It sucks for people now but it was a smart if very unfair idea to do this

Yeah what i'm thinking about doing right now is just straight up buying bitcoins since they're like going up 50 cents a day

Following the greater fool theory? Dangerous. This bubble will pop, we just don't know when.

I kinda read through this, and while I may not know everything behind it, it looks unfair, it seems to be a waste of time and computational power, and I think it would be more beneficial to actually work for real money.

or run folding at home on their computer to put their CPU cycles to good use.

Quote from: Snake X on June 03, 2011, 10:36:01 pm

Yeah what i'm thinking about doing right now is just straight up buying bitcoins since they're like going up 50 cents a day

Following the greater fool theory? Dangerous. This bubble will pop, we just don't know when.

Indeed.  I don't know much on the matter of how currency works itself, but from stock market knowledge, you never, never, ever buy when it's going up, only when it's stagnant after a big fall (catch the dead cat bounce, pull out, get back in and generally hold it in there)

<Necropost warning>
Yes, I'm waaay behind the latest fads here. Sorry about that. Wish I had found this thread sooner.
I independently discovered bitcoin a few months back, found the idea fascinating, and started experimenting just for fun. It would certainly be nice to be able to send money digitally without having to have stuff like credit cards, etc., which has been a difficulty in my position.

The previous posters raise some good points, I think, but here's my take on things. I'm also kind of disappointed that I joined in too late for things like mining to be as profitable as the really early adopters. However, it's still not too late to be an “early adopter”. Of course, you won't be as well off as people before you, but if this takes off, you'll have a head start over those joining in after you.

I certainly don't advise anyone to invest more than you're willing to lose into it. I personally won't be putting any physical money into this for now (other than what I pay indirectly in electricity usage, etc., which I'd probably just end up using on something else if I weren't doing this, anyway ). So if Bitcoin takes on, I'll have a small head start, and if not, well, at least it was a fun experiment.

There are still some ways to accumulate a small amount of Bitcoins over time, though, if you don't mind spending some time and effort on it. You can still do pooled mining (p2pool looks the most inviting to me at the moment)—don't expect huge payouts, but you can gain some especially if you happen to have a decent graphics card. There are also sites like dailybitcoins and Bitcoin Faucet and others. You just have to look around.

Finally, there are a number of competing experimental currencies—LiteCoins, NameCoins, and more. These are younger than Bitcoin and claim to fix some preceived disadvantages, so you can be an even early adopter of these right now. Of course, they may fail, but they may overtake BitCoin eventually. It's a bit of a gamble, sort of like investing, I guess.

Anyway, if anyone here is still playing around with these cryptocurrencies, hopefully the above info may be helpful.

(By the way, just in case anyone is feeling generous and wants to donate to me: 12tLJDcw2TmgcHfyVWsJyYnYajjkgVxdxW  )

Double necro

Bitcoins shouldn't be looked at as a method to get rich. It's supposed to be a currency first and foremost, and now 2 years since this thread has started it's crashed several times but recovered every time. The reason why they're harder and harder to mine (now impossible without several GPU's or an ASIC) is to control the flow of new currency thus making it a deflationary store of value (kind of like gold) backed by its own scarcity as opposed to an inflationary one backed by the word of a government (like the US dollar).

Bitcoin may eventually go to 0 but I doubt it will be because of panic selling. A lot of people have faith in the currency, as an open source codec flaws have been looked for and (almost) none found. In April this year they crashed from $266 down close to $50 but have been sitting comfortably around $120 for the past few weeks. If Bitcoin ever takes off, it would *not* be a smart idea to sell; you'd be losing money as the currency would begin experiencing massive growth. Right now the largest single holder of bitcoins are the Winklevoss twins, yet they only hold 1% of the total Bitcoin economy.

Thoughts, now we've had a couple years observation on the topic?

Bitcoins have been going crazy these days.