7 ms·

> It's clear I'm not going to make my fortune off manual mining, and I haven't even included the cost of all the paper and pencils I'll need. He's not taking i

> It's clear I'm not going to make my fortune off manual mining, and I haven't even included the cost of all the paper and pencils I'll need. He's not taking into account price inflation over the long term. If BTC ever cracks a million USD, he'll really regret not squeezing every last bit of hashrate he can now.

ritinkar 9y ago
If BTC cracks 1 million won't that mean there's 2.1 trillion dollars worth of USD BTC in circulation in addition to all the other currencies?
- tomerico 9y ago
  21 trillions, or about 3 times the value of all gold mined in the world.
  - vinceguidry 9y ago
    And around the market size of the S&P 500.
- m3kw9 9y ago
  If bitcoin price is derived from the bid ask, most of the worlds money would have to be parked in bitcoin, does that even make sense?
  - jjeaff 9y ago
    "parked"? No, since no real money or asset is held to back up bitcoin. It could go to $100 million tomorrow based on a few transactions, but that wouldn't be indicative of what anyone else will be able to get for it.
    - celticninja 9y ago
      Now that is just wrong. If the price went to $100m tomorrow it is because people are buying and selling bitcoin for that price.
      - astrodust 9y ago
        All it takes is a single trade at a $100M valuation and, for that nanosecond, that's the value of Bitcoin.
        celticninja 9y ago
        Yes but no one really considers that to be the market price.
        jjeaff 9y ago
        Yes, the exchanges would, at least until a bunch more lower transactions took place.
  - vinceguidry 9y ago
    Money supplies are constantly inflating, every financial instrument can be looked at as a form of money, and quite a few of them are actually considered to be money, such as treasuries and traveler's cheques. According to Wikipedia, the broadest measure of money supply currently in use was 10.5 trillion, in 2013. That cryptocurrencies are not currently considered to be money by the world economic order, it goes into a much broader range of financial assets like stocks and bonds. The S&P 500 market size reached 19.6 trillion USD in 2016 Bitcoin has a lot of room to grow before it even comes close to playing in that league. Everybody on HN should be buying crypto right now, the upside is that huge.
  - john_moscow 9y ago
    Except it isn't parked in any way. The money goes from the hands of the optimistic buyers into the hands of those who decided to cash out just now. The only asset "backing" Bitcoin is the people willing to buy it.
    - fjsolwmv 9y ago
      It's weird to complain that because btc is backed by no set, it it not really worth it's process in USD, which is also backed by no asset. USD is backed by "the full faith and credit of the US government". BTC is backed by the Internet and meme magic.
- jjeaff 9y ago
  Only in the most theoretical sense. Since there is no underlying asset, you are going to run out of buyers real fast at that amount.
  - vinceguidry 9y ago
    If the market can't clear, the price will drop until it does. Saying bitcoin has reached a certain price carries with it the implication that the market is clearing at the price, i.e. that people are indeed buying. Million-USD transactions already occur in BTC all the time.
    - __alias 9y ago
      There's a VR webapp that was shared recently that shows live btc transactions. Just thought i'd share that for the 10 minutes I watched it the other day I saw numerous 10M+ transactions
      - jjeaff 9y ago
        Those are transfers, not necessarily transactions. No one probably traded 10m in bitcoin for USD. If an exchange transfers btc from one wallet to another for holding, it will show up on the transactions list.
    - glenneroo 9y ago
