It was around $800 10 hours ago, expected to go down to $200~$300 soon... all other coins are affected aswell... LTC, NMC and PPC has dropped aswell... everyone's sellingrtp wroteindeed its 600 now.Hybrid wroteChina banned the banks from dealing with bitcoins..... here comes the huge fall....
Bitcoin in Lebanon
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/secondmarket-ceo-wall-street-put-203000747.html
To the moon?
I'm heading over to Lebanon in January and would love to meetup and get a discussion going with the local community. Things to talk about include: where Bitcoin is at today in Lebanon, what are plans in the near term, opportunities to grow adoption in Lebanon and the ME region, and anything else you come up with.
Anyone on here are interested in getting a good conversation started?
Also, can you think of other avenues where we should spread the word? It would be great to get a diverse set of people from various places.
(Feel free to suggest other days, I'm pretty flexible between Dec 27-30 and Jan 2-5)
What I did is move to other cyrto currencies; then exchange them for bitcoin. I experimented mining litecoin, but the difficulty is rising quickly. It is scrypt based, so high end AMD Radeon cards should be able to give decent hashrate (the 280X has the best hashrate/price ratio). Though even with 4 of these cards (can make around 3000KH/s), mining litecoin isn't getting profitable much (especially after litecoin's drop in price, was 30$ 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!
As MrClass said,Nemesis-301 wroteguys, 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?
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.
what do you think?
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.
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@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.
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.
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.
I think you're too hasty calling it broken. But it's true that it's currently highly volatile.hussam wroteThe concept of bitcoins and any non native currency is fundamentally broken. There is no cap to how high a bitcoin can be worth.
Can you explain this, please?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.
I always wondered if it's possible to pay using fractions of bitcoins. What's the granularity exactly? Can I pay 2.5 bitcoins?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 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.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.
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.
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.Therefore, to keep its value, a bitcoin needs to remain a 'virtual asset' that can be traded for only certain online items.
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..rahmu wroteI think you're too hasty calling it broken. But it's true that it's currently highly volatile.hussam wroteThe concept of bitcoins and any non native currency is fundamentally broken. There is no cap to how high a bitcoin can be worth.
Can you explain this, please?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.
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.
Oh ok. I see. thank you for explaining that :)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.
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Yep you can easily,rahmu wrote I always wondered if it's possible to pay using fractions of bitcoins. What's the granularity exactly? Can I pay 2.5 bitcoins?
Big Fraction Numbers (example 0.019699) are very common in the bitcoin and litecoin world lately.