posts |
If thats the case then no way I would buy one off of ebay from a seller with zero feedback as in the link above. I just don't trust people THAT much.. |
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Moderator
 Australia
16809 Posts |
Quote:
Basically, the "physical" Bitcoins are tokens with one-time-use codes. Each transaction (roughly speaking) has a unique ID number, so you can assign a sum of BTC to a certain number, then mark that number on a physical object. Once it's used, however, its BTC value is gone. What you have described is not "money", because the whole point of "money", especially money in physical form, is that it is reusable and as permanent as the word of whoever it is that issued it, be it government coin or private token. If its value disappears when it is "used", except perhaps to collectors, then it is more akin to a postage stamp, or a bus ticket, than it is to a coin or token. It's even worse than a stamp or bus ticket, really: used stamps get postmarked, used bus tickets get punched. Does anything physical happen to this bitcoin thing when it is "used" to prove it no longer has BTC value, like that little hologram thing gets peeled off? If not, then there is opportunity for some serious fraud to happen, especially with objects of such high denomination. $1500 is a high price to pay for an otherwise-worthless ounce of silver. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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Valued Member
United States
239 Posts |
I made a post months ago when the price spiked from $20 - $150+
I am involved in the btc market mainly for poker. Some of those Casascius rounds go for big premiums. There are even some error rounds out there. I believe someone bought up most of them and paid crazy money.
A lot of people came into large sums of money via bitcoin before it blew up. There is a famous transaction that took place a few years back. Someone wanted a pizza for bitcoins, he just wanted to pay someone bitcoins and have them call in an order to a local pizzeria for delivery. Well, that guy paid 10,000 bitcoins for the pizza. (which was about average price back then)
Well boys, today that man paid $100,000+ for a large pie, delivered.
Bitcoins are stored in "wallets", each wallet has a code ID which is usually random generated letters and numbers. Each of these coins has a wallet code on them that usually covered by something. Once you uncover the wallet code, you plug it in and have access to the bitcoins, 10btc in this case.
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Valued Member
United States
239 Posts |
Edited by Jenger
08/10/2013 11:11 am
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3670 Posts |
So the basic thought in designing these is basic money laundry.....
I can buy bit coins and store my money there in untraceable form, then gamble or whatever without any tracking ramifications?
Edited by Silverhawk74
08/10/2013 11:37 am
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Valued Member
United States
239 Posts |
Exactly. Bitcoin's themselves can be used to move large sums of money around, tax free, under the radar. People used to say its much easier transporting gold across borders instead of cash, well now all you have to do is transfer funds to different wallets. Transactions are virtually instant. Here is a site with alot of info on bitcoin myths, explains a lot https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/MythsBitcoins are mined from computers. A simple way to think of it is, its transforming electricity into currency (value wise). To mine BTC, you consume a much larger amount of electricity and there are many calculators out there, so you can figure out what you are actually profiting minus your electricity usage. A simple PC can't really profit from mining bitcoins anymore. There are machines (called asics) that are purposely made to mine very large amounts of btc. Mining bitcoins also have whats called "difficulty" and that simply means its that much harder to mine the bitcoin "blocks". The difficulty consistantly raises higher & higher as more btc is mined. As of right now, there have been 11533825.00000000 total bitcoins mined so far. Once 21 million bitcoins have been mined. Thats it, thats all. No more bitcoins can be mined after that. It still boggles my mind, but I am interested in it. Its been steady at around 90 - 105 usd for the last few months. I remember when they were >$8 a piece. Edited by Jenger
08/10/2013 12:38 pm
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Pillar of the Community
United States
807 Posts |
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What you have described is not "money", because the whole point of "money", especially money in physical form, is that it is reusable and as permanent as the word of whoever it is that issued it, be it government coin or private token. That's true. And I, for one, never claimed that it was "money". The "money" part has no physical existence at all, & is designed specifically so that it cannot be permanently tied to a physical evidence such as one of these so-called coins. |
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
2805 Posts |
It's ridiculous that this round is silver. It even says "one troy ounce" - but isn't the commodity being traded here Bitcoins, not silver?
It's like a gold ounce round that says "GOOD FOR 500 OUNCES OF SILVER AT [whatever]" in that it doesn't make sense and the material it's made out of apparently has no bearing on the actual value of the object. This is just a very successful attempt to cash in on the bitcoin craze by pulling libertarian heartstrings with two of their favourite things combined into one. What they really need next is to make these in electrum, add a denomination in New Liberty Dollars, then put a Bitcoin value on it too - the Four-In-One Fight the Power Round. If you put this on Kickstarter, be sure to mail me a cut of the massive profits you'll make.
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Valued Member
United States
239 Posts |
Kind of like how all other paper currency is? I high value written on something as cheap as a piece of paper? People buy these, have cashed in the BTC codes and your still left with a 1oz silver round. Your paying a high price because BTC commands a large price right now. Check out the graphs on http://www.mtgox.com |
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Bedrock of the Community
13014 Posts |
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Kind of like how all other paper currency is? I high value written on something as cheap as a piece of paper? Once a government turns the paper into money its no longer a cheap peace of paper. |
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Replies: 17 / Views: 3,647 |
Posted 08/09/2013 11:27 pm
