LebGeeks

MrClass

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

Mining bitcoin on graphic cards is not efficient anymore. You need ASICs that have hashrates of hundreds of GH/s and above to mine fractions of a bitcoin; you wouldn't break even in a month or even a year. I did my study of mining crytocurrency; purchasing an ASIC miner today will ship and reach you in 4 months. At that time, the difficulty would be so high that your miner renders useless. Forget about mining bitcoin.

What I did is move to other cyrto currencies; then exchange them for bitcoin. I experimented mining litecoin, but the difficulty is rising quickly. It is scrypt based, so high end AMD Radeon cards should be able to give decent hashrate (the 280X has the best hashrate/price ratio). Though even with 4 of these cards (can make around 3000KH/s), mining litecoin isn't getting profitable much (especially after litecoin's drop in price, was 30$ now 17$).

Thanks to cysto, I moved to Dogecoin (another cyrtocurrency). Dogecoin's difficulty level is still low, so mining it is pretty acceptable. I'm mining it with a total power of 490KH/s and have mined 14000 of it so far. According to http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency, mining Dogecoin is profitable. At a mining hashrate of 3000KH/s (for example), it takes only 16 days to mine enough Dogecoin to make a bitcoin (versus 30 days with litecoin).

Consider moving on with mining Dogecoin; it is your best chance in making profit. Hope you have a decent AMD radeon card; happy mining!

Hybrid

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

guys, I am new to mining, if you could help me out a bit that would be great! I am using gui miner, and mining slush's pool...I have been mining for almost an hour with a ~75Mhashes/s (55 with my primary vga, and 25 with my secondary vga) and I still haven't gotten a single hash accepted or stale...what am I doing wrong? or is this normal?

As MrClass said,

Mining bitcion or any sha-256 coin with GPU is useless, ASICs will always be ahead of you

Use your GPU to mine scrypt coins, like litecoin, dogecoin, worldcoin, luckycoin, diamond coin, etc... then trade them for bitcoin, you will make much more profit.

If you want to use your cpu, there are coins for CPU like primecoin or protoshare, just mine them and then trade them for bitcoin.

Nemesis-301

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

thanks for the info guys, am gonna give dogecoin a try.... much thanks! wow! :)

samer

Admin

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

Dave pointed out to me that the Lebanese central bank issued a warning related to Bitcoin and digital currencies on December 19th. Here's the official announcement in Arabic, and an English article on Coindesk.

DaveAchkar

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

Notice the discrepancy: they first remind that electronic money is illegal, then proceed to warn about Bitcoin (rather than outright ban it), they even refer to both differently: النقود الاكترونية vs النقود الافتراضية which is odd.

what do you think?

samer

Admin

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

@Dave: I think they are being cautious. They don't fully understand crypto–currencies and what they entail. A warning would allow them to easily go back on their decision, whereas a ban is probably harder to revert. What is curious though is that they are differentiating between "electronic money" and "virtual money", two terms that mean the exact same thing. I believe they should have used
عملة لا مركزية (decentralized currency) instead.

reppinhighz

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

Guys, not to burst your bubble but its looking hopeless. major central banks around the world are banning it or cautioning against it. The major problem is being able to exchange bitcoin for actual money not to mention the rising difficulty and the fact that its quickly becoming illegal.
If i were you and im speaking from a financial background and someone who is always up to date with money flow around the world, i would advise everyone to just drop the whole thing and move on. its future is bleak.

reppinhighz

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

@Dave: I think they are being cautious. They don't fully understand crypto–currencies and what they entail. A warning would allow them to easily go back on their decision, whereas a ban is probably harder to revert. What is curious though is that they are differentiating between "electronic money" and "virtual money", two terms that mean the exact same thing. I believe they should have used
عملة لا مركزية (decentralized currency) instead.

no they are not the same thing. electronic money is actual money moving around. debit cards credit cards, wires etc.... while virtual currency is something that in its simplest definition is not physical or a real mean of exchange as it is not backed by anything (gold, economy etc...)

also there is no such thing as decentralized currency since currencies are basically all decentralized in terms of trading and flow/exchange. The only way they are centralized is the fact that they are issued by a country and printed.

