Can I buy a liter of milk with bitcoins or anything at Amazon ?
I really don't get it ... Seems like a pyramid game or a big bubble generator ...
Technically, it's illegal in most countries - it's a decentralised currency. America (especially) won't allow it, as ALL money has to go through the correct avenues. Granted, I have heard of some shops/outlets that allow for BC transactions to be made in USA and other places.
If I read that stuff I feel old as I really don't get what makes the value. And as it create kind of income I wonder what the tax authorities say once they realize there is virtual value convertible into real world currency.
Illegal. Fake. Non trusted. Etc.
The drive is the algorithms and computation time, it is also a limited asset, in that there are x amount of BitCoins out there, and nobody can ever great more. All you can do is use your computer to "mine" for more, you invest and you are rewarded. Each iteration makes it harder to be rewarded (so you have to either spend more time computing, or more $ investing to get the same exact number of BCs as the previous iteration). It's a slow process though. It was designed this way to take into consideration Moore's Law and whatnot.
I guess I keep folding aliens :
:
hehe, aren't they going to stop that soon enough? (I thought I read that somewhere)
But I don't mind someone explain an old man what's behind.
Hi
CJ, and
all others - I've been busy with work these past few months travelling around and whatnot, but let me chime in here for an update, the best I can do for midnight on a Sunday evening anyway!
Firstly, thanks for the participation thus far. It's been good reading the positive and negative comments. As somebody who would consider investing money into BC I appreciate the speculation and criticisms as much as the other comments.
Secondly, I think the most appropriate way to explain BC trading (and mining) is like a commodity such as gold.
- BC, like gold, can be traded from entity to entity - I could convert my hard earned cash into the BC currency via online traders. I give the online trader my secure wallet ID public key (such that it's 100% secure, aka, deposit only), they take their 1-3% exchange rate fees (as they always do) and suddenly I have internet moneys. In a similar fashion, I can convert my BC back into another currency. That is the trading side of it, currently it's very unpredictable. As in, $60USD = 1BC on Thursday, $100USD = 1BC yesterday.
- In addition to trading the commodity, one can also mine it. If you are rich enough, you can mine for gold (I'm sure there are licensing fees in some countries for this, but the Internet is a free place - so please disregard that aspect for now) just in the same manner you can mine for BCs.
My idea was to set up a MacRumors team, and a server (I would organise) that each team member connects to, to mine for BCs. A BC is generally broken up into many pieces, each persons machine attempts to compute the correct mathematical conversions for the BC, and if we are successful in getting the answer before anybody else then we win! Each member of the team gets their cut (the cut is a percentage of how much computing power they contributed into the pool over the entire period of calculations, so is a fair return) and the next BC is chosen.
Of course, there are quite a few considerations, such as investment (electricity usage, purchasing extra hardware) vs return (BC received, time, machine damage) & additional concerns I'm sure; such as "how much do I have to contribute per day to make a positive return?", etcetc.. So if you have them please voice, and I will attempt to address as best I can. I am still learning a lot about this myself - but I think it would certainly be fun to play around with!
Thanks for the time & attention! I do hope this can be successful.
DoFo