      To support your argument, according to this[0] the largest recent transaction about 3 hours ago was almost 25 million USD. 5 other transactions also exceeded 1 million USD in the last hour or so. [0]: https://blockchain.info/largest-recent-transactions https://blockchain.info/largest-recent-transactions
      - jjeaff 9y ago
        I could be wrong, but I read somewhere that almost all of those large transactions are inter or intra exchange movements simply moving money around into different wallets. Also, they only indicate a transfer, it seems very unlikely that anyone has cashed out $25m all at once with bitcoin.
- rabidrat 9y ago
  I have 1 BTC but I lost the wallet. So that's one less BTC in circulation. (Literally, it is impossible for that BTC to circulate).
  - kelnos 9y ago
    I'm in the same boat. CPU-mined somewhere between 1.5 and 2 BTC back in 2010 or 2011, and lost the wallet years ago. I wonder how much BTC has been lost to similar mistakes, but I guess there's no way to know or even estimate, right?
    - NightlyDev 9y ago
      I managed to loose ~53 BTC too. I'm pretty sure a large percentage of bitcoin is gone forever. https://www.google.no/amp/amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2017/11/25/lost-bitcoins https://www.google.no/amp/amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2017/11/25...
riazrizvi 9y ago
Hmm. If you can mine 15 trillion hashes per second you are likely to find one bitcoin after 486 days (derived from numbers on this site www.cryptocompare.com). The human rate of hashing is .67 hashes per day. Based on a price of $1 million for one bitcoin, that would translate to a break even salary of one million-billionth of a penny per hour. Probably be hard to find good people at that rate.
- coralreef 9y ago
  China might be a good place to setup shop?
  - vm 9y ago
    Ignoring the racism baked into that comment, smart people in China probably have more job opportunities than ever, with greater opportunity for wealth creation. China has one of the hottest tech industries in the world: Tencent and Alibaba each have market caps above $450B USD, and Baidu, JD, and NetEase are all in the $50-80B range. All these companies are rapidly growing. Not to mention the booming startup ecosystem across the country.
    - monochromatic 9y ago
      Labor is cheap in China. It’s not racism to make factually accurate observations.
      - Alterlife 9y ago
        > factually accurate observations ... in this case, it's a sarcastic quip based on an exaggerated truth.
      - asteli 9y ago
        the inferred reference you're missing is the 'all asians are good at math' stereotype.
        9y ago
beardog 9y ago
It would be way more effective to work a minimum wage job and buy some Bitcoin with that money.
autokad 9y ago
I was thinking of mining ethereum. there was a 250$ video card that could mine 500$ worth of ethereum per year. I thought wow thats profitable, but I did some more research. the same card could mine 1500$ worth 2 months ago, and ethereum was 30% cheaper. that would have been a losing deal to get into, and it assumed the machine was mining 24/7 without issue. I tried mining with my existing card, but it spent a substantial amount of time building the DAG, and it really wasnt worth turning my PC into a space heater. between more people mining and hashes getting harder, the price of the coin is not as much of a factor in whether its worth mining.
Dylan16807 9y ago
Remember, a hash that takes much longer than 10 minutes is worth absolutely nothing. You don't get a coin, and you can't participate in a pool.
- astrodust 9y ago
  What if you had a time machine and a lot of paper and pencils?
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    Go back a few years and trade a ream of paper for the 10k pizza bitcoins.
    - tehlike 9y ago
      Heck, even pay the guy 100$ and say you are taking a huge risk here.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