DaveAchkar

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

I agree that virtual money and electronic money are different, however electronic money is not "actual money moving around". It can't be, because it is strictly forbidden since 2000.

As long the central bank doesn't clearly define what they mean by virtual money (which I can't seem to find), Bitcoin is still subject to interpretation e.g., it can be a digital asset, a commodity, a currency, or whatever else. So I wouldn't say this is outright bad, they are just being cautious.

Overall, I don't think it's such a bad thing, the central bank needed to come out with some sort of response to the interest in Bitcoin. They've basically done that by following (it seems almost identically) other major central banks. However, their stance is clearly not definitive (it's only a warning afterall), so I think they're still open to future developments.

hussam

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

The concept of bitcoins and any non native currency is fundamentally broken. There is no cap to how high a bitcoin can be worth.
It acts as a 'digital asset' and not as native currency.
Non native currencies are economically bad. This is because it is easier to buy a bitcoin than earn it or spend it.

Bitcoin is nothing but a geek's/technology enthusiast/new-age toy. It will remain that way because it was allowed to reach insane values. Once the bitcoin crossed 5USD, it was doomed.
There are no smaller pieces of bitcoins. This means it it became mainstream, its value is going to diminish to allow smaller purchases.
For a currency to work, it needs to be able to take over. You can't go to a supermarket and buy half a KG of cheese with bitcoins. You can however buy it with your credit card or cash. People can argue that it is intended to internet purchases. That still doesn't help because internet purchases are often items worth less than a bitcoin. Therefore it is only useful in certain situations such as a university in Cyprus that allows tuition to be paid in bitcoins. Banks discourage currencies that are only useful under certain cases. They only encourage currencies that are useful in all cases and more importantly, only currencies that can be safely invested.

Again, for the sake of the argument let us assume that sometime in the future, the whole world switched to bitcoins instead of their native currencies. We all walk around with some digital wallet devices that hold our bitcoins. What is going to happen if this change occurred? We can compare this to the problem we had in Lebanon over 20 years ago with the dollar. The dollar which was once 3 Lebanese pounds suddenly became 2500LL in 1992 (down to ~1500LL now). The US dollar will suffer the same fate to bitcoins that the Lebanese pound suffered to the dollar. Everyone lost the value of their investments when they bought dollars.
The bitcoin will end up having the same economic value of the current dollar. A bitcoin will buy you two Pepsi cans.

Therefore, to keep its value, a bitcoin needs to remain a 'virtual asset' that can be traded for only certain online items.

Joe

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

The concept of bitcoins and any non native currency is fundamentally broken. There is no cap to how high a bitcoin can be worth.

I think you're too hasty calling it broken. But it's true that it's currently highly volatile.

It acts as a 'digital asset' and not as native currency.
Non native currencies are economically bad. This is because it is easier to buy a bitcoin than earn it or spend it.
Bitcoin is nothing but a geek's/technology enthusiast/new-age toy. It will remain that way because it was allowed to reach insane values. Once the bitcoin crossed 5USD, it was doomed.

Can you explain this, please?

There are no smaller pieces of bitcoins. This means it it became mainstream, its value is going to diminish to allow smaller purchases.
For a currency to work, it needs to be able to take over. You can't go to a supermarket and buy half a KG of cheese with bitcoins. You can however buy it with your credit card or cash. People can argue that it is intended to internet purchases. That still doesn't help because internet purchases are often items worth less than a bitcoin. Therefore it is only useful in certain situations such as a university in Cyprus that allows tuition to be paid in bitcoins. Banks discourage currencies that are only useful under certain cases. They only encourage currencies that are useful in all cases and more importantly, only currencies that can be safely invested.

I always wondered if it's possible to pay using fractions of bitcoins. What's the granularity exactly? Can I pay 2.5 bitcoins?

