Google and Wiki make no sense.

Can I put a bitcoin in my pocket?
What are they worth?
What the fuck is bitcoin mining?

Forget about this issue and read the thread about divorced dudes looking for poon tang

It’s a bunch of 1s and 0s that turn into dollars magically

I'm in the same boat, OP.

Google, it's a motherfucker.

They are the building blocks of Lamborghini's.

That's all you need to know.

A bitcoin is a 'serial number' which cannot be duplicated or recreated.

Included in the tech is a universal ledger which shows where each 'serial number' currently resides along with it's origin and it's history.

That's not really correct but gives the general idea.

It's a fad based on a hoax, like eating Tide Pods.

Basically this:

Crypto currency that's easy to steal I guess

https://www.ar15.com/forums/general/Crypto-Currency-Heist-534-Million/5-2075108/

So, we are currently in stage 2 then.

It’s an imaginary item of dubious monetary value, much like a dollar backed by the US Government.  Think digital dollar.  You can (maybe) exchange it out for greenbacks if you want, like selling out your 401 or TSP.

Here is the Kindergarten version
• A bitcoin is a long ass number, that you probably wouldn't be able to say.
  
• If you tell anyone what it is,  they can spend it, so best kept secret
• You can write it down on paper and keep it in your pocket or keep it on your computer
• If its on your computer you should encrypt it, so hackers don't get it
• 1 bitcoin is worth about $11,000 today
• You can get the cash at an exchange, kind of like selling a stock certificate.
• Mining bit coin is done my running math computations on your computer.  This takes a long time to find the math solution to the next available bit coin, and people spend a lot of money on specialized computers to do this.

Here's my take on it:  
No you can't put it in  your pocket. It only exists online.

Bitcoin mining is "creating effort" to "create value" so it is valuable.

The only reason it can be traded is that some people agree to trade it. It's essentially the same reason people accept the American dollar. There's no gold or silver backing it up-- the only thing that keeps it going is the fact that people continue to do so. As soon as some of the 'big boys' (China or Russia) publicly announce that the dollar is worthless, it will collapse.

It’s a nonperformer for me, that’s what it is!

Forget the word “bitcoin” for a sec, and think of it merely as the first (potentially) successful attempt at people creating their own currency that is not tied to any particular government or backed by any precious metals, etc.

The technical details about how it works are pretty inventive, but basically it boils down to mathematical equations with finite solutions that take a lot of computing to figure out (how you “mine” a bitcoin).

Or something like that.

A bitcoin is a unique mathematical solution to a faimly of cryprogical equations.

Actually its an acceptalbe passkey to an encrypted serries....

There are only 21 million such keys possible.

Miners use tons of computer hardware to "crack" another passkey.... this is mining a bitcoin.

Bitcoins exist in a blockchain, a distributed data network. All bitcoins possible and a record of all transactions ever exist in the block chain anonymously. (mostly anyways).

Bitcoins are more than just currency, they are a banking system. Transactions are processed in the blockchain for a fee.

It could eliminate the need for a Fed, a national mint, and cetralized banks.... It is a Libretarian's wet dream come true.

Bitcoin has serious limitations... other crypto currencies aim to improve on what bitcoin started.

Pretty simple... right?

Lol, that's actually kind of funny.

Even if true, there are some serious Cheeto finger coated hat tippers parking their Ferraris in their moms garage because they capitalized on it.

I'm not hesitant to admit I'm jealous as shit.

It’s easier to grasp than the idea that a green piece of linen can be exchanged for meat, fuel, and shelter. But here we are.

Same here

If you want to read something interesting about bitcoin mining google the energy consumption required.  It's stunning.

I wish I got in years and years ago when I first did some research. At the time I was concerned I'd be pissing away a couple hundred bucks.

It would be worth over 150k right now.

But I did buy in with a little bit of money more recently and it bought me a brand new handgun I'd never have been able to justify otherwise. So it's still a win at the end of the day I love my new "CryptoGat"

A couple of weeks ago I read an article that summed up what I've thought was wrong with Bitcoin, aside from the speculative bubble aspect:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-27/bitcoin-is-an-implausible-currency

If you are the TL:DR type, the header of the article sums it up:

the newest pyramid scheme

Lots of people conflate 'bitcoin' and 'cryptocurrency'.  But they aren't one and the same.

