Bitcoins

Satoshi

dryhat wrote: »

This thing is going mad... Bitcoin price now over £400

Up over 300% in a month and showing no signs of slowing down.

Its a buying frenzy alright.

I am undecided shall I dip my toes in now or wait for the next dip. I suppose a little would not hurt here.

Dryhat can you advise about transaction fee's for a small punt? Say I wanted to just buy £100 worth of bitcoins to start with? Where is the best place and how to go about it please?

dryhat

Satoshi wrote: »

Dryhat can you advise about transaction fee's for a small punt? Say I wanted to just buy £100 worth of bitcoins to start with? Where is the best place and how to go about it please?

The transaction fees on any amount - even millions of pounds worth - are negligable. We are taking pennies.

The best thing for you to do is go to "localbitcoins" and find someone looking to sell (either online by bank transfer or in person with cash)

Pick a trader with a good trade history and 100% feedback and everything will be quick, smooth and secure.

Satoshi

padington wrote: »

Just bought 10 lite coins. Worth a punt I thought. Once kieser starts turning his focus to how undervalued bit coin's little brother is and the lite coin gets accepted on more platforms, we should see a big upswing.

I wonder how much I'm going to regret not buying a thousand one day ...

You are right about litecoin not being in the press as much as bitcoin.

How would someone have a small punt on litecoin Padington? What are the transaction fee's for a small punt like £100 or so? How does it compare with BitCoin?

sorry for lots of questions, I am feeling a little have I missed the boat with Bitcoin now its over £400 and is litecoin going to catch up with its big brother? I wonder if many will be thinking that?

Satoshi

dryhat wrote: »

The transaction fees on any amount - even millions of pounds worth - are negligable. We are taking pennies.

The best thing for you to do is go to "localbitcoins" and find someone looking to sell (either online by bank transfer or in person with cash)

Pick a trader with a good trade history and 100% feedback and everything will be quick, smooth and secure.

Wow in person for cash, how does that work?

dryhat

Satoshi wrote: »

You are right about litecoin not being in the press as much as bitcoin.

How would someone have a small punt on litecoin Padington? What are the transaction fee's for a small punt like £100 or so? How does it compare with BitCoin?

sorry for lots of questions, I am feeling a little have I missed the boat with Bitcoin now its over £400 and is litecoin going to catch up with its big brother? I wonder if many will be thinking that?

This is a nice exchange where you can play about with lots of other crypto-currencies and you get paid interest on your balances...

https://mcxnow.com/exchange/LTC

spacey2012

Satoshi wrote: »

e I missed the boat with Bitcoin now its over £400 and is litecoin going to catch up with its big brother? I wonder if many will be thinking that?

Would you want your savings in a virtual currency with no capital assets or collateral.
The boat will be going down with everyone's money, make no mistake, like all investments where it is backed by fresh air, that is what you will be left with.
The same fools who bailed in to endowments will bail in to bitcoins.

Unless your intention is speculative trading and you have to find someone daft enough to buy your stock first then most will be loosing money, all your money.

csm888

Over the last year I have spend 100's of hours learning and studying Bitcoin, I have a fairly good understanding of Bitcoin, both from a technical viewpoint and a number of the more social issues surrounding it.
Bitcoin like real money is a complex area for discussion, and there is tremendous ignorance surrounding a number of the issues.

I have spent many hours explaining Bitcoin to my father and a number of computer savvy friends, but they can still misunderstand certains parts of what it is, and the implications of various parts of the currency.

If you think you have spotted an obvious failing of Bitcoin, the odds are you haven't. Every aspect has been discussed ad infinitum on the bitcoin
discussion boards, by both techy kids, markets traders and a good number of other people from all walks of life. Bitcoin may well have a weakness, which could in the end destroy it, but at the moment, the technical aspects hold-up, and the other social and economic discussions are open for debate.

I hear this all the time from people who just don't understand:

1) Its not backed by anything - it is backed like all other currencies by peoples willingness to give it value. Think about Diamonds.

2) Its used for drugs and by criminals - just like cash, HSBC etc etc.

3) 21 million coins in total isn't enough. - they are infinitely divisible, 1 Bitcoin is enough for the entire planet.

4) What happens if the cryptography is broken
Bitcoin is the least of our worries, the whole of modern banking and computing is probably in real trouble,
the mathematicians tell us we are still safe, and every time you pay with you credit card or use online
banking you are trusting them too.