Again, for the sake of the argument let us assume that sometime in the future, the whole world switched to bitcoins instead of their native currencies. We all walk around with some digital wallet devices that hold our bitcoins. What is going to happen if this change occurred? We can compare this to the problem we had in Lebanon over 20 years ago with the dollar. The dollar which was once 3 Lebanese pounds suddenly became 2500LL in 1992 (down to ~1500LL now). The US dollar will suffer the same fate to bitcoins that the Lebanese pound suffered to the dollar. Everyone lost the value of their investments when they bought dollars.
The bitcoin will end up having the same economic value of the current dollar. A bitcoin will buy you two Pepsi cans.

I disagree. If the whole world is using bitcoins, it doesn't matter that the value of dollars is going down. The prices went insane in Lebanon in 1992, because the goods sold were mainly imported in USD. In the hypothetical situation that everyone accepts bitcoins, no one will care about the value of other currencies; they can safely die.

However, this is an extremely delicate problem: in order for bitcoin to stabilize, it needs universal adoption. But no one is going to adopt it as long as it remains unstable. Chicken and egg problem.

Therefore, to keep its value, a bitcoin needs to remain a 'virtual asset' that can be traded for only certain online items.

I'm not sure I understand the difference you make between 'assets' and 'currencies'. I agree that today, bitcoin doesn't look like a trustworthy currency. But it is so widely adopted that it still has chances to stabilize. The question is not how can we replace current currencies with bitcoins, it's too see how far we can take this experiment.

hussam

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

The concept of bitcoins and any non native currency is fundamentally broken. There is no cap to how high a bitcoin can be worth.

I think you're too hasty calling it broken. But it's true that it's currently highly volatile.

It acts as a 'digital asset' and not as native currency.
Non native currencies are economically bad. This is because it is easier to buy a bitcoin than earn it or spend it.
Bitcoin is nothing but a geek's/technology enthusiast/new-age toy. It will remain that way because it was allowed to reach insane values. Once the bitcoin crossed 5USD, it was doomed.

Can you explain this, please?

I mean its value is not stable and I feel the reason why we are interested in it is only the technology behind it (encryption, etc..). You have wallet files which simulate real life wallets as they can be lost, etc..
The idea behind it and the technical implementation are really attractive.

I would rather call it an asset instead of a currency because right now, the impression I get is that people are looking into ownership of bitcoins and not what they can spend it on.

I disagree. If the whole world is using bitcoins, it doesn't matter that the value of dollars is going down. The prices went insane in Lebanon in 1992, because the goods sold were mainly imported in USD. In the hypothetical situation that everyone accepts bitcoins, no one will care about the value of other currencies; they can safely die.

However, this is an extremely delicate problem: in order for bitcoin to stabilize, it needs universal adoption. But no one is going to adopt it as long as it remains unstable. Chicken and egg problem.

Oh ok. I see. thank you for explaining that :)

Hybrid

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

I always wondered if it's possible to pay using fractions of bitcoins. What's the granularity exactly? Can I pay 2.5 bitcoins?

Yep you can easily,

Big Fraction Numbers (example 0.019699) are very common in the bitcoin and litecoin world lately.

Last edited by Hybrid (January 5 2014)

DaveAchkar

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

However, this is an extremely delicate problem: in order for bitcoin to stabilize, it needs universal adoption. But no one is going to adopt it as long as it remains unstable. Chicken and egg problem.

It doesn't need universal adoption, just an adoption that is significant enough. Today we're talking about a very small fraction of the world population that owns and uses bitcoin. Therefore, if any new country gets excited about Bitcoin (as China did) the influx of new demand is very significant compared to the existing base and destabilizes the currency.

As the base of Bitcoin adopters grow, the impact of new groups of people leaving and entering the networks will decrease and eventually become negligible.

There are no smaller pieces of bitcoins. This means it it became mainstream, its value is going to diminish to allow smaller purchases.

There are in fact up to 8 decimal points to a Bitcoin. Many of which are still not used since they are too small. e.g., 0.00000001 bitcoins is currently worth USD 0.000085.

