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Yantelope
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I have been. Only ran it for a few hours since. I've got 0.005 of a bitcoin at the moment. My card isn't very powerful (15hash/sec compared to 350 on the top end Radeon)

 

It's a bit badly documented on setting up n getting in a pool or what not. Even if I only manage to get one bitcoin it won't be half bad, seems a fair few sites up for using them.

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A currency that people get for free for donating CPU cycles? What a sane way to deal with money supply. Making fake money doing fake work.

 

As opposed to just printing it out on bits of paper?

 

@Kovach: If anything it's around may that it seems to be kicking off n hitting the public eye more.

 

edit: oh the crash, that was the other week iirc.

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A currency that people get for free for donating CPU cycles? What a sane way to deal with money supply. Making fake money doing fake work.

 

As opposed to just printing it out on bits of paper?

 

@Kovach: If anything it's around may that it seems to be kicking off n hitting the public eye more.

 

edit: oh the crash, that was the other week iirc.

 

Bitcoins have no rational monetary policy behind them and the bitcoin market is based on their use to buy illicit goods. Unlike fiat currency, which is back by faith in governing institutions (which are generally backed by economic and military power). Indeed, people have to ask how much a Bitcoin is based in USD; they have no intrinsic value as a currency, just as a means of spending money online without being traced.

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Well from my understanding BitCoin does have a policy behind it on it's growth n such. Unlike other currency which can from time to time just....well you know.

And I can tell you now I won't be using it for illicit goods and there's a fair amount on non-illicit places that accept them. FSF aren't exactly an illegal operation. Not denying they're not used to buy dodgy things, not like regular cash isn't either so it's a bit of a moot point to bring up.

 

I don't really get what's to hate.

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It's not so much hate as exasperation. First of all, mining bitcoins is fine, I guess, if you' really a miner. If you have Amy real vested interest in the bitcoin currency, though, it's disturbing that wealth is initially distributed on a completely arbitrary basis.

 

Second, it's not that I care about illicit products per se, I mean I'm pro legalization. It's just that the value of bitcoins is largely supported by the market for illicit goods. The momentlaw enforcement plugs that hole, the value of bitcoins will crash hard. FSF may take charitable donations in bitcoins, but I'm sure it cashes them the fuck out ASAP.

 

Third, fake currencies are prone to crazy speculation and wildly variable values

Indeed, the value of a bitcoin is dependent entirely on exchange rates with that fiat currency so loathed by internet libertarians and anarchists. There's no basket of staple products to provide a baseline measurement; you don't buy bread or pay rent in bitcoins. You buy drugs or services from fellow internet loons, is all.

in the world of fake currency everyone's either a grifter or a mark, and most won't know which they are until too late.

 

I guess MT venom stems from my general distaste for mass hallucinations andthe subsequent whining from peop to the cleaners for engaging in mass stupidity.

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So what you're implying then is that me and Yantelope are being conned out of our GPU cycles? And you're putting a lot of assumptions in this whole "it's based on sale of illicit drugs" cos tbh while the system n the supposed untraceability could lend a hand in that (which it's been shown that like most P2P networks it's not exactly anonymous) from my experience with it up to now I can't see it being used by many drug users. Unless there's a fair bit of linux running GPU farm owning drug lords out there.

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Doomed to failure.

 

With the scaling rarity of BitCoins this is pretty much a pyramid scheme. The guys who started it were generating a coin every 10 minutes. It's now taking Yante about two days to generate half of one coin. As the scheme scales up you're going to be left with people mining all month to get 0.0000001 BitCoins while the early adopters will be relative millionaires.

 

Secondly, the currency is not guaranteed against anything.

 

Fiat currencies all link back to something tangible or something with real value. The government promises that your money is worth x amount. They back this up with tax revenue.

 

There is nothing (and more importantly no one) to fall back on when the bitcoin market collapses. When the economy collapsed in Germany the government were eventually able to re-establish the economy by exchanging the new undervalued currency with the new one at a controlled rate. They could also enforce this rate at a market level by having banks collect/pay rent and having business pay staff in the new currency at the agreed rate.

 

When bitcoin collapses that's it, like any other pyramid scheme, the winners disappear with the money while the losers are left to pay the price.

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So what you're implying then is that me and Yantelope are being conned out of our GPU cycles? And you're putting a lot of assumptions in this whole "it's based on sale of illicit drugs" cos tbh while the system n the supposed untraceability could lend a hand in that (which it's been shown that like most P2P networks it's not exactly anonymous) from my experience with it up to now I can't see it being used by many drug users. Unless there's a fair bit of linux running GPU farm owning drug lords out there.

 

I'm not talking about mining; that's fairly harmless. I'm talking about full participation in the Bitcoin economy. That is, what people actually *buy* with the damned things tends to be either illicit goods and services or, I suppose, esoteric IT services.

 

IIRC, one of the biggest marketplaces for the actual exchange of bitcoins for goods and services is silk road; a great deal of activity on that marketplace is for drugs and other illicit products.

 

Thursday Next is 100% correct; there's nothing backing the bitcoin except market exuberance. Take that away, either via a collapse in actual goods and services that can be bought with the things, or through a speculation bubble, and there's no recovery mechanism. Indeed, the supply of bitcoins will continue to grow because miners will still be able to get the devalued currency for free.

 

 

Rule of thumb: if you can't invest in legitimate businesses with a currency, it's a fake currency and should be avoided.

 

To those asking what bitcoins are: ever been to an amusement park where you can buy "Disney Dollars" or "Fun Buxx?" Bitcoins are like those, except their values can rise or fall based on their market value (read: exchange rate with real currencies). The 'draw' is that they can be treated like digital cash; rather than having to go through banking institutions to pay for stuff online (so much red tape! Who cares about fraud protection or anti-money laundering laws, anyway?).

Edited by Mr. GOH!
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Saw that about the trojan. Also, just figured out you can run a script to keep your file from going idle. Pretty helpful.

 

taskkill /F /IM phoenix.exe /T

ping 123.45.67.89 -n 1 -w 5000

start /d C:\phoenix-1.47 start_bitcoinpool.bat

ping 123.45.67.89 -n 1 -w 295000

start /d C:\ looper_bitcoinpool.bat

exit

 

basically it just restarts the program and then restarts the loop after 5 minutes. I increased the time to 30 minutes though.

Edited by Yantelope
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