Bitcoin
 

Hi everybody,
anybody understand something about bitcoin mining and how to do it?

Re: bitcoin
 

Solo? Not really viable, you'll put more money into it than you'll get back.

Try this: https://vertcoin.org/ (Different currency, same idea)

Re: Bitcoin
 

Yes, and dont waste your time (and money).

Re: bitcoin
 

The electricity useage these days apparently costs more than any potential gains even with a tailor made machine. The only people who did well with mining were the early adopters.

You can still buy and sell, not just bitcoin there's all sorts of currencies now some more volatile than others.

VBeware though its very easy to lose your money by fair means or foul.

Re: Bitcoin
 

I keep thinking about whether to just go out and buy 1 Bitcoin if it is financially viable to do it like that seeming the cost is shooting up, but i need to learn alot more before i take that risk.

Re: Bitcoin
 

Bitcoin itself is now strictly in the province of dedicated ASIC miners.

Etherium is what's been driving the demand for 4GB high end graphics cards - and for that or any other altcoins, the next dilemma is to hold them or transfer to bitcoin - there are about 10 or so that some mining solutions can do, sometimes with autoselection

Re: Bitcoin
 

You can buy a fraction of a bitcoin, such as 0.1 or 0.5 BTC.

To OP, as others have said, forget mining Bitcoin now. When Bitcoin was in it's infancy, mining bitcoin on your home pc was an option but not now as mining gets harder as more time goes on and more bitcoins are mined. Think of bitcoin mining as your computer doing extensive maths problems which could lead to a fraction of a bitcoin being discovered. As more bitcoins get discovered over the world, the complexity of the maths gets harder. We are now at the point where the maths are so hard that it is mostly hardware created specifically for doing the maths involved are doing most of the mining. Look up 'ASIC mining'.

You could get in to an alternative newer crypto-currency which will be easier to mine but there is a good chance a majority of them will never be worth anything, so you either have to spread your mining across a few currencies or be very lucky with choosing the right one to concentrate on.

I expect the BTC bubble will burst but go down to still acceptable levels. Personally I will be spreading some of my greatly inflated BTC across to some other crypto-currencies in the hope some of them do well too :)

Started when 1 bitcoin was £190, now 1 bitcoin is worth £5500. <3 bitcoin :D

Re: Bitcoin
 

Why cant you buy a single bitcoin?

If i was to buy part of a coin, where is it stored and how safe is it from theft?

Re: Bitcoin
 

You can.

I think the point was you dont have to buy them in whole numbers, you can buy fractions as well.

Re: Bitcoin
 

You can get an e-wallet to keep it in, but some are safer than others and they can be stolen.

Re: Bitcoin
 

You have a wallet online or on your pc via software which has an unique address (a long string of letters and numbers) and anyone can send bitcoin to that address and the owner can send from that wallet.

That is it simplified anyway. I think the actual reality is all the bitcoin are on the blockchain, which is like a database distributed across loads of servers and computers on the net, which know how much is in each wallet. Only the person with the correct cryptographic keys for a wallet may send bitcoin to another wallet, which is the owner of the wallet who knows the passphrase which unlocks the keys locally.

You could actually not have a wallet online and just print out the keys on a piece of paper (will be just a printout of gibberish) and put that in a safe. Everything you need to get at your bitcoins is on that piece of paper.

If you use an online wallet, you have to worry about someone getting your username and password and being able to transfer you coins. You can turn on 2 factor authentication and other features for more protection.

Re: Bitcoin
 

You seem to know your stuff, so maybe you can help with a few questions as i am seriously considering buying upto 1 bitcoin? :)

1. Is it free to open a wallet online?
2. Where do you recommend to open a wallet?
3. Does a wallet have a monthly or annual maintenance charge?
4. When buying or selling a bitcoin i assume there is some kind of charge involved?
5. When the button is pressed to buy/sell a coin how quickly does it appear or leave the wallet?
6. Do we have to declare profits from bitcoins towards capital gains tax?

Thanks for your help if you have the time to answer these, normally i would google but i feel safer asking someone who has dabbled is this already.

Re: Bitcoin
 

I'm a noob when it comes to bitcoins, know just enough to get by.

1) Yes
2) https://www.coinbase.com/ (as mentioned before, turn on some 2 factor auth option)
3) No
4) Sending bitcoin there is something called a miners fee, like an amount to make sure other computers on the bitcoin network process the payment. Offline wallets like electrum can work out the charge for you and coinbase should do the same.