The shift to a digital currency is not as far-fetched as you make it sound. Today, in North America, hardly anyone still uses cash. We're using credit cards, paypal, and other services like Dwolla, Square, Venmo, etc. Hence, all our money is already very much virtual, it's just checks and balances that get updated in different virtual books (whether Visa or Paypal's books or my bank account).

reppinhighz

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

However, this is an extremely delicate problem: in order for bitcoin to stabilize, it needs universal adoption. But no one is going to adopt it as long as it remains unstable. Chicken and egg problem.

It doesn't need universal adoption, just an adoption that is significant enough. Today we're talking about a very small fraction of the world population that owns and uses bitcoin. Therefore, if any new country gets excited about Bitcoin (as China did) the influx of new demand is very significant compared to the existing base and destabilizes the currency.

As the base of Bitcoin adopters grow, the impact of new groups of people leaving and entering the networks will decrease and eventually become negligible.

There are no smaller pieces of bitcoins. This means it it became mainstream, its value is going to diminish to allow smaller purchases.

There are in fact up to 8 decimal points to a Bitcoin. Many of which are still not used since they are too small. e.g., 0.00000001 bitcoins is currently worth USD 0.000085.

The shift to a digital currency is not as far-fetched as you make it sound. Today, in North America, hardly anyone still uses cash. We're using credit cards, paypal, and other services like Dwolla, Square, Venmo, etc. Hence, all our money is already very much virtual, it's just checks and balances that get updated in different virtual books (whether Visa or Paypal's books or my bank account).

Btw, China banned it and closed many exchanges there so not even the significant adoption you are looking for. Sadly its just a matter of time before others ban it too.
Its true that cash transactions are rare  nowadays but that does not mean we are dealing in virtual currency, We are still dealing with real money through electronic means.
Dealing with a virtual currency is a different beast. Volatile, not backed by anything, already outlawed by certain countries etc... It lost 50% of its value in 1 day several weeks ago its ridiculous.
I have seen years ago around 2004, forms of virtual currency that were quickly banned and eventually disappeared.

Hybrid

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

Taiwan seems to be banning it too soon

On the positive side, Zynga will start accepting bitcoin, and today bitcoin price peaked at $1000
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2084300/ … hases.html

And supposedly wall street is going in soon in couple of months.

Last edited by Hybrid (January 6 2014)

DaveAchkar

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

Btw, China banned it and closed many exchanges there so not even the significant adoption you are looking for. Sadly its just a matter of time before others ban it too.

China did not ban bitcoin, it has not allowed banks or merchants to deal with it. Individuals are still  permitted to do so. BTC China is still the biggest Bitcoin exchange in the world

Dealing with a virtual currency is a different beast. Volatile, not backed by anything, already outlawed by certain countries etc... It lost 50% of its value in 1 day several weeks ago its ridiculous.

Yes it's volatile today, like any new technology it has growing pains. You need to look at the potential bitcoin has in a future state, a state where adoption has grown significantly thus reducing volatility. I'm not saying it's inevitable, I'm saying it is a possibility, and volatility is not an intrinsic problem, just a temporary one.

As for currency backing, this is a very controversial topic, and I don't pretend to know the final answer. But what is the US dollar backed by? Not much other than the US army, if that can be considered a backing. Why is currency-backing required?

Thailand is the only country that has outright banned Bitcoin, every other country that has pronounced itself has issued the equivalent of a warning requesting it's citizens to be cautious.

reppinhighz

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

Btw, China banned it and closed many exchanges there so not even the significant adoption you are looking for. Sadly its just a matter of time before others ban it too.

China did not ban bitcoin, it has not allowed banks or merchants to deal with it. Individuals are still  permitted to do so. BTC China is still the biggest Bitcoin exchange in the world

Dealing with a virtual currency is a different beast. Volatile, not backed by anything, already outlawed by certain countries etc... It lost 50% of its value in 1 day several weeks ago its ridiculous.

