[hackerspaces] bitcoin

[Niall Kearney]

There's a large main reason why individual people aren't generating bitcoins
any more. The difficulty of generating them is determined by how much
computing power is being thrown at the network, once you reach a certin
point the dificulty get recalculated and if coins are being mined too fast
the difficulty is being raised. Better info then I can provide is available
in the white papers posted earlier.

The first milestone in rasing the difficulty was the pools, people have made
groups where you can throw some computing power at generating bitcoins but
in a group, all the power goes to discovering one block and when that block
is discovered the 50 found are distrubited to everyone that has contributed
in an even manner (the more you contribute the more you get)

The second is CUDA and GPU mining. People with several GPU cards running in
paralell have supreme mining machines.

Combine both and you have groups finding multiple blocks a day and the
difficulty shoots through the roof when it's recalculated.

ATM bitcoin mining pools are the best way to get a bit of the bitcoin action
instead of changing real money in to bitcoins but don't expect much from
them if your only going to use cpu's to mine, using 4 lower powered PC's I
now have 1.08 bitcoins to my name after 2 weeks.r

The groups might disperse in time as the difficulty goes up and up but
considering the stubborness of some people I'd say only more GPU power will
be thrown at mining.

On 29 May 2011 14:57, Yves Quemener <quemener.yves at free.fr> wrote:

> I have a similar experience : I generated 50 bitcoins a month ago or two
> and none since. But that is not a problem, mining is just a way to
> bootstrap the system now we need to use it as a transaction tool if we want
> it to have any use.
>
> > What still puzzles me, wtf can i do with bitcoins??
>
> You can pay me to develop software. (I'm a freelance developer) I'll
> exchange a part of these bitcoins for cash (unless I find a way to buy
> local food with BTC) and I'll use another part for similar dematerialized
> work. I have occasional needs for 3D or 2D models from CG artists, if I
> find one that accept BTCs, I'll be happy to bypass the transaction fees of
> banking systems.
>
> I really see BTC as a banking framework for the people who work in the
> "cyberspace". It may be a cheesy term but it really describes a virtual
> space where hundreds of millions of people interact without concern for
> physical borders. But only non-financial interactions have been authorized
> so far : discussion, OSS development, chit-chat. "Serious" things like
> contract making or monetary transactions still rely on national legal
> frameworks.
>
> The legal framework for international collaboration is close to inexistent.
> Non-profit OSS is the only one that a small number of persons spread over
> several countries can use to collaborate. In order to have a structure that
> manages money, you need to have a legal team per country involved. No
> wonder we are still in the prehistory of the global village.
>
> I see bitcoin as a way to change that by bypassing many national barriers.
> Tomorrow, if I want to team up with a US developer, and one of our Japanese
> clients uses bitcoins, we can collaborate without the need to go through an
> obsolete bureaucracy and banking system sharks. We can get paid by day (or
> by hours) we can do a quick payment to the German OSS dev that gave us a
> hand by correcting a small bug. It is also possible to design systems that
> rely on micropayments. Note that this is not a way to evade tax : selling
> bitcoins have to be declared as a revenue, but it is a way to evade
> ridiculous transaction fees that banks apply on international transactions
> and that have really no justification.
>
>
> > And also, it seems that if you haven't generated bitcoins months ago,
> you're
> > pretty much doomed. Unless you invest thousands of euro's in GPU's, which
> I'm
> > not really prepared to do :) I hear people saying they have machines
> crunching
> > away for weeks and haven't found a single bitcoin. Anyway, i'll read up
> on the
> > matter, because so far i've only heard things and have no clue what it is
> all
> > about :)
>
> Mining is now the hardest way to earn bitcoins. The quick fortunes were
> already made. Now is the true test for bitcoin : will people start to
> exchange them and trade goods and service for these ? I'll surely try, so
> if you know someone who needs a computer vision and augmented reality
> specialist or a CG artist that accept BTC payments, don't hesitate to
> contact me :-)
>
>
> Iv
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