Bitcoin & Bitcoin Mining

[Smiling Buddha]

When I first mentioned LTC in this thread they were going for $4 USD. Now about $37 USD.

I was going to buy some off a mate but the price has gone too high for me now.

Ridiculous price growth though. Anybody who says this isn't a bubble is a fruitcake.

i didn't realise until today and tallying them all up that i have about 2k in total.

You mean you have 2000 BTC or $2000 worth of BTC?

 

[The Passenger]

You mean you have 2000 BTC or $2000 worth of BTC?

~$2.5k US of bitcoins, litecoins and peercoins. 1.1 BTC, 19 LTC, 251 PPC.

If i had 2k BTC you guys would have known a long time ago about it.

litecoins were $30 US when I arrived at work this morning and now at $37. Who the **** knows what is going on.

 

[Nothing]

Perhaps we should be selling TulipCoins.

 

[Norwegian Blue]

Perhaps we should be selling TulipCoins.

That's pretty much what this bitcoin craze is. What I find most amusing is that there are people out there who think they're trading a currency. Idjits.

 

[Smiling Buddha]

When I first mentioned LTC in this thread they were going for $4 USD. Now about $37 USD.

I was going to buy some off a mate but the price has gone too high for me now.

Ridiculous price growth though. Anybody who says this isn't a bubble is a fruitcake.

Well I changed my mind about buying in after this post. I thought, 'If I was willing to chuck in a few hunge at $5 and never expect to see the money back, why not at $40?'. I still believe the whole thing will crash, but if I am going to waste my time watching this rollercoaster, I might as well be on it.

So I teed up a mate who had been offering to offload some LTC and bought $300 worth @ $45AUD/LTC.

In the short time since, they have risen to ~$47USD on a cyclical but upwards trend - one so melodic that it is genuinely suspicious imo.

I never expect to see that $300 again and if I don't, I'm glad it went to my mate because he has far more to lose if this whole thing crashes than I do.

If LTC gets to $1000 within two years (which I give 1/50 chance), I'm throwing a party and everybody at bigfooty is invited.

 

[Rustin Cohle]

I'll buy some peercoins for the lulz.

 

[The Passenger]

If LTC gets to $1000 within two years (which I give 1/50 chance), I'm throwing a party and everybody at bigfooty is invited.

You and me both. Going to tee up localbitcoins today and put in another $300 US and that will be it. $800 US invested all up which I am willing to lose completely. Todays $300 will be spread $150 to Litecoins and $150 to Peercoins. I'm just gonna stick with the 1 bitcoin I have.

Just looking at the Vircurex charts and Litecoins got as high 0.055 bitcoins (which would have been the near $60 you mentioned) overnight then dropped suddenly. Nothing like cryptocurrency panic.

At current Vircurex rates (I use half way between Ask and Selling price) BTC is $924 US, LTC is $38.13 US, PPC is $3.44 US. So right now I have 1.182 BTC ($1,092 US), 19.69 LTC ($750 US), 251 PPC ($863 US) totalling $2705 US.

I am starting to plan an exit strategy though. Part 1 will be once my overall portfolio reaches 10 x starting investment, so ~$8k I'll cash out a quarter which locks in a tidy profit. At current rate it will be reaching that $8k mark within a couple of weeks. Surely not sustainable?

Then I haven't thought much beyond that but it's a start. Maybe just every time the portfolio reaches $10k I'll just cash out $2.5k and bring it back down to $7.5k and just run on that cycle for however long it lasts? If it crashes and it drops down to $5k just cash the whole thing out and call it a day? Or if it crashes buy back in when BTC $250, LTC $5, PPC $0.50 ? Maybe it will never crash ?

If it never reaches the 10x mark and it falls to shit before then, well so be it.

 

[Freak Dodgeball Accident]

The Passenger, I just sent you a PM.

 

[LiZ4RD]

Ouch

http://www.news.com.au/money/money-...rtune-in-britain/story-e6frfmd9-1226770932955

 

[The Passenger]

would be one of the worst feelings in the world.

 

[The Passenger]

And my final cryptocurrency investing is done (for now).

Spent 300 AUD today (roughly 270 US), so overall spend is $770 US. (I have found it easier to calculate this in USD). Picked up another 3 LTC and 59 PPC.

