On 13 Feb 2014 at 11:34am Dickie wrote:
Just out of interest, are there many people in Lewes that have started investing or mining in Bitcoin or other altcoins such as Litecoin or Dogecoin?
This is mainly just out of interest as most people I talk to have no clue as to what cryptocurrencies are apart from what they hear/read in the media.
FAQ for Bitcoin linked below:
Check it out here »
On 13 Feb 2014 at 11:57am Forum user wrote:
I bought a bunch of bitcoins at £15 each for use on Silk Road a year or so ago. I used most up but have five or six left. Last week I could have sold them for nearly £600 each, this week they are worth less then £320. I am hoping that Mt Gox sorts our the security issue and they rise in price again... otherwise i might just spend them all on Silk Road 2 or Black Market Reloaded.
One of the oddest experiences I've had was buying some bitcoins from a woman I met in the carpark of an industrial state near Heathfield and banging our phones together to transfer 1 bitcoin from the wallet to mine. We originally contacted each other through www.localbitcoins.com.
I've not considered mining them.
On 13 Feb 2014 at 12:39pm Xplorer1 wrote:
Perhaps Bitcoin will be what an independent Scotland ends up using.......
On 13 Feb 2014 at 1:23pm Dickie wrote:
@Forumuser
Yeh, the transaction malleability bug is currently being worked on by the Bitcoin dev team. MtGox basically screwed up big time and blamed the BTC protocol, when in fact MtGox had actually implemented badly written code on their end.
I'd hold on to whatever BTC you currently have and just wait for the price to go back up again.
Purchasing wise, there are a lot of places now accepting Bitcoin/Litecoin/Dogecoin and some other alt's like Quarkcoin both online and in the high street. I can see this trend growing more and more this year as more retailers embrace the fast transaction speeds and the tiny transaction fees that are sometimes required, compared to using fiat via conventional payments.
Wallet wise, I have a Bitcoin, Litecoin and Dogecoin walet on my device (only contains as much as I think I may need) for purchases I can make when out and about. I know that a pub up in London now accepts Dogecoin for transactions. NFC enabled devices will benefit from this due to the ease of paying using their altcoin wallet of choice.
Mining wise, I only have one HD 7870 running @ -I 17 overnight giving me approx 280 Kh/s, but that is still enough to mine approx 1,200 Dogecoins a day. Thinking about building a rig specifically for mining sometime in the near future, if and when I can afford to.
On 13 Feb 2014 at 1:46pm Forum user wrote:
Quarkcoins: Super name.
About £4 of Dogecoins a day then! :-)
Thanks for the explanation about Mt Gox. That makes sense. Coincidentally I've just received an alert from my BitCoin Paranoid app saying they'll not deal with Mt Gox anymore. Seems that Mt Gox are not favourite at the moment.
I have no doubt at all that cryptocurrencies have a big future. They are far too convenient not to have. And the facts that transactions are (currently) outside of state control and can include full ledger information makes them very attractive.
My problem is lack of a UK BitCoin exchange. It's hard to buy and sell them effectively in the UK, hence my use of the expensive localbitcoins.com. I'd like to buy some more now for instance (before Mt Gox re-opens properly) but the pain and expense of buying them puts me off (I've opened a Barclays Sharedealing account instead.. seems pretty much the same thing but lacking ability to buy quality drugs!).
On 13 Feb 2014 at 2:23pm Dickie wrote:
I know that the amount of Doge I mine isn't a huge amount, but she's running whilst I am at work, plus I can have it running without it lagging out my PC whilst I'm using it for watching movies on one screen and surfing on the other.
Buying wise, I have always just bought BTC over at BitBargain (the sellers charge approx £40 over the actual average price of BTC which is to be expected, albeit annoying) and then transferred straight to my desktop wallet. From there if I want to trade for other alt's I send some BTC to my online wallet over at BTER and exchange for either Doge or Litecoin. Transaction fees at BTER are 0.2% which isn't bad. I'm hoping that there will be some better ways for people to purchase BTC soon online.
You can buy BTC in Lewes though now. There are 8 places currently selling BTC using ZipZap, although I haven't used any of them yet, so can't tell you what the prices are like. ZipZap now have 28,000 UK locations in which to buy BTC, so with more competition, the prices should hopefully get better.
Quarkcoin is something that I have only just started to look at, but it seems like a very secure coin and has the fastest transaction speed of all.
Best places for talking about many of the various alt's out there is over at reddit. All of the main coins have a sub reddit over there.
