Bitcoins/Litecoins/Virtual Currencies

I absolutely cannot understand this Dogecoin thing. For the last few weeks, a multicoin pool with 8000MH/s (SCRYPT!!!) has been mining Dogecoin because its the most profitable coin to mine. 8000MH/s = 12,307 Radeon 7950s. Its a lot of hash power. The pool has paid out 100+ BTC daily. By these robust maths, that means a group of people have been exchanging 80k USD EVERY DAY of bitcoins in exchange for these Dogecoins over the last few weeks.

I'm familiar with the greater fool theory but the sustained hype in alt-coins just blows my mind. I was there in March when a new coin was a reasonably cool thing, and witnessed the birth of 50 more coins over the next few months. I just don't understand why the lazy rich haven't gotten bored of this yet.

I think its more of a fad than anything. Also people love telling other people they have 100k in dogecoins, vs say .25 bitcoins. I personally don't think its worth shit, its not going anywhere. I mined about 50k total and converted to bitcoin when the price was up. I now just mine over at middlecoin.

The whole thing is built on speculation so if they are making Dogecoins a legit form of currency then it's no different then bitcoins imho

Really just comes down to what vendors even accept it

Tuco_sl said:

I can't imagine what kind of nightmare it would be to be a vendor and accepting bitcoins with how volatile the system is. Ironically the recent surge of speculators fucking with the market (myself included even though I'm not really trading just buying it for a novelty) make BTC less usable.

Right now it smashed rinthe's upper wedge and will probably continue to slowly rise until the next market shakeup which I imagine will happen before it steadies out. The best thing for BTC as a currency is if speculators lose interest, it drops to ~400 and holds there.

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BitPay absorbs all the volatility from any vendor wishing to transact in Bitcoin.

Tuco_sl said:

I'm pretty new at this but I saw that somewhere in Miami they did a 'BTC Happy Hour' this weekend where they accepted BTCs for an hour.

Can the bar advertise $3 drafts, get handed a BTC credit card, charge "3USD" to it and bitpay will take the BTC, convert it to USD and deposit the USD in the bar's bank account?

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Yes -- I forget which exchange bitpay uses... but at the time of the transaction, the merchant will print out or display the public key, the customer sends the bitcoins, and Bitpay deposits USD in the vendor account daily. I don't know how bitpay protects themselves from volatility but the vendor isn't exposed at all and actually saves 1-2 percent compared to using a card.

EDIT: I don't know what you mean by a BTC credit card. 99 percent of customers using this feature right now would just have like .1 or .2 BTC on a cell phone wallet. The generated QR code that the vendor prints out will have the price filled in as well as the public key. If you have a smart phone, install Mycellium on it -- its pretty damn easy to send/receive using a phone.

Tuco_sl said:

Thanks. I didn't know that vendors could receive bitcoins and convert them to USD so easily and without a charge.

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There is a charge for a vendor to use Bitpay, but it looks like they're very competitive compared to Visa. I'm not sure what small business owners have to pay Visa for CC transactions but I though it was 2-3 percent.

BitPay

The 1 percent transaction fee is probably the best route for most merchants until/if BTC transactions become more common.

Eidal_sl said:

I just don't understand why the lazy rich haven't gotten bored of this yet.

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People are printing an inherently worthless "currency" and exchanging it for money that has a real value. How do you get bored of that?

Melvin_sl said:

People are printing an inherently worthless "currency" and exchanging it for money that has a real value. How do you get bored of that?

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Are they really? I ask as someone who has a 6870, 6950, and 7950 sitting un-used next to me. Could I mine LTC or BTC for a month and turn it into actual money (even if the fee is 5-15%) without any hassle, bullshit, scam, or run-around?

Tuco_sl said:

I think Eidal is talking about the people paying real money for inherently worthless currency.

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I'm undecided on the long-term value of BTC or LTC; I think that cryptocurrency is here to stay but I find it highly plausible that the public utility and public interest (and thus, price) changes as more iterations come out. For example, the myspace ---> facebook --> ? iterations we've seen over the last decade.

That being said, how so much BTC/USD has entered Dogecoin blows my mind -- this is not what I would call a likely contender and the evidence is all over coinwarz.com that these scamcoins only pan out for the ultra-early adopters. There are 50+ dead coins from the last six months.

Eidal_sl said:

I'm undecided on the long-term value of BTC or LTC; I think that cryptocurrency is here to stay but I find it highly plausible that the public utility and public interest (and thus, price) changes as more iterations come out. For example, the myspace ---> facebook --> ? iterations we've seen over the last decade.

That being said, how so much BTC/USD has entered Dogecoin blows my mind -- this is not what I would call a likely contender and the evidence is all over coinwarz.com that these scamcoins only pan out for the ultra-early adopters. There are 50+ dead coins from the last six months.

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I don't really see BTC going away. It has too much "sticking" power and infrastructure now. Bitpay/Coinbase and the number of merchants already using these services. The announcement with Overstock accepting Bitcoin later this year, among some other major retailers who have hinted at the same.

Barring some extreme exploit found in the code, or something catastrophic happening, I think Bitcoin is here to stay. It's a little different than simply switching from Myspace to Facebook.

Jovec_sl said:

Are they really? I ask as someone who has a 6870, 6950, and 7950 sitting un-used next to me. Could I mine LTC or BTC for a month and turn it into actual money (even if the fee is 5-15%) without any hassle, bullshit, scam, or run-around?

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Depends on what you mean by hassle. Setting up a decent scrypt miner could be difficult depending on your level of computer expertise. If you mean exchanging it for USD, then you'd need a coinbase account or friends willing to do the exchange to USD for you.

Hi Reddit, 20 year Wall St. geek and Bitcoin fanatic here : Bitcoin

Enjoyed this thread.

Already mined 1 BTC in less than a month on middlecoin.. check it:

Middlecoin - 155KBgfcu2NbeTZfG6sq3UZM1UaGUgzPP4

That's my payouts since Dec 12th. I also took a couple days off to mine some alt coins in between. Notice Dec 20th I was paid .1 BTC

Eidal_sl said:

Hi Reddit, 20 year Wall St. geek and Bitcoin fanatic here : Bitcoin

Enjoyed this thread.

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Coming from a finance professional and bitcoin skeptic: That wasn't a bad read. The guy blows his own horn a bit too much, but most of his thoughts are sound.

I read it, didn't like it much. I must admit I was biased since reading he's from sell side (selling products and skinning clients) rather tahn buy side (getting paid by being right about market bets) so his perspectives on whether or not bitcoin has a future should be taken like car advice from the 2nd hand car salesman.

I still keep in correspondence on an email list with a bunch of old traders, money managers, economists, VC guys and the like. The average age I'd guess would be 60+, but quite a few have pretty decent programming backgrounds so aren't complete luddites. Most have't put much time into bitcoins, but all who have came to the scam conclusion.


Anyways looks like I failed to find a good place to buy. I think it still looks good to break all time highs, this creeping slow rise over the last week is bullish price action. But yeah, it looks like I'll be on the side lines for a while and may have missed it. Oh well. Maybe if it chops down to about 600 over a couple of weeks. I suppose if it chops down to 840 over the next day or 2 that could be an ok spot.