As for buying from an exchange such as Coinbase, I assume it's a bit like changing foreign currency where there may be a percentage charge. Never actually purchased bitcoin myself, mine have all come to me by other means.
5) It can leave the wallet immediately but usually for the rest of the bitcoin network to accept it's gone, it needs confirmation by a couple of different servers. This happens quicker the higher the miners fee is. Also if the fee is too low, it might not actually get processed.
6) No idea. My bitcoin are completely anonymous though and not pulled any out to a real bank account yet. Used it to buy services and put invest a little in some other crypto-currencies too, so all in limbo for me :)

Re: Bitcoin
 

You can for £5,200 :O

Re: Bitcoin
 

Thanks for the reply much appreciated. :)

---------- Post added at 12:12 ---------- Previous post was at 11:54 ----------

The price has started to drop a little now, but 1 month ago the price of a bitcoin was only around £3800 and 6 months ago it was just £1500 so this is the reason i am a little interested in having a dabble, i just need to be brave enough to buy something.

Atleast you don't have to buy a full Bitcoin as 1 Bitcoin can be divided into 100 million parts making it cost effective to take the risk.

Re: Bitcoin
 

Or £11,650 now...less than one month after you posted that :)


I have no doubt it's a bubble that will burst at some point but with btc's first futures exchange opening business on Monday, it probably has a way to go yet.


Disclaimer: I am not a financial adviser and just a newbie in currency trading so don't buy anything based on what I say, unless it's ice-cream. I know my ice-creaml!

Re: Bitcoin
 

It is a bubble and all of them do, it's just a question of when. For every bit-millionaire there'll be a whole lot of losers.

Re: Bitcoin
 

It actually went up to £18,500 for a while yesterday and is now sitting at £16,000.

I am still planning on buying part of 1 coin, just need to sort ID out and link my bank account, hope i haven't left too late.

Re: Bitcoin
 

Be careful. If you do see a profit it's better to take one (albeit small) than hang on and be forced into accepting a loss, possibly huge.

I'm getting loads of bitcoin related spam and I have no doubt that a great many people who can't really afford to lose money are being sucked into something they're going to regret. Time will tell.

Re: Bitcoin
 

Oh when/if i do it i will be careful, it is worth a punt for anyone, even for £500.

Never had any Bitcoin spam, atleast not yet.

Re: Bitcoin
 

I can't see it being too long before the bubble bursts. You may have left it too late for a punt. Just be careful.

Re: Bitcoin
 

Bitcoin value is volatile and a big risk. Everyone is jumping on it because of the massive gains it's had, with a 'get rich quick' mentality. There is the chance it will lose a lot of value and if you don't take it out at the right time, you can make a loss.

LiteCoin (LTC) and Ethereum (ETH) are alternative crypto-currencies which people are investing in which are rising in value, just not at the mad rate of Bicoin. Maybe investing a small amount spare cash in to one of those may be a better option for those new to it, to get a feel of how it all works. They are going up in value at the moment. I know someone who brought just £80 of LTC yesterday and it's value today is £110 to £120. That kind of small investment to start and to monitor is better than dumping in tons of money when it's your first investment IMHO.

Re: Bitcoin
 

Must be a sign of age - mostly bitcoin, bingo and other gambling rubbish (free spins etc...) with a dash of Russian dating thrown in... :D

It's your choice of course and good luck but that's how pyramid schemes work, lots of small 'investors' get drawn in and lose fairly small amounts (mostly) whilst a few people get very very rich whilst they're thinking up their next money making exploit.

Re: Bitcoin
 

Now testing the waters carefully with BTC as i have just purchased £100 worth of a bitcoin (0.008).

Re: Bitcoin
 

Good luck. :tu:

Re: Bitcoin
 

I think I'll give bitcoin a pretty wide berth!

Re: Bitcoin
 

Ok i guess i can call my first Bitcoin purchase experiment a success.

6 days ago i bought £100 worth of a Bitcoin from Coinbase.com which included the transaction fee of £3.84.

I have now just sold what i bought for £112.86 after the sale fee of £2.99 was deducted, so i would say a profit of £12.86 13% is not bad for a 6 day experiment. :)

Kinda wish i had purchased the maximum weekly purchase of £750 now for my experiment, but i guess i can still chip away with small purchases and still make money and if it goes bad it won't be a great loss.

Re: Bitcoin
 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42940728

Re: Bitcoin
 

Queue conspiracy theories about the mainstream financial institutions trying to control the flow of money etc to protect their own money making profits.

Re: Bitcoin
 

Not really a problem you can still buy using a debit card or like i do use a sepa transfer.

Who buys with a credit card anyway? lol

Re: Bitcoin
 

You'd be surprised. Why ban it if no-one were using it?