Bitcoin is A cryptocurrency.  Litecoin, Ethereum, are others.  And there are many more.

Not all suffer from the same limitation bitcoin suffers from.  Many are designed specifically to avoid some of the encumbrances, like long transaction times.

sooo, like cash.

it's a digital unit of currency that can be exchanged across the world in minutes or hours vs days or weeks for "normal" fiat money.

That's all you really need to understand. It's digital money that can be used to store and transfer value over distance and with fees that are comparatively a lot lower than "normal" bank owned money.

Think of it like a dollar,  and if you want to send your buddy in Germany a dollar,  you'd have to go to the bank, or western union,  pay huge fees,  send the money, wait weeks for the money to clear etc.

Now you can just "send" or "transfer" a bitcoin from you to him, in minutes to hours depending on how much of a fee you want to pay. They are orders of magnitude cheaper to transfer than "normal" money.

it's not that complex.

mining is a different topic. There's lots and lots of youtube videos explaining it

so I heard a good way to explain parts of it.

imagine you are in a large auditorium.

it is filled to capacity.

a person on stage says I have 5 bit coins.
I want to give 1 bit coin to john.

Everyone in the room checks their book and says yup you own 5 bit coins.
you are giving one to john. They remove one from your list and add it to john's.
now john owns 1 bit coin.

That is a simplistic way to explain how the idea of bitcoin works and why you can't create counterfit bitcoins.
everyone knows where every one of them are.

Why is this important?
Today and in history, governments destabilized other countries by introducing counterfit currency into the economy. Causing inflation among other things.

so that is point one.
in recent history and in the past, governments controlled the people by controling money.
don't want a run on the banks, close them down.
no one has any money, they can't buy goods.

I think there was a case of this recently and most of the people switched to bitcoins to get by.

Value is a different issue.
Why did they go from .001 cents to 11000 dollars?
It is a scarcity and use thing.
When they were .001 cents no one used them.
It would be like finding a gold or diamond mine but no one cared about those things.
Eventually due to people deciding they could use those items or debeers deciding they could market them, people decided they had to have one and due to the scarcity( real or controled,) these items increase in price.

Mining is a bit different.
It is part of the finding another combination/serial number that cannot be faked, and being the first guy in the room to say you are right you transfered 1 bitcoin to john.
There is a fee charged for the transaction and that guy gets that fee.
everyone else still has to look it up and agree, but that first guy got the money.

It's like a dollar, except it can't be counterfeit, it's supply can't be inflated by the whim of a government or bank, that can be transferred around the world faster and cheaper than a wire transfer or ach.

Why arfcom is so poo poo about a monetary device that allows one to decouple their capitalism from governments and banks is beyond me.

I am a bitcoin miner.  I run four antminers that make me a little bit of money every month.

Well, actually they do work in a pool, which is the combined resources of all other members of the pool.

If you are familiar with folding@home or seti@home then you actually already are close to a conceptual understanding of how bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies work.

If you could buy and sell the results of the work done by computers participating in seti@home or folding@home or any other group computational effort, then it would be another form of cryptocurrency,  more or less.

The difference is primarily in the details of how the "block" is computed and validated.  The block is the string of data that IS the bitcoin.

For a block to be a valid bitcoin it has to have certain features, one of which is that it currently has to start with a chain of 18 zeroes.  That doesn't seem like much, except the odds of randomly generating a long block of numbers (say 256) and the first 18 digits are all zero,  well, those are very long odds indeed.

The block itself is created by a hashing function.  Hashing is a mathematical process of starting with one or more input numbers and a seed number and mathematically combining them to creat an output number that is unique and of a defined length.

Other computers on the network have the capacity to repeat a calculation made by the computer that "found" a valid block, and cross-check that block for validity.  In fact, a LOT of computers on the bitcoin network do this.   I'm not sure exactly how many,  and really as the operator of a mining system even I don't have to know the details.

But part of the hash function that is used to find a new block is the last block to be mined.   The newest block is one of the numbers that is hashed by miners to create the next block.

That next block can not be valid if the previous block is not incorporated into its hashing function.

So, every block is derived from the previous block and other information,  in a manner that can be validated by all the other computers on the network.   This makes it impossible, for all intents and purposes, to forge blocks.    The block generation system is VERY secure due to its cross-checking features.