On 13 Feb 2014 at 3:22pm Dickie wrote:
"I haven't used Reddit for a very long time. I'll have another look at that too."
There are some incredibly well informed people over there who will help you in all things BTC or whatever. I'd also checkout the Dogecoin community there as they are arguably the best altcoin community on reddit, and have made huge wave PR wise for the coin, which is why the value of it continues to grow.
"I'm sort of vaguely surprised you use a local wallet (although assume you have multiple and offsite backups in place). I have my wallet at blockchain.info and only transfer to my phone wallet for local transfers. I think the idea that you can print out your Bitcoins and hold it on paper as a QR code is just plain funny!"
Yep, I have many encrypted backups in place for my wallet.dat info. Paper wallets though are something that I also have stored safely and something people should really have, especially if they are long term investors. My main one being for Armory (great secure wallet for BTC). That way should the worst happen and my house burns down/ computer is stolen or I die, them either friends or family can easily access any coins that were stored in the paper wallet. I use both my Bitcoin-Qt wallet and Armory wallet for storing BTC. I backup after every transaction and both are encrypted. Of course that won't necessarily protect you against a virus specifically written to steal BTC from local wallets, but as long as you have decent security in place, you should be OK.
I have heard about online wallets being compromised from hackers in the past, which is why I have always avoided storing coins in them for longer than necessary.
Side note, I run Malwarebytes Pro and MSE on my machine. I also have full-disk encryption using Truecrypt, and use AxCrypt for encrypting files/folders I store in the cloud.
"Thanks for the info. Very useful. I did not know of ZipZap and will have a closer look at BitBargain (but £40 equates to a 10% charge which is pretty extortionate)."
Agreed, especially as the average price (according to PREEV, which I'll add a link for) is currently at £388.40 GBP for BTC and BitBargain are asking £430. If I find a better way, I'll post back in the future.
Check it out here »
On 13 Feb 2014 at 3:22pm Forum user wrote:
Thanks for the info. Very useful. £40 at BitBargain equates to a 10% charge, a bit much. I tried ZipZap but it seems only open to the US. How do you manage to use it in the UK?
I'm sort of vaguely surprised you use a local wallet (although assume you have multiple and offsite backups in place). I have my wallet at blockchain.info and only transfer to my phone wallet for local transfers. I think the idea that you can print out your Bitcoins and hold it on paper as a QR code is just plain funny!
I haven't used Reddit for a very long time. I've just had a look around and unearthed this rather worrying post about Mt Gox.
Check it out here »
On 13 Feb 2014 at 7:19pm Major Tom wrote:
What planet is this?
On 13 Feb 2014 at 8:01pm Ben Nevis wrote:
Noo- it'll be yon Groat that we be using when we are free of Sassenach control. Best buy your groats and check your passport is up to date if you are thinking of visiting us. When we have to fund the third Forth bridge ourselves, and Rosyth and Faslane naval bases are shut, all thaat's left is tourism and our economy will be in deep haggis s***.
Och aye!
On 13 Feb 2014 at 9:49pm Forum user wrote:
Someone has just transferred 0.0000001 of a bitcoin to my wallet. Why would anyone do that?
On 14 Feb 2014 at 11:31am Dickie wrote:
@ForumUser
Look at the address that the BTC came from, does it have, "1Enjoy" or "1Sochi" at the beginning? There are thousands of these payments being made to people around the world at the moment and it was first noticed last week and seems to be targeted at people who store their coins on their online wallets over at Blockchain.info (not the actual Blockchain) Some other people have also started to notice that Gambling sites are also beginning to send tiny payments out to people. It seems to be spam on the network as the payments won't actually confirm.
Here is a discussion regarding this over at the official Bitcoin Forums:-
Check it out here »
On 14 Feb 2014 at 12:33pm Forum user wrote:
It was sent to my wallet at blockchain.info and you are right on the money... the address is:
1Enjoy1C4bYBr3tN4sMKxvvJDqG8NkdR4Z
Thanks.
On 14 Feb 2014 at 1:44pm ducatipete wrote:
Bloody hell! I must live on another planet how do you find out about this stuff?
On 14 Feb 2014 at 5:59pm Zebedee wrote:
Google Bitcoin?
On 14 Feb 2014 at 8:55pm Border Control wrote:
Oh well, you've all be robbed !! Great Bitcoin Raid ! Inside job, you'll never know ! Hehe
Check it out here »
On 15 Feb 2014 at 9:27am Zzz.. wrote:
People who left money in Silk Road 2 have been robbed. These are mainly the drug dealers who have to leave a deposit/bond with the site to be able to sell drugs through it.