# Bitcoin Woes



## Venusian Broon (Jan 12, 2021)

This popped up in the Guardian and....well, doesn't the universe sometimes trip you up with big comedy clown shoes:









						Programmer has two guesses left to access £175m bitcoin wallet
					

Stefan Thomas is not the first person to forget a password, but memory lapses are rarely so potentially costly




					www.theguardian.com
				




7,002 bitcoin on that harddrive so about 240 million dollars on paper. But this also reminded me of the Welsh guy who managed to throw away his harddrive with over 7,500 Bitcoin on it - now residing in a large municipal tip somewhere in Newport. 









						Man offers council £7.4 million to dig in its tip for his lost Bitcoin
					

"How can they leave $100m in the ground when making cuts to services?"




					www.walesonline.co.uk


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## Foxbat (Mar 1, 2021)

To be honest, (try as I might) I just can’t get my head around all this bitcoin mining malarky. It does not compute in my brain. But this might be of interest to some. I’d never considered the sheer amount of energy it takes to produce something like this.








						How Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble
					

Could the cryptocurrency's huge electricity consumption also sink it?



					www.bbc.co.uk


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## HareBrain (Mar 1, 2021)

Foxbat said:


> I’d never considered the sheer amount of energy it takes to produce something like this.



Nor me until a few months ago. The scale of human stupidity on display is astounding. All that energy, to do what, exactly?


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## Ursa major (Mar 1, 2021)

Foxbat said:


> It does not compute in my brain.


The reason for this is obvious: for your brain to do blockchain processing, you have to be a blockhead (and you obviously aren't).


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## Don (Mar 2, 2021)

In too many cases it's far easier for retail investors to purchase financial product than sell it.









						Bitcoin holders barred from depositing profits in UK banks
					

Bitcoin has surged to record highs this week but anyone who wants to take profits might struggle to cash in their gains.Some banks will not accept transfers fro




					www.thetimes.co.uk


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## .matthew. (Mar 2, 2021)

The value of them comes from the same place as the value for anything. Scarcity. Each additional Bitcoin mined takes more computing power than the last on an exponential curve. While increases in computing capability will push the number higher, it's not possible for an infinite amount to exist, therefore, rare.

It makes about as much sense as anything in a capitalist market... meaning, not much


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## AE35Unit (Mar 2, 2021)

I thought Bitcoin died a death years ago


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## CupofJoe (Mar 2, 2021)

There is a lot of interesting and useful technology behind it and it may find a long term use [I think Trading Banks use something similar for unencryptable communications ] but as far as I see it now its the Tulip Mania gone digital. At least at the end of that you had the chance of a pretty flower.


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## BigBadBob141 (Mar 5, 2021)

What's a bitcoin???
Tried reading about this on Wikipedia but all I got was gobbledygook techno jargon!
Could anybody out there please explain in hopefully plain english.


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## Venusian Broon (Mar 5, 2021)

BigBadBob141 said:


> What's a bitcoin???
> Tried reading about this on Wikipedia but all I got was gobbledygook techno jargon!
> Could anybody out there please explain in hopefully plain english.


It's a digital currency designed to work without a central bank or authority controlling it. 

Think of it like foreign money. You could buy some with your dollars and then spend it on something - in places that accept it etc. 

However it behaves more like Gold at the moment, with massive swings in value. A lot of people into bitcoin, I believe, are mostly trying to buy into it as an investment, hoping that they can later sell it at a higher price. So that makes it a totally sh*t currency.


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## Ed Lake (Mar 5, 2021)

BigBadBob141 said:


> What's a bitcoin???
> Tried reading about this on Wikipedia but all I got was gobbledygook techno jargon!
> Could anybody out there please explain in hopefully plain english.



As I understand it, it's a way of transferring money without leaving any record.  It was created for buying things on the "Dark Web," like porn.  You put money into a bitcoin machine and you get a receipt.  That receipt has a code that you can give to someone else who can turn that code back into money.   There are books on the subject.  I got "Mastering Bitcoin" from my library, but I never got around to reading it.


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## Venusian Broon (Mar 5, 2021)

Ed Lake said:


> As I understand it, it's a way of transferring money without leaving any record.  It was created for buying things on the "Dark Web," like porn.  You put money into a bitcoin machine and you get a receipt.  That receipt has a code that you can give to someone else who can turn that code back into money.   There are books on the subject.  I got "Mastering Bitcoin" from my library, but I never got around to reading it.



No, you can technically follow the 'path' of each transaction via the blockchain that is part of how it works. But let's not go down that rabbit hole. 

And no it wasn't created for the 'Dark Web' or porn, it was a high concept computer science project that, like Frankenstein's monster hit with electricity, came to life when the technology was able to make it possible. It was seen as an alternative to Fiat currency which is controlled by governments and 'the establishment'.  

However it was quickly taken up by those that saw that it and the systems that sprang up to make it viable, could be used to launder dirty money -  although to be fair there are plenty of traditional methods of doing this in the world's financial system.


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## Ursa major (Mar 5, 2021)

Venusian Broon said:


> However it behaves more like Gold at the moment


There's no "at the moment" involved, and that's because it *is* like gold in the sense that it's a resource (just not a physical one) and there's a finite amount of it.

