Silkroad Online Forums

the goal to the mining is to secure the system that's being used to transfer BitCoins from one person to another. how it exactly works I don't know, it's quite technical. in return for your help to improve the security of the system, the BitCoin community rewards you with BitCoins. Even though the BitCoins are a currency, you can't buy much stuff with them as only the BitCoin community is putting it's trust into the currency and therefore they are the only ones that acknowledge it's value. You should see the BitCoins as shares. Their value increases and decreases. Two months ago one BitCoin was worth 33 dollar but then one miner sold 100.000 bitcoins at one time dropping the prices of BitCoins to 3/4 dollar. Now, two months later, one BitCoin is worth 16/17 dollars.

In order to get BitCoins you need alot of graphical power. My nephew bought 3 PC's and each one had four graphic cards. He's using an ATI 6-series card, forgot which one exactly. With each system he was able to mine 1.5 BitCoin a day. So now he's mining a total of 4.5 BitCoins a day. You can save alot on the PC's. My nephew didn't even buy a case but put everything in a box. Most of the money goes into the graphic cards. They're just pure mining PC's. If we take the current price of 17 dollars a BitCoin, he should be able to have his investment back within 40 days. By this time he has already made profit because he got his systems for free. So even if he decides to quit mining, he can sell his three systems for atleast 1500-2000 euro's. After 40 days he'll start making profit with the mining. He also calculated that each PC costed him 60 euro's a month in electricity. So it could turn out very very profitable for him.

Ofcourse there is always the risk of price. The BitCoin can drop in price but that the same time they can rise too. But imo that makes it kinda of fun, you can buy and sell and make alot of money of it too on top of the money you'll get by mining.

so it seems like stocks to me.

But i dloaded the program, and i did not know what to do from there lol. how do i start mining so i can start getting coins?

and where do i check my progress etc.

The most serious thread, ever, on SRF.

I think we're capable of having serious threads all the time.

Essentially for every transaction that happens through bitcoins (ie I send you 1.5 bitcoins for whatever reason) there is some calculations to apply to both your 'wallets' and security measures etc. Imagine each transaction as a piece of a chain, and to create that piece of the chain your computer needs to do several calculations. Whoever does them first adds the piece to the chain, and gets a 50 bitcoin reward. This also prevents things like spending your bitcoins twice (fraud), and other security related things.

So essentially, the mining keeps the transactions going through and safe. That's a rough way of seeing it, though the finer details are a different.

Also, if you don't have an ATI graphics card, you can still use NVIDIA ones (though they are slower for this task), and you can even use your CPU, though it is much slower than both.

ROFL... What is all this bullshit about BitCoin?
If you like bitcoins, thats fine. I Just don't trust them and I don't think I ever will.
Seriously, but what exactly gives a Bitcoin its value?

its called read the thread before you reply.

I don't trust USD currency. What gives it value? It's just paper lmao, what a stupid concept. Paper has value!! LoL!!

I'd be careful with any investments guys... honestly.

+1

If I were to Invest, it would be the old fashioned way. Not something new unless years and years of investment proved a success in this system.

Ok I understand how that works, now. Thanks for explaining. Outside of participants in the BitCoin thing, who wants BitCoins? Where can you pay with them?

+1

Btw: I'll Just leave this here.. lulz

Yes and other currencies are faked all the time, wallets and money are stolen daily..What is your point exactly? Or is it just your blind ignorance..

Not to the point where it effects the global market and has to be rolled back (that last part being of HUGE importance).

Yeah. It's too bad the US couldn't roll back on those dirty mortgages and credit swaps.

But at least it's not like it affected the global market.

This happened when? Because I havnt heard anything about it over here.

Link to info pl0x?

'Over here' would be under a stone? Far away from the crisis that's forcing every country to reform?

No, Sweden. I admit I haven't been keeping tabs on the news lately but I would assume that if it was that big of a deal I would have heard about it from friends/family/forums.

Are you serious?

Yes.

Thanks for the link Azilius.

Didn't know what the cause of it was but yes I knew about it. And no, I haven't felt the effects of it much even though it sais Sweden supposedly is one of the countries to have been hit hardest. But yes, I see your point.

Back to the original point though, I feel this cant really be compared to what happened to Bitcoin because that was the doing of a single individual onto another. The best analogy I could think of is someone breaking into someone elses bank account and that in itself is much harder than hacking someone for a simple password (assuming they/he has the sufficient knowledge). Obviously that is an assumption but I don't see anyone cracking the account of one of the wealthiest men/women in the world.

Copying a debit card is incredibly easy actually. I had mine copied a few months ago and they withdrew $900 before my bank saw it as 'unusual activity'. But to build off of your point, people with bitcoin wallets are just not protecting their money adequately. There are many ways to secure your information so things such as bruceforce attacks on your password, and even breaking into your network to steal data cannot happen (such as putting your wallet on a secure USB drive). Imagine when currency in the form of bills and coins first came out and there were no banks to store money in... The bitcoin market is still in its infancy, and more secure methods of keeping coins and anything else associated will rise up.

Bump - Small update.

After about a week of mining I have 1.2 coins. Using a 6870 to do the bulk of the mining, and my original gtx 570 mines when I'm not using my computer for games/video/etc. Had this week been a bit more steady I would have just under 2 coins. At a market price of $15 USD per coin, I'd be looking at $25~ a week, translating to approx. $100 a month.

This translates to about $10 in electricity costs (extra) a month (if I run both cards simultaneously mining 24/7). So the margins aren't bad, but it would take a few months to be profitable assuming you want to buy a new 6870 to mine with.

That being said, 5770's are on sale at NCIX right now for $70 with free shipping, which can pay for itself in a little over a month.

So to make it more simple, if I download this program and leave it running on my PC, do I get money? that easy?

More or less...yes.

But if your graphics card is older it might cost more in electricity than you will make. You also run the risk of overheating your graphics card if you don't know what you're doing I suppose.

Bitcoin implodes, falls more than 90 percent from June peak



http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news ... e-peak.ars

Luckily sold most of my coins at $15 and made a nice profit. I still have about 20 coins..waiting for the day it jumps again.