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The Bitcoin Beat - Thursday, Apr 11, 2013
Apr 11, 2013 | djf

Posted on 04/11/2013 1:20:30 PM PDT by djf

BTC Current $124.90 High $203.00 Low $110.20
LTC Current $2.50 High $4.62 Low $2.10


If you bought Bitcoins yesterday, you lost your shirt! If you sold them, you lost your pants! If you bought them, you made a boatload of cash! If you sold them, yur filthy rich!

It was all a question of timing.

Bitcoin, Litecoin, and all the virtual currencies fluctuated wildly yesterday. Part (a BIG part) of the fluctuation due to more rumours of hacking, actual DDOS attacks, and the simple fact that Bitcoin had become so overbought in the last three business days, it was simply ridiculous!

Last Friday, Bitcoin closed in the $130 area, after a not-so-slow but STEADY rise over the earlier part of the month.

But it became a victim of it's own success over the weekend, as news of Bitcom and commentaries exploded over the net.

The commentaries and rave reviews are not enough to sustain the prices that were seen earlier this week. It peeked somewhere in the $260.00 range.
Something like a billion dollars of Bitcoin equity was erased yesterday when it fell like a rock, dropping to a low of about $105.00

The bad news is that there were actually people foolish enough to but it in the $240-$260 range. Their collective bad investment choices should not reflect on the currency itself, but you can bet there were alot of people yesterday who wished they never, ever, ever heard of the dang thing.

But anyone who had watched Bitcoin for even a few days would have recognized this temporary bubble as just that, and would have sat back and waited for things to stabilize.

The good news is that Bitcoin survived! Pretty remarkable news, at that! Beaten and bloodied a bit, but still breathing, and actually recovered back to the levels seen late last week.

On a personal note, I am trying to get the Namecoin DB downloaded and running. It, like it's Bitcoin counterpart, is quite large.

Now. UNLESS THE BITCOIN DEVELOPERS find a better way to handle the DB issues, Bitcoin WILL fail.

Imagine that you had a dollar bill in your pocket and you wanted to buy a pack of gum. The clerk demands that you show him a list of EVERY place the dollar bill was EVER spent! For a brand new fresh off the press dollar, that might work.

But for an older, creased, maybe a bit greasy dollar, it amounts to an impossible demand.

And that's the biggest problem now with Bitcoin, other than the hack attacks. The more successfull it is, the bigger the DB gets. When it gets to the point that you need a 100 Gigabyte/Sec Ethernet connection to sync the DB, Bitcoin dies.

In fact it would probably die before that.

So the developers need to get off their (newly) rich behinds and find more solutions.

If it can be done in a reliable, secure manner, Bitcoin will be an economic force worldwide.


djf

BTC 1ETDmR4GDjwmc9rUEQnfB1gAnk6WLmd3n6
LTC LiLPrmp1UU6usTmGFCWRzV2WPVJy3gnhYH

I may or may not start a thread later this evening, depending on what happens!


TOPICS: Business/Economy
KEYWORDS: bitcoinbeat

1 posted on 04/11/2013 1:20:30 PM PDT by djf
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To: djf

Some are saying that Bitcoin will collapse. But its attractiveness as relatively anonymous means of purchasing contraband will likely keep it alive.


2 posted on 04/11/2013 1:40:14 PM PDT by Jyotishi (Seeking the truth, a fact at a time.)
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To: Jyotishi

There is a growing list of legit vendors taking Bitcoins.
And a Cyprus type event could never happen with Bitcoins.

Sup to you.
You pays yur money, and you takes yur chances!

;-)


3 posted on 04/11/2013 1:47:00 PM PDT by djf (Rich widows: My Bitcoin address is... 1ETDmR4GDjwmc9rUEQnfB1gAnk6WLmd3n6)
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To: djf

well you don’t have to pay exactly. I mine it. We shall see where it goes but low risk unless you’re putting dollars toward it.


4 posted on 04/11/2013 2:05:43 PM PDT by rudabaga
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To: rudabaga

I don’t have the hardware to mine Bitcoins.

I tried mining Litecoins on the fastest machine I got, a 2.4 GHZ Pentium 4, but got about 500 hashes per second.
That’s not a snails pace, it’s a DEAD snails pace.

So it’s not worth it for me burning up the hardware.

But I find it very fascinating anyways!

Didja ever get a hit?


5 posted on 04/11/2013 2:13:11 PM PDT by djf (Rich widows: My Bitcoin address is... 1ETDmR4GDjwmc9rUEQnfB1gAnk6WLmd3n6)
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To: djf

Yes but I only recently started so I haven’t made that much. You have to join a pool unless you want to devote serious hardware to the task. Then you can add workers to it giving you a better return. It’s pretty simple. I devote a few older machines to the task and just leave them running. I wasn’t using them anymore anyway, 2 macs and 2 PCs.


6 posted on 04/11/2013 2:38:34 PM PDT by rudabaga
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To: djf

I’ll use dolars, you people are nuts!


7 posted on 04/11/2013 2:56:02 PM PDT by dalereed
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To: rudabaga

What I don’t understand is why GPU’s are supposed to be so much better than CPU’s for mining.

Maybe GPU’s have some kind of vector-based instructions that work better on long strings of cryptographic data...

I wonder if the codes will ever get cracked? Mathematically, it’s possible, but supposed to take billions of years.

You never know. Some 12 year old in Iowa or something might come up with it and Bitcoin comes crashin to the ground!


8 posted on 04/11/2013 2:56:42 PM PDT by djf (Rich widows: My Bitcoin address is... 1ETDmR4GDjwmc9rUEQnfB1gAnk6WLmd3n6)
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To: All
Very interesting article!

Meet the Bitcoin Millionaires
9 posted on 04/11/2013 9:20:52 PM PDT by djf (Rich widows: My Bitcoin address is... 1ETDmR4GDjwmc9rUEQnfB1gAnk6WLmd3n6)
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To: rudabaga

Make sure you are above the threshold or you will be burning more electricity than you are producing bitcoins.


10 posted on 04/11/2013 10:54:06 PM PDT by willyd
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To: djf

Haha! Yes probably. I really have a hard time imagining this will end well.


11 posted on 04/13/2013 9:03:23 AM PDT by rudabaga
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