Anyone mine bitcoins?

[berry120]

More because I'm intruiged rather than anything else but does anyone here mine bitcoins? Or know what they are even?

I was looking into it the other day and while I'm not sold on the idea I do think it's an interesting concept. Then again I do think there's problems stopping it taking off from an economic standpoint, such as built in deflation - why would you spend a currency that's only ever (by design) going to go up in value? Of course this isn't necessarily the case, but if it survives it's something that'll be true in general over long periods of time.

I'd definitely go for it if I was living somewhere with free electricity - nothing really to lose in that case apart from perhaps the initial investment cost of a few graphics cards (and even then you've still got a few graphics cards if it fails!) Paying for the electricity you use though seriously eats into any profits you might make.

Thoughts?

[David Lindon]

Hmm so bitcoins are a economic currency and you can brute for to generate bitcoin codes right?

[berry120]

It's a currency of sorts, it's not officially recognised anywhere but yeah that's what it aims to be.

People can trade bitcoins all over, you don't necessarily need to mine for them, you can buy them as well. But if you choose to mine then yes it's kind of like a brute forcing operation to get them. Normal behaviour (if you've just got a modest setup) is to join a pool (think folding@home style but generating bitcoins) then for every bitcoin found (or technically every block of 50 found) it's split between everyone in the pool proportionally to the computing power of everyone in it.

At one point it was hugely profitable to do this - you could sell a bitcoin for well over $30. Then it crashed and is now only worth a couple of dollars, but arguably still worth doing if you're living somewhere where you get cheap (or free even) electricity. If I was still in student halls where electricity was free then I'd be pounding away at it!