Yes it's volatile today, like any new technology it has growing pains. You need to look at the potential bitcoin has in a future state, a state where adoption has grown significantly thus reducing volatility. I'm not saying it's inevitable, I'm saying it is a possibility, and volatility is not an intrinsic problem, just a temporary one.

As for currency backing, this is a very controversial topic, and I don't pretend to know the final answer. But what is the US dollar backed by? Not much other than the US army, if that can be considered a backing. Why is currency-backing required?

Thailand is the only country that has outright banned Bitcoin, every other country that has pronounced itself has issued the equivalent of a warning requesting it's citizens to be cautious.

Def has potential and i cannot say it does not. A real future for it is possible but when major governing bodies are warning against it/outlawing it and banks not allowed to deal with it as well as one of the most difficult aspects of it is not able to transfer it to real cash easily, those reasons alone make it a somehow losing bet. At least this is my opinion.
Also volatility is not at all a temporary problem. I work in the financial markets and i can tell you that volatility is something i experience on a daily basis and has been ongoing since i started watching global markets almost 10 years ago. But i believe i see what you are saying here is that liquid global markets with plenty of volume do not usually move 50% a day. So i guess to rephrase the whole thing, extreme volatility is a temporary problem.

Regarding currency backing well i don't even wanna get into that. But i will tell you that currencies are always backed by something, Otherwise its a whole different ballgame. US army is not a backing for the Dollar. Im pretty sure you realize that is a very geopolitical theory to justify military involvement of the US army.

Its having a rough start so this is why im advising against it. Its not gonna be easy to adopt something like that and treat it like any other currency. Again my opinion. Remember that money laundering could be easily done through bitcoin and you know how tight anti money laundering laws are.

DaveAchkar

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

If you have some good resources to share on the importance of currency backing, I'm interested in learning more about it and why it's important. The US army backing was said half jokingly. What, in fact, is the US dollar really backed by?

reppinhighz

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

You could say the economy, GDP, debt of the US government. A simple definition would be a currency that is accepted as a legal tender for payments/taxes within the country of issuance.
Here's a few links i found interesting for you to read.
Remember that each country is different

http://www.forbes.com/sites/karlwhelan/ … he-dollar/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of … tes_dollar

DaveAchkar

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

ok, thanks.

DaveAchkar

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

It's about time Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies spread to Lebanon and the Middle east. We're obviously still in the early stages, but we gotta start somewhere to spread awareness and knowledge about this new tech.

A bunch of people are working on getting an active Meetup group and Facebook page going in Lebanon, and also outside the small tech communities. And we need all the support we can get.

If you want to join the discussion and help shape things, join us. And, we're also open to suggestions about the best way to grow this community.

Links:
http://www.meetup.com/Bitcoin-Beirut/
https://www.facebook.com/BitcoinLebanon

Jerome

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

It's about time Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies spread to Lebanon and the Middle east. We're obviously still in the early stages, but we gotta start somewhere to spread awareness and knowledge about this new tech.

A bunch of people are working on getting an active Meetup group and Facebook page going in Lebanon, and also outside the small tech communities. And we need all the support we can get.

If you want to join the discussion and help shape things, join us. And, we're also open to suggestions about the best way to grow this community.

Links:
http://www.meetup.com/Bitcoin-Beirut/
https://www.facebook.com/BitcoinLebanon

Good page, liked and will be following

MrClass

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

Sounds great Dave. Thanks for sharing the links. I have one suggestion in mind. Basically alot think that crypto currency is only Bitcoin; but its not. Plenty of digital currencies exist; bitcoin is just the most popular. I would recommend spreading the idea of crypto currency rather than just bitcoin. Other coins such as litecoin and dogecoin deserve the same publicity as bitcoin. And as a dedicated miner of scrypt based currencies, I'm interested to see the mining community in Lebanon. Am I the only dedicated miner in this country? I hope not.

Johnaudi

Member

Re: Bitcoin in Lebanon

A couple years ago, bitcoins were worth less than 10$. Man, I wish I bought some a few years back.