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BITCOIN Discussion v. 8 Coins on an Old Computer

Yeah, that's what I figured later. Didn't know about the RAM requirements though. What software do you use for the MD simulations? Because I'll probably end up buying a 590 or something sooner or later.

(Sorry for derailing the thread:o)
 
What are the gpu's calculating exactly? That's the only part of this I can't figure out. Is this like SETI or folding at home? Or is it just mathematical nonsense to waste power? I don't get it.
 
What are the gpu's calculating exactly? That's the only part of this I can't figure out. Is this like SETI or folding at home? Or is it just mathematical nonsense to waste power? I don't get it.

It's nonsense, in the sense that you're hashing out a large (random) chunk of data in hopes of "completing" a block and getting a 50 bitcoin reward. The difficulty is so enormous at this point that it's rather impossible to do this without a large cluster of GPUs, so people have taken to pooling efforts in order to get regular payouts. If the value of bitcoin remains high (which is more or less artificial, thanks to speculators), then mining can be profitable. A high-end graphics card running at 300 megahash per second can net about 0.3 BTC per day, which is about $4.5USD at current market prices.

It's just a shame that the biggest exchanger (we're talking 95% of total bitcoin to other currency trades) went down recently due to a hacking attempt, and has been down since. Trust in bitcoin has dropped because of this. Who knows what the market will do now, but I think I'll keep buying low and selling high, personally.
 
They should have had all those GPUs cranking out some useful calcs at the least. What a waste of electricity.
 
Who wants to partner with me on creating derivative instruments based on bitcoins before the govts of the world exercise their monopoly rights on creating currency? We could build an exchange.
 
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It's all speculative right now. Anybody who's down to join the conversation, please - I've already started posting on bitcoin's forum because I think this is a good idea, and I'm not smart enough to pull it off without the help of some very smart people. I don't even want to be the boss - I just want to be part of it happening because I've been waiting on something like bitcoin ever since I started really studying derivatives in general about 5 years ago. The derivative markets for other markets are very advanced and have strong servers that never go down. The derivatives market as it is now is very new. Not too long ago they were traded over-the-counter with brokers. Now the floodgates are open because of technology. YOU can buy as many contracts as you want for $15 or less IMMEDIATELY from ANYWHERE.

Bitcoin is like the nucleus for something like this. In the atom itself you already have the talent and the political motivations floating around like electrons, ready to collapse the wave.
 
They should have had all those GPUs cranking out some useful calcs at the least. What a waste of electricity.

This would be the ideal thing, and probably in the future someone will make this happen... Unfortunately it's kind of a difficult thing to track GPU/CPU cycles. I suppose you could pay for time on a virtual machine or something along those lines pretty easily

there was just one exchanger handling almost all of the trades to 'real' currency? that seems...not thought out too well..

No, there are lots and they are very competitive. Mt. Gox just handled the bulk of the trading... It's well known for the trading websites to hack/DDoS one another too to try to drive users to their other competing services.
 
cb, great presentation! Please count me in, the idea's brilliant. How soon can intellectual property be patented or protected? Hate to have someone else beat you to the punch, you know? (Also, now I'm extra glad I read Griftopia, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to follow your train of thought.) I say, run with it!! :))
 
They should have had all those GPUs cranking out some useful calcs at the least. What a waste of electricity.
BitCoin network has intrinsic value as a decentralized notarization platform. Coins can link ownership to a domain name in BitDNS. It can be used to authenticate identity like SSL. I'm not sure if BitCoin will take of as a currency but I think useful systems will be built on top of the technology. Comparing BitCoins to hypothetically disrupted services like SSL certificates and DNS could be a good starting point for estimating fundamentals.
 
I'm not sure if BitCoin will take of as a currency but I think useful systems will be built on top of the technology.
all the better if the tech was actually innovative / will be built upon as far as software, but the real innovation here is the beginning of an untaxed, anonymous "internet dollar".
i wish bitcoins weren't so volatile, a strong 'internet currency' would be helpful off the bat (and- perhaps - hurtful in the long run), it'd raise confidence and could really build the #of users.

((bitcoins, as a single instrument, CAN fail. if/when they really take off, and we see other popular 'internet dollars' come and compete, that'll be the day ;P ))
 
It may be a waste of energy in the short term but the overall benefit of BOINC projects is also arguable. One big limitation to the processing power available to scientific calculations is, not surprisingly, money. When(if) we move into a system where the planet's resources are more equally balanced, we will more than make up for what little we lose in ventures like this. Not to mention the exponential growth of processing power. In 20 years whatever idle CPU time the whole world could have contributed will seem like a joke. Point is, if bitcoin helps push us towards better resource handling even a little bit, it will have been worth it.
 
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