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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/27/inside-japan-s-bitcoin-heist.html

Its almost like all those terribly banking regulations and procedures exist for a reason.

The free market should decide!

I am picturing little 16 bit digital miners hard at work in a digital mine searching for bitcoins now.

I was imagining the Joker breaking into the Internet with a bus and stealing all the coins before baking out into a public street where everyone decided to not notice the bus backing out of the internet. Needless to say it wasn't that grand XD

When I was reading about that Mt. Gox thing a few days ago, I was laughing my ass off. I could not imagine what sort of fool would invest in bitcoins, either then or now, and yet here we are, people handing over actual money that they worked to get for tulips and flooz.

Unbelievable.

For me, the best part is the Winklevii taking it in the shorts again.

Virtual Currency is pants on head stupid. Especially Bitcoin and DOGE. There is no possible reason to invest in them at this point. No amount of clever blog posts by hipsters wearing chukka boots and knit cardigans could convince me.

Well, if you have enough processing power you can "mine" them practically for free. If you can sell them for real money or stuff afterwards it looks a pretty good deal.

Some student at Harvard got caught using their department supercomputer to mine "Dogecoins" (an alternative virtual currency.)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/22/harvard_student_abuses_supercomputer_to_mine_dogecoin/

And the idea is alright, a unified global currency is something we could potentially go to. But obviously not for quite a long while.

 n0t_u wrote:
And the idea is alright, a unified global currency is something we could potentially go to. But obviously not for quite a long while.

I don't see how this could work without there also being a global oversight committee of some sort to manage the currency.

Global currency could work. Digital currencies without regulation aint that.

 trexmeyer wrote:

 n0t_u wrote:
And the idea is alright, a unified global currency is something we could potentially go to. But obviously not for quite a long while.

I don't see how this could work without there also being a global oversight committee of some sort to manage the currency.

Honestly, I don't see a universal currency happening before we start uniting the Earth. As long as countries keep claiming their individuality they will want their own currency. Yeah, the Euro opposes this, but then again, our government completely ignored the vote held on it and went ahead with it anyway.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Well, if you have enough processing power you can "mine" them practically for free. If you can sell them for real money or stuff afterwards it looks a pretty good deal.

They're only 'free' if you're not paying for electricity (lucky enough to live in a building with electricity costs rolled into a flat rate on the rent, I guess) and ignore the degradation that the hardware undergoes being utilized that intensely for that long, not to mention some of the truly scary and even dangerous approaches some enthusiasts have taken towards the issue of cooling.

 Frazzled wrote:
Global currency could work. Digital currencies without regulation aint that.

Teef?

I was going to make a joke about finding bitcoins down the back of the cache, but I couldn't RAM it home.

 notprop wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Global currency could work. Digital currencies without regulation aint that.

Teef?

I was going to make a joke about finding bitcoins down the back of the cache, but I couldn't RAM it home.

That was terrible, and I loved it.

 Ketara wrote:

 notprop wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Global currency could work. Digital currencies without regulation aint that.

Teef?

I was going to make a joke about finding bitcoins down the back of the cache, but I couldn't RAM it home.

That was terrible, and I loved it.

It was beautiful Ketara!

notprop... take an exhault!

And you all thought minecraft was about building cool structures hahaha...

I keep hearing about this, WHAT IS A DAMN BITCOIN!!!!!

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I keep hearing about this, WHAT IS A DAMN BITCOIN!!!!!

It's electronic currency. Think digital money that is not backed by anything and is an exceedingly stupid idea.

So like the coins you get at chuckey cheese that have no real value? In cyberspace?

 trexmeyer wrote:

 n0t_u wrote:
And the idea is alright, a unified global currency is something we could potentially go to. But obviously not for quite a long while.

I don't see how this could work without there also being a global oversight committee of some sort to manage the currency.

You mean like the oversight that adjusts exchange rates daily? we already have that.

In the end it would be a lot more efficient to just have one currency, plus think of the fun when you tell the americans it won't be their dollar

Doesnt the Anti-christ propose one world wide currency?

If you want to buy drugs, guns, a hit, or transfer money to another terrorist cell over the internet bitcoin is the way to go!

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I keep hearing about this, WHAT IS A DAMN BITCOIN!!!!!

It's electronic currency. Think digital money that is not backed by anything and is an exceedingly stupid idea.

Unlike the Dollar, backed by guns.

Guns, and drone strikes. We back our money with extreme prejudice.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
So like the coins you get at chuckey cheese that have no real value? In cyberspace?

Incorrect. You can bounce a Chucky Cheese coin off someone's skull if you want.

How can you "mine" a Bitcoin? Some kind of Matrix like gold mind?

I think it had to do with using your processor while you arnt using the computer in conjunction with a buuuunnncch of other computers to do science. then you get paid for the time spent or something like that.

You basically log into a server with a team of other "miners" like yourself. You then wait until your computer or one of your team mates randomly finds a block of bit coins (25 coins in a block I think). Your computers then try cracking a long code (string of numbers).

When the code is cracked you can deposit those 25 coins into your online bitcoin wallet (a bank account type thing you setup). If you worked within a team, then you split the coins however it was determined would be done. The creators of bitcoin make the code increasingly hard to crack every once in a while so that bitcoins stay somewhat rare despite computers getting faster - maintaining the difficulty of mining bitcoin.

It isn't very profitable to mine coins these days as there is so much competition - you will get like 0.01 bit coin per day if you have a good machine going 24/7 (due to 100s of miners working together to split the 25 coins). It also isn't viable to solo mine as you could go weeks or months without finding a block of coins to attempt to mine. In most cases the energy cost to run the computer is higher than the value of the coins you mine.

 gossipmeng wrote:
You basically log into a server with a team of other "miners" like yourself. You then wait until your computer or one of your team mates randomly finds a block of bit coins (25 coins in a block I think). Your computers then try cracking a long code (string of numbers).

When the code is cracked you can deposit those 25 coins into your online bitcoin wallet (a bank account type thing you setup). If you worked within a team, then you split the coins however it was determined would be done. The creators of bitcoin make the code increasingly hard to crack every once in a while so that bitcoins stay somewhat rare despite computers getting faster - maintaining the difficulty of mining bitcoin.

It isn't very profitable to mine coins these days as there is so much competition - you will get like 0.01 bit coin per day if you have a good machine going 24/7 (due to 100s of miners working together to split the 25 coins). It also isn't viable to solo mine as you could go weeks or months without finding a block of coins to attempt to mine. In most cases the energy cost to run the computer is higher than the value of the coins you mine.

So its more elaborate computer game and not regulated currency. Thats awesomely stupid.