Author Topic: Bitcoins  (Read 83686 times)

jaDEB

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4551
  • Karma: +31/-3
    • View Profile
Re: Bitcoins
« Reply #15 on: October 11, 2017, 03:25:00 pm »
BTC/ZAR 66,500
jaDEB

If it scares you, it's a sign you need to do it

andre

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 52
  • Karma: +7/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Bitcoins
« Reply #16 on: October 11, 2017, 04:25:56 pm »
Yip - only way is up.
Ethereum is still struggling to recover but almost there.
The forecast for BTC was always $5k by the end of 2017.


jaDEB

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4551
  • Karma: +31/-3
    • View Profile
Re: Bitcoins
« Reply #17 on: October 13, 2017, 07:20:50 am »
BTC/ZAR 77,924
jaDEB

If it scares you, it's a sign you need to do it

Hamster

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 535
  • Karma: +13/-0
    • View Profile
    • Off Topic
Re: Bitcoins
« Reply #18 on: October 13, 2017, 02:09:54 pm »
The latest surge must be hype... it's insane!

jaDEB

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4551
  • Karma: +31/-3
    • View Profile
Re: Bitcoins
« Reply #19 on: October 16, 2017, 12:34:33 pm »
BTC/ZAR 78,492  :TU:
jaDEB

If it scares you, it's a sign you need to do it

Nivek

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 295
  • Karma: +6/-1
    • View Profile
Re: Bitcoins
« Reply #20 on: October 16, 2017, 02:49:15 pm »
It's climbing so fast it must be getting nosebleeds. I don't get it, why are they so valuable?

gcr

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1008
  • Karma: +28/-1
    • View Profile
Re: Bitcoins
« Reply #21 on: October 16, 2017, 06:51:35 pm »
It's climbing so fast it must be getting nosebleeds. I don't get it, why are they so valuable?
My understanding is there is only a finite number in existence at present, so its a captive market, also its an ideal opportunity for money laundering without authorities knowing where the coins are at any given time - no registers.
I do believe this is a bit of a bubble and a bit like the tech stock melt down a number of decades back - but hey this happens in markets you just need to be astute with your wealth
Not everything that counts, can be counted, and, not everything that can be counted counts - Albert Einstein

jaDEB

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4551
  • Karma: +31/-3
    • View Profile
Re: Bitcoins
« Reply #22 on: October 17, 2017, 04:17:36 pm »
BTC/ZAR 79,282

jaDEB

If it scares you, it's a sign you need to do it

jaDEB

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4551
  • Karma: +31/-3
    • View Profile
Re: Bitcoins
« Reply #23 on: October 17, 2017, 04:23:17 pm »
It's climbing so fast it must be getting nosebleeds. I don't get it, why are they so valuable?
My understanding is there is only a finite number in existence at present, so its a captive market, also its an ideal opportunity for money laundering without authorities knowing where the coins are at any given time - no registers.
I do believe this is a bit of a bubble and a bit like the tech stock melt down a number of decades back - but hey this happens in markets you just need to be astute with your wealth

Let’s say Maria wants to send mail to Peter. First she needs to know what Peter’s mailbox address or number is. Let’s say Peter’s mailbox is number 2034. Similarly, if she wants to send Bitcoin to Peter, she needs to know his Bitcoin address, which is a number that uniquely identifies him. This is also sometimes called his wallet address, or public key, which functions similar to your bank account number. It’s a long and complicated number because there are so many Bitcoin post boxes in the world, but thankfully you don’t have to remember it, you can find it on the internet.
So now Maria deposits the Bitcoin in Peter’s mailbox. She can have a peek inside and see the Bitcoin there, in fact anyone who walks by can see that mailbox 2034 is filled with one Bitcoin. This is part of the exciting part of Bitcoin - that everyone can see all the transactions but without anyone having to share their identity. People can see there is one Bitcoin in 2034, but no-one, except for Maria and Peter, will know it belongs to Peter.
jaDEB

If it scares you, it's a sign you need to do it

Moonraker

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1095
  • Karma: +31/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Bitcoins
« Reply #24 on: October 17, 2017, 04:34:35 pm »
From https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/148/what-exactly-is-mining

Quote
The way Bitcoin works is that instead of having one central authority who secures and controls the money supply (like most governments do for their national currencies), this work is spread out all across the network. Most of the heavy lifting for Bitcoin is done by "miners".