Re: Bitcoin
 

There was some article a few months back saying a third of new investors to Bitcoin were using credit cards. As to if that was just with Coinbase or a particular country, I cannot remember.

Using credit cards for money or money related stuff usually has extra charges too, so not the best way of doing it.

Some people remortgaged their home to get some equity to put in to Bitcoin. Goes way beyond the general rule of only investing what you can afford to lose.

This current dip is harsh but those in to crypto's early in 2017 or earlier are still a huge percent ahead than they were. Just lost some of those gains in the last month.

Re: Bitcoin
 

Trying to guess when the dips are going to be is hard, i got it wrong and lost out, but i expect it to go up and i will be making a profit in 6 months time.

Just need to consider buying more while the prices are low, especially on the cheap ones like Ripple which cost 0.72 euros today.

Re: Bitcoin
 

Buying low doesn't always work without considering background and future forecasts. Even then it's a minefield.

The credit card companies banning purchases will affect the price in the future as it depresses speculation buying.

Re: Bitcoin
 

Remember dips are only dips if they later recover.

Re: Bitcoin
 

Absolutely.

Re: Bitcoin
 

Re: Bitcoin
 

Just said it because there is a lot of 'buy the dip!' around at the moment but people were saying that when it was at £10k......

Re: Bitcoin
 

i thought buy the dip was when you got a bag of doritos.

Re: Bitcoin
 

I was just looking to see if there were any mining posts and come across this post from a long time ago and had to say how wrong this turned out to be

I had a bash when it first all started and had the same opinion as Paul did here . My goodness I am kicking myself now

$47K per coin . At the start you could buy them for a quid

Re: Bitcoin
 

There is a big difference between mining them when bitcoin first started, and now (or even 2017, when that was posted) - the chances of actually mining one are small, and the costs high.

Re: Bitcoin
 

now it is impossible to mine Bitcoin it is pretty much all done by investment. Mining and holding has made a fair few people very rich so for them it certainly was not a waste of time or money and with ETH now it looks like it could be very profitable. People mining now could very well be rich in a few years

Re: Bitcoin
 

I've just purchased over 6million Safemoons which is a new altcoin that the market are talking about, so thought i would take the risk and get in early as it only cost me $60, so if/when it goes pair shaped and i lose it all it won't matter, but if it eventually goes the way of Dogecoin then it'll be fun!

Anyone else done anything like this for very little cost?

Re: Bitcoin
 

I had €501 in an account i had never purchased any coins with so took the risk an hour ago and bought 851 Dogecoins, it's already made a €6 profit, i like this game.

Disclaimer... only invest what you can afford to lose and i always expect to lose it.

Re: Bitcoin
 

Millionaire in a year

Re: Bitcoin
 

I'll get the begging letter ready. :D

Re: Bitcoin
 

Lol I wouldn't bet on it.

Re: Bitcoin
 

but you are betting on it lol

---------- Post added at 14:37 ---------- Previous post was at 14:36 ----------

mine is in the post already hehehe

Re: Bitcoin
 

Now its making a €2 loss, im enjoying the ride!

Re: Bitcoin
 

There was one guy with a flash drive that has several million bitcoins.


But the drive is protected by a password and after 10 (IIRC) wrong attempts it will erase the contents.


He has about 4 goes left, last I heard.

Re: Bitcoin
 

Well my Doge went to the dogs last night after Elon Musk said something on SNL, he's the one that owns the most though.

Re: Bitcoin
 

Don't worry, I'm sure if the price drops enough he'll hoover up any excess . . . and then say something good to push the price up again ;)

Re: Bitcoin
 

I'm now relying on my 28 million Safemoons to give me the £, it's fun.

I'm suffering from fomo.

Re: Bitcoin
 

Tesla can write off any losses, unlike normal traders - they treat cryptocurrency as an intangible asset, don’t book any rises in price as gains until they sell them, but do recognise a loss if the cryptocurrency falls below the price at which Tesla purchased its allocation over an accounting period, even if the coins are not sold.

https://www.ft.com/content/364734d1-...f-c813c93062ab

Probably some tax shenanigans.

Re: Bitcoin
 

I'm going to have to be careful here, just dropped £500 in Safemoon, now got 97 million tokens, now I understand how people get addicted to gambling so easily.

Re: Bitcoin
 

Looks like China has screwed crypto investors https://metro.co.uk/2021/05/19/china...down-14609681/

Re: Bitcoin
 

Yes it's not good, it'll recover though it always does ... Hopes!