I may move these between BTC, LTC and PPC or even other currencies but won't be putting in more $ in until some way down the future.

Using localbitcoins to determine the value of BTC/USD as that who I will be cashing out with. Currently that is about $1360 AU or $1236 US. I would love to know why the price on Vircurex is still only $900 US.

Totals:
1.06272245 BTC @ 1236 US = $1313
22.68454 LTC @ 45.6 US (1236 x 0.03689) = $1035
310 PPC @ 4.97 US (1236 x 0.004021) = $1541

Total: $3889 US

The question is can I resist the trigger finger and not pull out before this reaches $8000. At that point I'm gonna cash out $200 and lock in some profit.

Sorry won't keep boring people with these figures, but this thread is the only place I have this all written down so it's been a good place to keep track.

 

[True__Believer]

Bitcoins just hit an all time high of $1242US. Surely it can't keep going? I got in at $825US which i thought might have been a tad expensive, however maybe it wasnt.

 

[Smiling Buddha]

The Passenger

I hope you keep this thread updated as time goes on. I for one am hoping you make millions.

 

[Smiling Buddha]

Interesting chart. 1 oz gold vs 1 BTC.

btw I've started the thread for the Inaugural Bigfooty Cryptocurrency Challenge.

 

[The Passenger]

I hope you keep this thread updated as time goes on. I for one am hoping you make millions.

haha you and me both. millions is probably stretching it but then who knows? they've already defied all expectation so far. at some point there is going to have to be some sort of correction but not really possible to know when.

will the whole cryptocurrency thing be a fad or do they have legs? I definitely think it has legs, but given how much power governments and financial institutions hold they won't just let CC's take over without a significant fight.

The one thing with technology though is that typically its the third or fourth generation of an idea that really takes off. Think file sharing (napsters -> Kazaa -> Limewire -> Bittorrents) and Social Media (Myspace -> Bebo -> Facebook)...

In terms of CCs I wouldn't consider Peercoins or Litecoins a new generation. They are virtually identical to bitcoin. If you download the main peercoin client they haven't even removed the references to bitcoin. Of the major CCs peercoin is the most removed from bitcoin with its proof of stake concept (as opposed to bitcoins proof of work) and a couple of things, but I would still consider everything right now as the first generation of this idea. Who knows what will come next but expect to see a new concept emerge in the next 12 to 24 months I reckon.

 

[The Passenger]

Pretty much all the cyrpto's have taken hits in the last day or so. Pretty much the first they have taken since the very first days after the silk road bust.

http://coinmarketcap.com/ (thanks to Smiling Buddha for this site. So much easier than using other sites)

When I went to bed my coins were worth about $4,200 US and when I got into work about $3,500.

 

[Smiling Buddha]

The major CCs are down about 20% but Quark is up 300% in the last 24 hours.

Meanwhile the major forums for BTC and LTC are both down and have been since yesterday.

Something very fishy going on... so in other words its just another day in the CC market.

 

[tandino]

Can you short it?

 

[RU486]

Prices are down because any other illegal marketplace (sheep) has taken off with $42 million worth of customer/vendor bitcoins.

 

[The Passenger]

Prices are down because any other illegal marketplace (sheep) has taken off with $42 million worth of customer/vendor bitcoins.

good pickup. the lack of trust that these illegal marketplaces will now garner thanks to the last six weeks will probably help CCs long term. short term pain, but making people look at alternative means to CCs will be a good thing for them.

prices have more or less recovered now to yesterdays level.

the guy that ran sheep marketplace better hope he had good security practices in place because there will be a lot of people with some seriously good technical skills chasing after him. he may end up wishing he had suffered ross ulbrights fate.

 

[katana]

check out the sheep subreddit.

dudes have been tracking his btc tumbling, wonder how long before the guy will try to cash out? and whether LE have any charge?

This is even more interesting than when SR went down.

 

[The Passenger]

katana the most interesting thing of that is that a couple of guys have been able to follow his tumbling through the blockchain. It would certainly help them that it's such a large amount being moved around. There are going to be some seriously pissed off people and depending on the userbase that Sheep Marketplace attracted (remembering it only takes one nutter not have lost a big chunk of money), and whether these guys decide to actually release his information if they find out who it is, he may have preferred getting taken down by the FBI.

