Cryptocurrencies(Bitcoin, Litecoin, etc)
 

What does everyone think about the new phenomenon that is cryptocurrencies? I think it is amazing, and potentially the future of currency, and and at the very least an extremely convenient method of purchasing and selling goods online.

Bitcoin, for example, is decentralized, has extremely low transaction fees(flat fee), highly secure, and anonymous. Paying with a credit card exposes you to risk of credit card fraud as anyone with your credit card number needed for payment can steal it, however with bitcoin you have a private key that is next to impossible to reverse engineer, so you're practically safe. Credit cards also have large transaction fees, which means by purchasing goods with bitcoin you can save. The fact that it is decentralized, meaning no one controls it, helps prevent it from being abused by governments, and it's also impossible to counterfeit.

Many places have begun to accept bitcoin. There are a lot of small businesses that accept it, and many major corporations are considering it. For Gyft allows you to purchase gift cards for many major stores like target and a lot of restaurants at a 3% discount when you pay with bitcoin. I haven't used it, but I hear it works great.

I've been mining litecoin and making ~$5 a day worth of it, and trading it for bitcoin. Just leaving my computer on I'm earning a large amount of currency since I have a nice Radeon 7870 GPU. Saved up like $60 worth so far in the past week, it's awesome. Hoping the value continues to rise like it has been, hoping to get rich off of it xD

The only reason I'd use bitcoin is to buy **** on SR. The hassle to get everything set up with bitcoin and the fact that I'd only use it for illegal items has led me to not even bother with it.

SR got shut down by the fbi, lol.

It's really not that hard to use either.

2.0 is up...not that I'd use it...plus there's other ones.
Meh, I don't really have much use for bitcoins outside of that, and I'm too chicken to do it anyway.

Bitcoin's not that new. I was hovering around the HackForums Bitcoin industry for a bit (ha), but I haven't made much out of it.

I remember I heard about it originally like a year ago because Anonymous accepts it for donations.

What's the best way to mine litecoins and could it damage your computer? I'm thinking about trying litecoin mining on my laptop.

Mining on a laptop isn't a very good idea. Laptops aren't designed to handle intensive computing, and they won't make much. Mining litecoin on your laptop will likely produce a ton of heat, and could shorten the lifespan of it. It also won't be very fast since laptops don't have powerful video cards, so you will likely end up spending more money on electricity than you earn in litecoin. You might be able to mine on low intensity for fun and make a little litecoin without damaging it, but you won't profit.

Mining coins with a good amd video card is highly profitable at the time. You need to keep a close eye on the temperature, to ensure the card does not get too hot. It may shorten the lifespan of the card if it gets too hot. If is reaching too high of a temperature, try making sure your computer has good airflow. If it does and you're still getting too hot,(anything above 90 degrees celcius is bad for the card long term, try to stay below 85 if you can, below 80 is best, the lower the better) then try downloading a program to make your gpu fan run faster.

What do you mean by 'mining'?

So fundamentally, bitcoin mining is similar to gralats. You have to purchase software and hardware to earn a virtual currency.

I believe that bitcoins are a good idea. It has a strange way of being earned, but it is neutral, to countries and individuals, but is a safe, secure, easy way to buy things online.

The reason you mine is because you help process transactions and make the network more secure. As a result you are rewarded with the currency if you or your pool find a block. That's how the initial bitcoins are created-the money has to start somewhere.

Just get some ASIC miners, plug them in, then forget about them. In a year you might have a bitcoin.

Isn't 1 bit coin worth like $1000

Was more than that a few days ago