Miners collect the transactions on the network (like "Alice pays Karim 10 bitcoins" and "Liam pays Sofia 8.3 bitcoins") into large bundles called blocks. These blocks are strung together into one continuous, authoritative record called the block chain, which doesn't permit any conflicting transactions. This is necessary because without it people would be able to sign the same bitcoins over to two different recipients, like writing cheques for more money than you have in your account. The block chain lets you know for sure exactly which transactions count and can be trusted (so no bad cheques!).

The way Bitcoin makes sure there is only one block chain is by making blocks really hard to produce. So instead of just being able to make blocks at will, miners have to compute a cryptographic hash of the block that meets certain criteria. Bitcoiners refer to this process as "hashing". The only way to find a cryptographic hash that's "good enough to count" is to try computing a whole bunch of them until you get lucky and find one that works. This is the "lottery" that David Schwartz refers to, because miners who successfully create a block are rewarded some bitcoins according to a preset schedule. The difficulty of the criteria for the hash is continually adjusted based on how frequently blocks are appearing, so more competition equals more work needed to find a block. A modern GPU can try hundreds of millions of hashes per second, so to be competitive in this race to find hashes miners need specialised hardware, otherwise they will tend to spend more on electricity than they make in the "lottery".

In addition to the hash criteria, a block needs to contain only valid, non-conflicting transactions. So the other main task for miners is to carefully validate all the transactions that go into their blocks, otherwise they won't get any reward for their work!

Because of all this work, when a Bitcoin client signs on to the network it can trust the block chain that was most difficult to produce (since this is evidently the one that was being worked on by the most miners). If there was a "fake" blockchain competing with the real ones (say, where someone pretends that they didn't actually give Sofia those 8.4 bitcoins and they still have them), the fraudster would have to do as much work as the whole rest of the network to make their block chain look as trustworthy. So essentially, the intense work that goes into finding blocks through hashing secures the network against fraud. There is also, of course, some nifty code that figures out how to choose between conflicting transactions; and what to do if two people find valid blocks at the same time.

One last thing: why is it called mining? In the original analogy, people who performed this essential work were compared to gold miners digging the gold out of the ground so that everyone could use it. But in reality, Bitcoin "miners" are just running computer programs on very specialised hardware that automates the process of securing the network. To sum up, this software

Collects transactions from the network
Validates them, and doesn't allow conflicting ones
Puts them into large bundles called blocks
Computes cryptographic hashes over and over until if finds one "good enough to count"
Then submits the block to the network, adding it to the block chain and earning a reward in return.
That's mining in a nutshell!


jaDEB

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4551
  • Karma: +31/-3
    • View Profile
Re: Bitcoins
« Reply #25 on: October 21, 2017, 02:48:19 pm »
BTC/ZAR 88,173
jaDEB

If it scares you, it's a sign you need to do it

Moonraker

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1095
  • Karma: +31/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Bitcoins
« Reply #26 on: October 21, 2017, 04:29:52 pm »
Watch out!

uBlock Origin Developers Take Steps to Block Cryptocurrency Mining Scripts

Quote
It has become rather evident that embedding cryptocurrency mining scripts in web pages can be a very lucrative business. The Pirate Bay recently experimented with such a script to potentially replace its ad revenue model. However, this technology can also be used for far more nefarious purposes. uBlock Origin, one of the world’s most famous ad blockers, has built in a feature that blocks these mining scripts altogether.
Quote
However, these new cryptocurrency mining scripts embedded in websites are also a big cause for concern. Using other people’s computer resources to generate money on another’s behalf without consent is a very dangerous concept. It is only normal that most people would take ample precautions to block these scripts without having to go through a big ordeal to do so. As it turns out, most ad blockers do the job just fine. uBlock Origin is one of the best ad blockers for this purpose.

(I have been using uBlock₀ and uMatrix for a long time - can recommend. You can add NoCoin FilterList to uBlock₀ https://filterlists.com/)

jaDEB

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4551
  • Karma: +31/-3
    • View Profile
Re: Bitcoins
« Reply #27 on: October 27, 2017, 02:14:24 pm »
BTC/ZAR 87,651
jaDEB

If it scares you, it's a sign you need to do it

andre

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 52
  • Karma: +7/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Bitcoins
« Reply #28 on: October 30, 2017, 03:10:58 pm »
Still going strong!
I expected a bit of a pullback after the fork - perhaps even close to $5200 again
Guess we'll see

jaDEB

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4551
  • Karma: +31/-3
    • View Profile
Re: Bitcoins
« Reply #29 on: October 31, 2017, 03:48:54 pm »
BTC/ZAR 94,499  :TU:
jaDEB

If it scares you, it's a sign you need to do it