Re: Bitcoin
 

Best explanation of what an NFT* (non-fungible token) is - very funny, but very sad for those who have actually bought one.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FDwpCfYW...g&name=900x900


*An NFT, which stands for non-fungible token, is a certificate of authenticity that conveys ownership in a digital asset like an artwork

Re: Bitcoin
 

This is what is wrong with Crypto.
As has been mentioned it is very easy to drop the price when someone wants like Musk has done. The big players will then buy the coin at the lower price and this in itself is enough for it to start rising again. There is a lot of insider trading in crypto. I know a guy who gets tip offs and has made a few hundred K. He keeps trying to get me interested but I live a simple life and do not really want to be rich as such

Re: Bitcoin
 

Send his tip offs to me! :D

Re: Bitcoin
 

he is spending 30K on a monitored mining rig with 8 3090s then intends to build more. The only way to buy bulk 3090s appears to be by buying complete towers

Re: Bitcoin
 

Chasing the end of that rainbow gets progressively more expensive :erm:

Re: Bitcoin
 

it will pay for itself in 6 to 8 months. But you are right of course and there is always the chance it all collapses

Re: Bitcoin
 

What happens if everyone jumps on the bandwagon and 90% of the country (or world) own £100 million in bitcoin . . does it suddenly become worthless?

Re: Bitcoin
 

Bitcoin in itself is pretty much all owned and only really traded in. Not a lot being mined now and as far as I am aware very little left in the pool

Ethereum is the coin of choice at the mo but that only has about a year in its current form from what I am told

Re: Bitcoin
 

So people just "create" another type of Cryptocurrency - 7000+ so far…

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...-coins-tokens/

Re: Bitcoin
 

exclusive premium statistic but I know you are right. The game is finding the next big one and getting in early

Re: Bitcoin
 

Speculation rarely ends well for the majority of those who put money into it...

Re: Bitcoin
 

no but a lot of people have made a hell of a lot of money essentially out of nothing

Re: Bitcoin
 

Presumably they have made it out of other peoples money (ie losses).

Re: Bitcoin
 

guess it is no different to any financial market

Re: Bitcoin
 

If you can’t see what’s wrong with that statement…

Re: Bitcoin
 

I am a simple man with nothing between my lines so I would appreciate an end to your sentence.

Re: Bitcoin
 

You cant make something out of nothing ? Possibly.

Re: Bitcoin
 

But isn't that exactly what crypto is? an idea artificial essentially nothing.

---------- Post added at 18:56 ---------- Previous post was at 18:56 ----------

https://www.ssense.com/en-us/editori...cryptocurrency

Re: Bitcoin
 

People don’t make money out of nothing - they make it out of other peoples’ money.

No one wants to acknowledge how bitcoin billionaires can rake the new suckers over the coals - prices depend on billionaires holding their bitcoin stakes, but they they cash out the small buyers lose out.

NFTs are the perfect example - the buyer owns nothing but the receipt for buying a digital version of an artefact, but think it gives them ownership of the content, proving NFTs were designed to be confusing and scam people.

Re: Bitcoin
 

I think you forget where bitcoin started. All in the blockchain. People used their PC resources and still do to mine coin which has value so all the early miners made something out of nothing and a lot of something

The fact it is now a financial market is irrelevant

Re: Bitcoin
 

"the blockchain"?

Blockchain is just a distributed shared database.

Re: Bitcoin
 

PC Resources still cost money, so they didnt mine coins out of nothing.

Re: Bitcoin
 

and ?

2009 the bitcoin network was created when Nakamoto mined the starting block of the chain, known as the genesis block
ba dum tush

---------- Post added at 19:08 ---------- Previous post was at 19:07 ----------

semantics Paul. I am not going to waste my night debating this. I was mining in the early days and I deeply regret not keeping it up

Re: Bitcoin
 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63601213

In related news…

https://www.reuters.com/markets/curr...es-2022-11-12/

Re: Bitcoin
 

I dont trust "crypto", and see no reason to change that opinion.

Re: Bitcoin
 

Banks ban crypto to fight fraudsters

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/e...a2cadd9bb6f9fc

Re: Bitcoin
 

Crypto currency is just another Ponzi Scheme.

Re: Bitcoin
 

The CEO of JPMorgan [Jamie Dimon] agrees with you.

https://financialpost.com/fp-finance...-ponzi-schemes

Re: Bitcoin
 

Isn't regular currency just a token too?

Re: Bitcoin
 

If you had some I hope you kept them, interesting times ahead

Re: Bitcoin
 

Interesting bold statement. Care to explain why?

Re: Bitcoin
 

https://wapo.st/3SSarI1