Question about BitCoin
 

who actually issues the currency? where does it come from?

why do you ask such questions, bitcoins are so great and you can make big money on it! :) somebody is so rich and smiling on all this...

curious where they originate from, like so many sites selling them, so where does the currency originate from a location?

Bitcoins aren't issued....people mine them with their videocards or cpus.

Chinese prisoners spend all day mining them.

.

so bascially an array of bots etc, but you can then swap them for real cash?

kinda insane isnt it?

swap here

https://mtgox.com/

https://coinbase.com/

It all traces back to a random guy known as Satoshi Nakamoto who made the first mention of the bitcoin system in a newsgroup


Coins are generated via mining and the demand creates the value.

Mining generates blocks which provide coins to whomever completes or closes the block.
The blocks also contain the transactions which get priority of inclusion by a transaction fee.
Making money, or transferring money will always cost money, hence most valuable currency on the planet.

There is only a limited amount of coins that can be mined. There will be a point that they are all mined. And if the demand keeps getting bigger the price per coin can get huge.

how did the whole process begin though? the founder mined coins himself, probably collected millions of them, then went out on the internet "Hey, these bitcoins have value, buy them from me for a $X"? isn't that basically what happened?

if that's not what happened, can someone spell out the history of bitcoins and the exact point when the coins became valuable?

the founder's name is an anagram or something of the original crew of hackers that created the system. only 25 coins can be mined per hour, maximum coinage reached in the year 2170 or something nutty.

2140 i believe.

But LONG before that there will already be so many users that the coins will worth a lot of money.

just checked the wiki,

a hard limit of 21 million bitcoins is reached during the year 2140

pretty cool blurb on the founder

Satoshi Nakamoto was the pseudonymous person or group of people who designed and created the original bitcoin protocol and launched the bitcoin network. Beyond bitcoin, no other links to this identity have been found. His involvement in the original bitcoin protocol does not appear to extend past mid-2010.[10] Nakamoto was active in making modifications to the bitcoin network and posting technical information on the BitcoinTalk Forum until his contact with bitcoin users began to fade. Until a few months before he left, he was responsible for most of bitcoins software, only rarely accepting contributions.[10]
In April 2011, Satoshi had communicated to a bitcoin contributor saying he “moved on to other things.”[16]
Identity
Investigations into the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto have been attempted by The New Yorker and Fast Company. Fast Company's investigation brought up circumstantial evidence that indicated a link between an encryption patent filed by Neal King, Vladimir Oksman and Charles Bry on August 15, 2008 and the bitcoin.org domain name which was registered 72 hours later. The patent (#20100042841) contained networking and encryption technologies similar to bitcoin's. After textual analysis, the phrase "…computationally impractical to reverse" was found in both the patent application and bitcoin's whitepaper.[1] All three inventors explicitly denied being Satoshi Nakamoto.[17][18]

please delete coinbase, it's more of an online wallet, not a good idea.

paper wallet is more secure

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet

http://s.s-bol.com/imgbase0/imagebas...4006951285.jpg

http://www.w3.org/Conferences/WWW4/Papers/228/

Donal O'Mahony, Michael Peirce, Hitesh Tewari

Bitcoin deities/creators :2 cents:

you were ragging the piss out of some dude cause he had bitcoins so have you changed your mind or just playing along here. I cannot tell anymore

He lacks conviction.

I just bought 10 more coins.

LOL sorry franck I found the thread and had you confused with someone else. I saw your threads about them also. I wanna drop 10K in bitcoins. What is the best site to buy them? I will post proof I bought them and see what I make or lose in a month. Then post the end result

how do you 'mine' something that doesn't exist?

I buy them on a Dutch site.
I wouldn't bother with a month. Keep them for at least a year.

They exist. They just need to be found.

i just don't get it. how do you find them and who put them there? obviously just buying them is easier but i find the whole thing strange and shady.

Strange, yes. Shady, not at all. Compared to real world money it's the most clear and honest system i know off.
Nowadays buying them is way easier. Mining now requires quite some hardware. Just using your pc will make you shit.

the process of mining creates the bitcoins, as i understand it.


it's an economy based on processing power.

more

New bitcoins are generated by the network through the process of "mining". In a process that is similar to a continuous raffle draw, mining nodes on the network are awarded bitcoins each time they find the solution to a certain mathematical problem (and thereby create a new block). Creating a block is a proof of work with a difficulty that varies with the overall strength of the network. The reward for solving a block is automatically adjusted so that in roughly the first four years of operation of the Bitcoin network, 10,500,000 BTC will be created. This amount is halved each four years, so it will be 5,250,000 over years 4-8, 2,625,000 over years 8-12, and so on. Thus the total number of bitcoins in existence will not exceed 21,000,000. See Controlled Currency Supply.
Blocks are mined every 10 minutes, on average and for the first four years (210,000 blocks) each block includes 50 new bitcoins. As the amount of processing power directed at mining changes, the difficulty of creating new bitcoins changes. This difficulty factor is calculated every 2016 blocks and is based upon the time taken to generate the previous 2016 blocks.


https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#How_a...ins_created.3F

I have yet to exchange anything of value for bitcoins ever.
Not money, not electricity, just my time, which is priceless.
Thanks though for investing in my return on not investing.

Dirty F, which wallet do youo use/recommend?

:thumbsup

namecheap accepts bitcoins now.

The consensus by bitcoiners seems to be Blockchain.info has the most security for an online wallet.

Never keep too many on a 3rd party site. I always send the extra onto my computer and store offline.

Go back 2 years I was getting the third degree about bitcoins on here. :p

what do you use for offline storage?

how can you know what you have is a 'bitcoin'? couldn't people be easily duped buying these things since its just a file or whatever the hell it is>

http://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoin-wallet-options/

I personally use the Satoshi wallet.

You can only transfer them with a unique code which you generate specifically for that transaction.

thanks DF

Bitcoin info ...

Watch video -> http://www.weusecoins.com/

Read -> http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=66

You can copy your wallet.dat file from your desktop client and put it on a flash drive. You can encrypt it to a zip file with a password for extra security.

If you do this make sure your client is closed. After you are sure your wallet.dat file is backed up, you can delete it from your client.. and when you restart your client it will create a new fresh one.

If you have an address from this wallet file, you can still send bitcoins to it even if its under your bed on a zip drive.

People also use paper wallets and all kinds of other methods. http://bitaddress.org

I have no used these.

If you have questions the Reddit group is a good way to get quick answers.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/

:thumbsup

Yes as do I. :)