ritinkar 9y ago

If BTC cracks 1 million won't that mean there's 2.1 trillion dollars worth of USD BTC in circulation in addition to all the other currencies?

tomerico 9y ago
21 trillions, or about 3 times the value of all gold mined in the world.
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  And around the market size of the S&P 500.
m3kw9 9y ago
If bitcoin price is derived from the bid ask, most of the worlds money would have to be parked in bitcoin, does that even make sense?
- jjeaff 9y ago
  "parked"? No, since no real money or asset is held to back up bitcoin. It could go to $100 million tomorrow based on a few transactions, but that wouldn't be indicative of what anyone else will be able to get for it.
  - celticninja 9y ago
    Now that is just wrong. If the price went to $100m tomorrow it is because people are buying and selling bitcoin for that price.
    - astrodust 9y ago
      All it takes is a single trade at a $100M valuation and, for that nanosecond, that's the value of Bitcoin.
      - celticninja 9y ago
        Yes but no one really considers that to be the market price.
        jjeaff 9y ago
        Yes, the exchanges would, at least until a bunch more lower transactions took place.
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  Money supplies are constantly inflating, every financial instrument can be looked at as a form of money, and quite a few of them are actually considered to be money, such as treasuries and traveler's cheques. According to Wikipedia, the broadest measure of money supply currently in use was 10.5 trillion, in 2013. That cryptocurrencies are not currently considered to be money by the world economic order, it goes into a much broader range of financial assets like stocks and bonds. The S&P 500 market size reached 19.6 trillion USD in 2016 Bitcoin has a lot of room to grow before it even comes close to playing in that league. Everybody on HN should be buying crypto right now, the upside is that huge.
- john_moscow 9y ago
  Except it isn't parked in any way. The money goes from the hands of the optimistic buyers into the hands of those who decided to cash out just now. The only asset "backing" Bitcoin is the people willing to buy it.
  - fjsolwmv 9y ago
    It's weird to complain that because btc is backed by no set, it it not really worth it's process in USD, which is also backed by no asset. USD is backed by "the full faith and credit of the US government". BTC is backed by the Internet and meme magic.
jjeaff 9y ago
Only in the most theoretical sense. Since there is no underlying asset, you are going to run out of buyers real fast at that amount.
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  If the market can't clear, the price will drop until it does. Saying bitcoin has reached a certain price carries with it the implication that the market is clearing at the price, i.e. that people are indeed buying. Million-USD transactions already occur in BTC all the time.
  - __alias 9y ago
    There's a VR webapp that was shared recently that shows live btc transactions. Just thought i'd share that for the 10 minutes I watched it the other day I saw numerous 10M+ transactions
    - jjeaff 9y ago
      Those are transfers, not necessarily transactions. No one probably traded 10m in bitcoin for USD. If an exchange transfers btc from one wallet to another for holding, it will show up on the transactions list.
  - glenneroo 9y ago
    To support your argument, according to this[0] the largest recent transaction about 3 hours ago was almost 25 million USD. 5 other transactions also exceeded 1 million USD in the last hour or so. [0]: https://blockchain.info/largest-recent-transactions https://blockchain.info/largest-recent-transactions
    - jjeaff 9y ago
      I could be wrong, but I read somewhere that almost all of those large transactions are inter or intra exchange movements simply moving money around into different wallets. Also, they only indicate a transfer, it seems very unlikely that anyone has cashed out $25m all at once with bitcoin.
rabidrat 9y ago
I have 1 BTC but I lost the wallet. So that's one less BTC in circulation. (Literally, it is impossible for that BTC to circulate).
- kelnos 9y ago
  I'm in the same boat. CPU-mined somewhere between 1.5 and 2 BTC back in 2010 or 2011, and lost the wallet years ago. I wonder how much BTC has been lost to similar mistakes, but I guess there's no way to know or even estimate, right?
  - NightlyDev 9y ago
    I managed to loose ~53 BTC too. I'm pretty sure a large percentage of bitcoin is gone forever. https://www.google.no/amp/amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2017/11/25/lost-bitcoins https://www.google.no/amp/amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2017/11/25...

riazrizvi 9y ago

Hmm. If you can mine 15 trillion hashes per second you are likely to find one bitcoin after 486 days (derived from numbers on this site www.cryptocompare.com). The human rate of hashing is .67 hashes per day. Based on a price of $1 million for one bitcoin, that would translate to a break even salary of one million-billionth of a penny per hour. Probably be hard to find good people at that rate.

coralreef 9y ago
China might be a good place to setup shop?
- vm 9y ago
  Ignoring the racism baked into that comment, smart people in China probably have more job opportunities than ever, with greater opportunity for wealth creation. China has one of the hottest tech industries in the world: Tencent and Alibaba each have market caps above $450B USD, and Baidu, JD, and NetEase are all in the $50-80B range. All these companies are rapidly growing. Not to mention the booming startup ecosystem across the country.
  - monochromatic 9y ago
    Labor is cheap in China. It’s not racism to make factually accurate observations.
    - Alterlife 9y ago
      > factually accurate observations ... in this case, it's a sarcastic quip based on an exaggerated truth.
    - asteli 9y ago
      the inferred reference you're missing is the 'all asians are good at math' stereotype.
      - 9y ago

beardog 9y ago

It would be way more effective to work a minimum wage job and buy some Bitcoin with that money.

autokad 9y ago

I was thinking of mining ethereum. there was a 250$ video card that could mine 500$ worth of ethereum per year. I thought wow thats profitable, but I did some more research. the same card could mine 1500$ worth 2 months ago, and ethereum was 30% cheaper. that would have been a losing deal to get into, and it assumed the machine was mining 24/7 without issue. I tried mining with my existing card, but it spent a substantial amount of time building the DAG, and it really wasnt worth turning my PC into a space heater. between more people mining and hashes getting harder, the price of the coin is not as much of a factor in whether its worth mining.

Dylan16807 9y ago

Remember, a hash that takes much longer than 10 minutes is worth absolutely nothing. You don't get a coin, and you can't participate in a pool.

astrodust 9y ago
What if you had a time machine and a lot of paper and pencils?
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  Go back a few years and trade a ream of paper for the 10k pizza bitcoins.
  - tehlike 9y ago
    Heck, even pay the guy 100$ and say you are taking a huge risk here.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]