Have a look at the Bitcoin wiki on Bitcoin Myths



Bitcoin is a risk, it may not succeed, I think everyone with half an ounce of sense who is involved in it understands this.
But Bitcoin isn't simply a Digital Currency, when it was created the inventor solved some major problems that had been plaguing the implementation
of Digital currencies.

The main problem is solves is it ability to prevent a double spend without a centralised body. Which means - as computers can easily duplicate anything almost infinitely, it is necessary to stop someone
spending and then re-spending their digital currency, it needs to be moved from one person to another.
Having no central control means no-one can change the rules unless there is a consensus of opinion (by the miners)
that this is an appropriate changes, the works a little a democracy. As all the miners have a vested interest in keeping Bitcoin successful the decision they make should be in the best
interest of the currency succeeding. Having no central authority means the value of your currency can't be de-value by a government printing more money (Quantitative easing)

Bitcoin also doesn’t stop a government collecting Tax, transactions can be tracked and will need reporting.
And the anonymity Bitcoin offers is not a simple type of anonymity, it is partial. In essence every Bitcoin transaction is visible to everyone, but as you can create as many Bitcoin addresses as you want and
each address isn't link to anyone unless you divulge that information, you can retain anonymity until your ID is linked to an address.

If you knew who I was and I paid you 1 Bitcoin with an address that had 100 Bitcoins in it, you would know I had at least 100 Bitcoins.
If your Business always accept Bitcoins at the same address, I could possibly see you much money your business is earning.

As you can see the issues are complex and each point can be discussed at length. You don't need to understand these intricacies to use Bitcoin,
but to formulate arguments against why it wont succeed or satisfy your own curiosity it helps if you do more research.


If you want to find out more try the Bitcoin Forum: bitcointalk

BoracicLint

dryhat wrote: »

The transaction fees on any amount - even millions of pounds worth - are negligable. We are taking pennies.

The best thing for you to do is go to "localbitcoins" and find someone looking to sell (either online by bank transfer or in person with cash)

Pick a trader with a good trade history and 100% feedback and everything will be quick, smooth and secure.

I used bitbargain.co.uk when I first dipped my toe in, you can search for people by the payment method you would like to use, I wanted to use Barclays 'pingit' so filtered for people accepting this as payment. You make contact through the website and the person has about an hour window to complete the trade. You pay the money into Escrow so there is little chance of them just pocketing your money and not sending the bitcoins.

You can also see feedback, number of transactions they have completed etc.. so its fairly safe. Keep an eye on the spot price on something like mtgox.com and make sure you're not being ripped off by the sellers price.

I bought a few, before the most recent bull run, I'm also tempted to increase my holding further, although as it stands now I wouldnt lose very much at all if my investment drops to zero so I might just stay put and ride it out. Also consider that you can buy fractions of bitcoins if you dont want to pay £400+ for one coin.

Satoshi

csm888 wrote: »

If you think you have spotted an obvious failing of Bitcoin, the odds are you haven't.

The main thing to bear in mind is how threatened the USA and other governments are by BitCoin, the last resort they have is to let the internet be unreliable or even go off all together. That's it the end of BitCoin absolutely. The very first time the internet becomes unreliable when it next comes back on there will be a rush to sell BitCoin while its still possible, and where will all these units of currency flow into? Gold and Silver and real tangible things.

I know some say the world will go to hell if the internet is switched off but when we were all kids there was no internet. This is why BitCoin is so fragile, it can not work without reliable internet.

DiggerUK

Bitcons worth is determined by its subservience to fiat, it can't exist without that relationship.
Remove or change that fiat, and bitcons go back to what they were....a fantasy.

If the Confederate states of America had access to some sort of equivalent to bitcon, it would have been linked to the Confederate Dollar in one way or another. After the war who would have wanted something linked to the worthless Confederate Dollar.
Gold on the other hand would be convertible to the Federal Dollar, or exchangeable with any new fiat that came along, no matter how long that took.
Looked at from a different angle, it is only possible for somebody in Zimbabwe to buy bitcons by first exchanging Zim$ to another currency.

Getting out of the first world mindset that predominates, how does an electronic currency have any place in poverty stricken areas of the planet that have difficulty getting batteries, let alone electricity.

One of the folktales about bitcon, is that it breaks the reliance on corruptible fiat, and can stand on it's own two feet, something that is simply false.
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