And, just like other finite resource that is mined (or "mined") or pumped, getting every last bit of it (pun intended) uses ever more effort (represented by time taken and computing power/electricity used).


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## Foxbat (Mar 6, 2021)

As I understand it, you have to 'mine' (which takes energy) but after you've gone through the process, you might end up with nothing because there's still the guessing of a random number involved (I don't understand this or even know this, I just read it in an article recently). 

I think the biggest difference with gold is that, in a cryptocurrency's case, there's nothing actually there. At least if gold became worthless, I would still have a physical amount present in the real world and, if I wanted, could build myself a gold sarcophogus. You can't do that with bitcoins


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## Foxbat (Mar 6, 2021)

As a supplement to my previous post, I think this was the article I was looking at....








						How Does Bitcoin Mining Work?
					

Bitcoin mining is how new bitcoins enter into circulation. It's also a critical component of the security of the blockchain ledger.




					www.investopedia.com


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## Dave (Mar 6, 2021)

Venusian Broon said:


> It's a digital currency designed to work without a central bank or authority controlling it.





			
				The Times UK said:
			
		

> *Bitcoin holders barred from depositing profits in UK banks*
> HSBC will not process cryptocurrency payments


These two statements (while undoubtedly true) seem mutually exclusive and quite possibly indicates the problem.


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## Vladd67 (Mar 6, 2021)

BigBadBob141 said:


> What's a bitcoin???
> Tried reading about this on Wikipedia but all I got was gobbledygook techno jargon!
> Could anybody out there please explain in hopefully plain english.











						Guide: What is Bitcoin and how does it work? - CBBC Newsround
					

The value of Bitcoin is hitting new heights at the moment - but what is Bitcoin and how does it work?




					www.bbc.co.uk
				



Perhaps the guy in the original article should have checked something like this out.


			Physical Bitcoin — Coming Soon
		

I seem to remember reading a couple of years back of a vending machine in Dubai that dispensed physical Bitcoins, but then their vending machines are known for being upmarket.





						Gold Vending Machine Dubai
					

The following tables shows the latest Gold Vending Machine Dubai and updated regularly. Gold price today in Gold Vending Machine Dubai per ounce and gram of different karats.



					www.brrcc.org


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## mosaix (Mar 6, 2021)

The comparison to gold is valid in the sense that people are buying them in the hope that their value will increase - gambling.


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## AlexH (Mar 6, 2021)

A short clip that marries Napalm Death's "You Suffer" with the volatility of bitcoin (contains strong language):


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## Vince W (Mar 6, 2021)

AlexH said:


> A short clip that marries Napalm Death's "You Suffer" with the volatility of bitcoin (contains strong language):


You had me at Napalm Death.


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## Matteo (Mar 6, 2021)

Vladd67 said:


> I seem to remember reading a couple of years back of a vending machine in Dubai that dispensed physical Bitcoins, but then their vending machines are known for being upmarket.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Just other day - and god knows why - but up came a You Tube video of a guy playing a coin pusher arcade game - and that pushed out some physical bitcoins.

We had a guy who worked in our office a couple of years back who resigned and moved back to the US (southern California I think) and it was rumoured that he had bought into bitcoins some years back - hence being able to resign in his early forties...


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## Vladd67 (Mar 6, 2021)

Matteo said:


> Just other day - and god knows why - but up came a You Tube video of a guy playing a coin pusher arcade game - and that pushed out some physical bitcoins.
> 
> We had a guy who worked in our office a couple of years back who resigned and moved back to the US (southern California I think) and it was rumoured that he had bought into bitcoins some years back - hence being able to resign in his early forties...


I saw the other day about a woman who divorced her husband years ago, part of her complaint was he spent too much on Bitcoins this was when a Bitcoin was $200, today they cost $48,493.75


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## .matthew. (Mar 6, 2021)

Vladd67 said:


> I saw the other day about a woman who divorced her husband years ago, part of her complaint was he spent too much on Bitcoins this was when a Bitcoin was $200, today they cost $48,493.75


I hope he got to keep the coins in the divorce settlement...

I bought a very small amount very late to the party, but it increased in value tenfold. It goes higher and falls back down quite often but it does keep rising. I think it's also the single largest return on investment in human history, even more than those damn tulips


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## Vladd67 (Mar 6, 2021)

Of course, any mention of Bitcoin has to mention this.








						Bitcoin Pizza Day: Celebrating the $80 Million Pizza Order
					

Bitcoin Pizza Day: the day Laszlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoins.




					www.investopedia.com


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## Wayne Mack (Mar 12, 2021)

Here is an unexpected angle - BitCoin's negative affect on the environment: Bitcoin's price is skyrocketing — so is its carbon footprint


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## Ursa major (Mar 12, 2021)

It isn't really unexpected.

Indeed it's a feature (for some values of feature): mining cryptocurrences is _very_ processor intensive and becomes ever more so as time goes by, as unmined units of currency (in this case, bitcoins) become ever rarer and require more "effort" to mine.


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## Mon0Zer0 (Jul 23, 2021)

A friend of mine had quite a few bitcoin that she mined from way back when it was starting. She kept them on a hardrive. When bitcoin was at its peak she suddenly remembered them - but cannot for the life of her find the hard drive! 

I've never bought any, personally. I have about 500 dogecoin which I bought for the lulz to gift on reddit, but I don't really know how to convert it back into real money!


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