[GNHLUG] MerriLUG: April 2nd 2013 - Bitcoin

[Peter M. Petrakis]

On 04/07/2013 02:08 PM, Marc Nozell (marc at nozell.com) wrote:
> Why mine it yourself when you can have others do it for you?
> http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/04/06/1448234/new-skype-malware-uses-victims-machines-to-mine-bitcoins
>
> Seriously, it appears that the compute needed to mine coins have
> outstripped the power of CPUs, GPUs and the action is in purpose built
> ASICs.
>
> I wonder at what point the expense of electricity is greater than the value
> of the mined bitcoin.

Well, it already costs money to mint U.S. currency, in some cases I'm pretty
sure the face value is exceeded slightly. However that pales in comparison
to the commerce it facilities. Fiat currency that isn't backed by the strength
of an economy and it's government is worth less than toilet paper when you
need it the most.

Even during the 2008 crash your dollars in hand were still good but if you were
one of many who thought it was a good idea to use a money market checking account
for payroll and expenses found out the hard way that your own hard earned money
was unreachable, frozen for weeks. At least at the end of that you still ended
up with the same balance you started with. With BC your wealth can fluctuate
wildly throughout the day.... based on network congestion.

Cute experiment, though it seems that they discounted alternatives like um...
Gold e.g. http://www.goldmoney.com/faq/what-are-metal-payments.html

DISCLAIMER: I'm no fan of fiat currencies

Peter

>
> -m
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 10:32 AM, Bruce Labitt
> <bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net>wrote:
>
>> On 04/06/2013 07:28 PM, Ben Scott wrote:
>>> On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 5:27 PM, David Rysdam <david at rysdam.org> wrote:
>>>>>     Peer-to-peer is two guys meeting on a street corner and saying "Hey,
>>>>> wanna buy some Bitcoins?"  :)
>>>> What if 100 guys meet on a street corner?
>>>     Umm... then there's more of them?  :)  It doesn't inherently affect
>>> the peer-to-peer nature, if that's what you're asking.
>>>
>>>> And what if that street corner is then blocked, "DoS'd" if you will,
>>>> by a rival gang? Isn't that exactly what happened here?
>>>     I guess so... I get the feeling this analogy has gotten
>> out-of-control.  :)
>>>
>>> -- Ben
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>>>
>> Anyone doing bit coin mining?  Seems like it would favor geeks with high
>> power computers/gaming rigs to decrypt the codes.  I've heard that
>> people are harnessing gpu's to do the decryption.  Discuss.
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