A few months ago, Bitcoins went into a huge bubble due to publicity, then blew up, then someone's computer got hacked and he lost an enormous amount.

Just saw a website advertising "We Accept Bitcoin".  Are bitcoins back?  Are they stable?

From what I heard it's a scam.  Didn't some guy build an exchange for it, pump it up to insane levels and then cash out?  

Bitcoins aren't stable or safe at all.

i would stay far, far away.

buttcoins are a worthless scam

IMO, I would only consider buying small amounts to play around with. And I would spend them quickly.

http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/

By "stable", if you mean bouncing between $2/$4 per BTC, then yeah, kinda/sorta "stable". I guess.

I've been keeping an eye on Bitcoin. It obviously has had a rather flawed implementation, and I don't think it has sufficient liquidity to truly represent a nation or a world's economy, but I certainly like the idea in a "v 1.0" sort of way.

Untraceable, un-forgeable, anonymous digital cash is the one bullet to the head that any and all forms of wealth-transfer Leftism needs, because it effectively destroys any .gov's ability to levy taxes to pay for such wealth-transfer, unless they're willing to totally shut down the Internet. And even then, ad-hoc peer to peer WiFi mesh networks and "sneakernet" on things like USB flash-drives makes even that not 100% effective.

Yeah, it would be a boon to crime, but arguably, the worst crimes out there, violent drug cartels, and human trafficking/sex/prostitution are only violent and deprive people of their lives or safety because their illegality in the face of the .gov makes them so lucrative in the first place.

Lol, bit coins. Just like in the California Gold Rush, I made out like a bandit on a few Radeom cards that I sold for 3x their MSRP. Sell the fools the tools of their own demise.

It's certainly not a scam but it's a preposterous, wildly unstable and dangerous currency.

Avoid at all costs.

My granddad once told me, "son, if it looks like a pyramid and you're not Egyptian, stay the heck away from it."

Well, it's not a pyramid scheme, since the mathematics behind the BitCoins is published and whoever wants to can review the system. Actually, the issuance of new BitCoins stops at a certain point, and the currency becomes deflationary, with the supply of BitCoins fixed, fractional BitCoins become ever more valulable, and it being digital, almost infinitely divisible. So in theory, if BitCoin took off, and stayed popular for decades, instead of 1 BTC being $5 like it is right now, per a rough poll of the various exchanges, someone could use their smartphone to pay .000000035 BTC for a hotdog or something 30 years from now.

The BitCoin money does come out of "thin air" sort of, the "miners" use computing power to solve an ever lengthening mathematical/encryption problem to uncover "new" BitCoins, by spending computer time and electrical power to produce them.

Which in it's own way, makes BitCoins more "real", than U.S. debt-issue/bond-backed fiat Federal Reserve Notes.

Ultimately though, even gold only has it's value in whether or not people want it. The old argument of the value (or utility) of a gold coin worth $4000, vs. a bag of wheat worth $10 to a starving man, right there and then...

Gold is only "better" than FRN's or BTC because that wanting has been fairly consistent over recorded human history. I agree, the odds of the thing overall dictate that BitCoin will probably crash-n-burn at some point. Although so have lots of "real" monies and governments over the course history too. Nor is ours immune either.

What I appreciate is the fact that somebody is trying.

Anonymous digital cash that can't be counterfeited is going to be a must if you want to see the nanny state destroyed and you like even just some libertarian ideals.  

Whether it's interesting theory or not is immaterial.  It's a risky place to invest, and the likelihood is that it will follow the pattern of a pyramid scheme.  Gramps didn't die rich, but he didn't die poor either.

I don't disagree. It's just unfair to characterize it as a "scam", since there is no central bank in terms of BitCoins that's getting rich by issuing them. It's an impassive and impartial mathematical algorithm and protocol that does not even reside in one central place that can be controlled. I suppose someone could try to "corner" the BitCoin market by turning an incredibly powerful supercomputer on the mining hashes (rather unlikely), but that would be self-defeating, because by hoarding all the future BitCoins early, they're worthless, unless they're "spent" on something in terms of real world goods or services. So then in a way, someone willing to try and corner the remainder of the BitCoin algorithim string, they're actually adding value to BitCoins by doing it, and to gain anything from them, the BitCoins have to get back out into a market of some kind and achieve liquidity to be "worth" anything anyway.

So in a way, the acts that could be committed to control BitCoins unfairly, almost serve to better establish it.

I guess the worst that could happen is someone corner BitCoins in this way, and if it does not kill BitCoin, and the remaining BitCoin in circulation goes up in value, gets popular, then someone floods the market with their stash, crashing the value, making people's "savings" worthless.

However, those are all risks that exist in any commodity currency, or fiat currency. Yeah, BitCoin could wipe you out. Odds are, it probably will. However, those same risks exist for the U.S. Dollar, seeing as how the Fed's been printing them lately.

Although I suppose as an official endorsement of BitCoin, I should divulge that my current investment in Bitcoins is exactly USD $.25, and there it'll stay.

And that BTC was given to me for free by some site giving away .05 BTC  to show how transfers work and to evangelize the new currency.

However, it's really interesting, and I give kudos to those taking a chance on it to use it for small transactions.

Anyone looking to "get rich" with BitCoin, yeah, they're fools, go buy a lottery ticket. The odds might be better.

Thanks for the long analysis, much appreciated.  I'm not looking to put money into it or anything, more as a tool to use instead of PayPal.

The dollar is a scam.

 

For a while there, Radeon 5 series cards were selling for way above their new price.    I was sorely tempted to sell my Radeon 5850 but I didn't want to go through the trouble of building a new Nvidia based PC.  

You have to build a new pc for a video card, instead of swapping the video card out?
 

Yep.  I have the disease called "upgradeitis".    No point in just swapping out one part in a 2+ year old system when you can build a whole new system.

- My LGA1366 CPU (Core i7 920) is now on a dead socket so I'd want to buy a new LGA2011 or LGA1155 mobo and switch to a new LGA1155 Core i7 or something similar on the LGA2011 socket.

- If I go with a LGA1155 socket system, my triple channel RAM is no good so I'd have to buy new dual channel RAM.

- I really hate cable management with my Corsair 850TX.  I'd probably go with a modular Corsair PSU next time around.

- New cases have SATA HDD docks and trays for removable SSDs.  My current case does not.  

At the end of the day, the only thing I might get to re-use are my hard/optical drives, card-reader, monitor, keyboard, mouse, webcam and monitor.  

I sold a 5830 and got the money for a 6950 in that one sale.



People are fucking stupid.

LGA 1366 is dead?

Yep. I think it's fascinating but would never consider it an investment.



 

Yes, not a bad run. they came out in Q3 2008. LGA 2011 has replaced it.