Smiling Buddha were are u storing your litecoins? I am moving all my coins to Encrypted USB Storage and out of any online exchanges in light of some of the recent security concerns some of them have suffered. The official peercoin client is great, and downloads the blockchain fast so I can use that no problem. The bitcoin and litecoin clients have massive blockchains now and take an age to download and process. Bitcoin is fine because you can use multibit as a client which doesn't need to do a full blockchain download, so I can use that. But there doesn't seem to be any equivalent for Litecoin so the download and syncing process looks like it's gonna take about a day to a day and a half.

 

[True__Believer]

check out the sheep subreddit.

dudes have been tracking his btc tumbling, wonder how long before the guy will try to cash out? and whether LE have any charge?

This is even more interesting than when SR went down.

I think this guy should be more worried about his vendors finding him. The product he was selling on that site wasn't exactly soft drugs. There will be a few asian, russian and columbian dudes very interested in finding him.

 

[Smiling Buddha]

Smiling Buddha were are u storing your litecoins? I am moving all my coins to Encrypted USB Storage and out of any online exchanges in light of some of the recent security concerns some of them have suffered. The official peercoin client is great, and downloads the blockchain fast so I can use that no problem. The bitcoin and litecoin clients have massive blockchains now and take an age to download and process. Bitcoin is fine because you can use multibit as a client which doesn't need to do a full blockchain download, so I can use that. But there doesn't seem to be any equivalent for Litecoin so the download and syncing process looks like it's gonna take about a day to a day and a half.

I use the Bitcoin-Qt and Litecoin-Qt clients as my storage. Not the fanciest way to do it but, for pissant punters like me, I actually think this is the smartest way to go. My logic is that the more security steps you put in place, the more chance that you will fail to recover the coins yourself at some point in the future.

I use the 'encrypt wallet' option offered by the clients. The passphrase I chose is over 20 characters long and even though I think I should be able to remember it, I have *cryptically* stored the passphrase somewhere I should always have access to it. I am supposed to backup my wallet.dat files to a secure usb (after encrypting said wallet.dat with TrueCrypt) but haven't gotten around to that part yet (I know, I know).

I should also point out that I dusted off an old netbook I had lying around for the specific purpose of running the clients. I wiped it, reloaded Windows, got rid of the bloatware (took hours all up), then installed the clients. I grabbed the blockchains off a mate to save having to download them, and now have that computer running in a spare room 24/7 acting as a node for the network.

A guy I know who has hundreds of bitcoins is planning to do a cold storage with engraved metal so that 'even if his house burns down, he won't lose the coins'. I guess if I had six figures worth of CC I'd probably go that far, too. For my $300 (now <$250 ) worth of coins, I am happy to just use the Qt clients for now.

 

[The Passenger]

I should also point out that I dusted off an old netbook I had lying around for the specific purpose of running the clients. I wiped it, reloaded Windows, got rid of the bloatware (took hours all up), then installed the clients. I grabbed the blockchains off a mate to save having to download them, and now have that computer running in a spare room 24/7 acting as a node for the network.

A guy I know who has hundreds of bitcoins is planning to do a cold storage with engraved metal so that 'even if his house burns down, he won't lose the coins'. I guess if I had six figures worth of CC I'd probably go that far, too. For my $300 (now <$250 ) worth of coins, I am happy to just use the Qt clients for now.

yep this is the part that is taking ages. hopefully this litecoin https://litecoin.info/Bootstrap.dat bootstrap does the job and then I can move all my litecoins out of vircurex as well. it's actually got me off my ass tonight, as i've been meaning to backup and encrypt a whole lot of other development work i've done. finally all done after being somewhat half assed about it for a couple of months.

as for your mate, a better option than an engraved metal, is to password protected his wallet.dat file (assume that's done) then encrypt it either using truecrypt or pgp; the latter is my preferred, but i haven't tried it yet. can't guarantee it would work but i don't see any reason why it wouldn't. once you've done that you can save copies to multiple USB's and external hard drives and not worry about losing them all. I run two laptops and three external drives for backups of my data, and each now has a copy of my peercoin and bitcoin wallets. sort this litecoin bootstrap tomorrow and hopefully that will then follow.

if you're looking for something a little more lightweight for bitcoins, rather than using the bitcoin-qt, you can download multibit. syncs to the network much much quicker than bitcoin-qt, but you can't mine using it. there is no equivalent for litecoin.