As for valuation, it's worth what people will pay for it.  People buy into it on speculation that it will increase in value or actually be useful as a currency for buying things.

If I can put my miners into the pool and I end up getting paid in real money to my real bank account via automatic cash-out,  that's all that's really important to me.

About tree fiddy.

read:

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

The paper that started it all.

Bottom line, it's a way of moving money, using a distributed public ledger.

Took me a moment to grasp it too, because it's only made valuable, because a few people started putting money in it and gave it a value. If it weren't for those who made the initial investment, it has no value. *shrug* whatever though, it does now so fuck it. What's a few bucks here and there thrown in when it's low. *shrug* If I had a PC capable, i'd mine the shit, but I don't. And i'm not spending thousands to build a good one for it.

Watch Banking on Bitcoin on Netflix.  Very enlightening

-Program on your computer. Communicates with other exactly same programs.

-People with program running get a reward of bitcoins.

-The amount of bitcoins released per day depreciate until only 21 million exist ever. Deflationary.

- The amount of processing your computer does gives you better chance of being rewarded since you are helping verify transactions the more.

- All the computers verify the history of all transactions and every bitcoins history.

-bitcoins CAN NOT BE CONTERFEITED because of this “blockchain” and the system that the anonymous inventor made. It can be stolen from you (hacking) but it can’t be conterfeited.

-no one gave a shit until a few nerds started trading it then with deflation came Scarcity and small amounts of  worth.

- once it had any value it became extremely extremely useful for any and all money laundering.

Here is what you need to know:
Since it can’t be counterfeited and it is unregulated and digital IF IF it holds value it will be the premier way to launder money for the foreseeable future and it’s deflating every day.

btc would be a really stupid way to try to launder money.

It's a digital commodity that looks like gobblygook that you can trick nerds into giving you cash for it.

Sort of like oil and gold, but without intrinsic use so more like fiat currency (I.E. US dollars) on a debit card.

This.  And I had a hard time explaining why people traded colored paper for stuff to my daughter.  The paper is backed by silver... or gold... or actually nothing now.  Whatever - people act like it has value, so it does.

Computer hackers, drug dealers, and people in Cyprus and China and anyone else trying to move money illegally disagree.

All the ones the FBI rolled up with all the tor markets wouldn't...

You see, there are people who actually understand this stuff, and then there's you!  If you want to learn, you should listen, not pontificate about something you don't understand.  The people who are moving illegal money switched to privacy coins a long time ago -- bitcoin has no privacy features, it's a public ledger and every bitcoin is traceable all the way back to the mining block it was created in.

Not only that, we're now using bitcoin to deanonymize tor.

https://www.wired.com/story/bitcoin-drug-deals-silk-road-blockchain/

Tag for interests.

If reading a basic description doesn't do it, then I'm not sure how we're supposed to help you on the technical end of it.

On the practical end, the important thing to understand is that while all currencies are meant to be methods of exchange, this one (and most of the other similar cryptocurrencies) are meant to operate outside the control of governments.   Combined with their portability, this makes them useful for a bunch of specific purposes, like fleeing a place and smuggling out your money.

But then, most people don't understand how traditional currency works either, so you have to start with that.

I’ve always wondered if it and other Cryptocurrencies were directly influenced by MMORPGs. A person would trade hard cash for established account (and the in-game wealth associated with that account).

Even if you spent thousands, a PC won't mine bitcoin effectively anymore.  You need a specialized ASIC system, that does one thing and one thing well - Verify sha256 transactions.

PC's, and GPU's are orders of magnitude slower.  I don't think you could even make a dollar per year with a CPU if you had free power.

It’s a joke. An imaginary financial instrument that has absolutely no intrinsic value. It doesn’t represent a unit of anything. We mine gold, silver, uranium, because they have intrinsic as well as monetary value. Calling the equation solving needed to “create” a bitcoin mining is fucking retarded, and so is anyone thinking its anything but a tool for scammers to rip off morons.

I've got around $1.5 million in Monopoly money, so I'm set.

But that is paper....that doesn't have scarcity or limited number of them , so it's not true value like bitcoin...

It’s buying bad loans. You hope to get more than what you payed for it.