Bitcoin mining

[eek]

One of the biggest Bitcoin exchanges, MtGox, has folded its tents and crept silently away: BBC News - Top Bitcoin exchange MtGox goes offline

It was originally named "Magic the Gathering Online eXchange" and existed for some kind of trading to do with the game MtG

Those of you who enjoy a bit of schadenfreude should get over the the "How much have you lost?" thread on Reddit - some people are looking at virtual losses in the millions of dollars: Gox horror story thread - How much did you lose? : Bitcoin

But there's still some optimism among the website developers:

Fill yer boots!

Supposedly the closer is due to a undiscovered theft of a few coins.... 744,000 of them or roughly $350m even at today's price.

 

[NickFitz]

Supposedly the closer is due to a undiscovered theft of a few coins.... 744,000 of them or roughly $350m even at today's price.

Coincidentally, here's a Bitcoin Address that has received 782,558.7249885 BTC up to a couple of days ago, and currently has a balance of 0: https://blockchain.info/address/1Drt3c8pSdrkyjuBiwVcSSixZwQtMZ3Tew

 

[northernladuk]

Coincidentally, here's a Bitcoin Address that has received 782,558.7249885 BTC up to a couple of days ago, and currently has a balance of 0: https://blockchain.info/address/1Drt3c8pSdrkyjuBiwVcSSixZwQtMZ3Tew

And drilling down the larger transactions they are also emtpy as well

 

[cojak]

As if people hadn't wised up last time... http://forums.contractoruk.com/general/94695-more-bitcoin-plundering.html

There's one born every minute.

 

[SunnyInHades]

So what exactly does bitcoin mining entail?

All the software to do mining already exists for free..

1) Install an unlimited, ultra fast Internet connection
2) Install then start free bitcoin wallet software on your computer
3) Install then start free bitcoin mining software on your computer
4) Configure the mining software - specify the wallet and mining details (it's possible to choose and join a mining syndicate)
5) Wait for untold riches ! - as the bitcoins are 'mined' (calculated from a constant incoming Internet data stream) they'll appear in your wallet as virtual currency which can be used 'like PayPal'

No need to worry about the mining algorithms, blockchains etc - the software will do it all for you !

Problem is step 4) ... on a standard pc it could take months, years?, never? to mine a single bitcoin now as standard hardware is just too slow to compete with the custom hardware established miners are using.

A little industry has grown up selling custom 'ASIC based' mining hardware .. e.g. https://products.butterflylabs.com/

"In the American gold rush the people who got rich weren't those digging for gold but the ones selling the spades"

For most, speculating on bitcoins with real cash could make (or lose) money much faster.

 

[NickFitz]

Here's MtGox's owner Mark Karpeles's GitHub account, specifically, his Bitcoin Lib. Note the comment at the top:

"quick'n'dirty bitcoin signing lib because too lazy to reimplement ECDSA in pure PHP"​

 

[MicrosoftBob]

More annoyingly it's also pushing up the price of high end GPUs for gaming