How the Internet Archive is having a great time with Bitcoin | Hacker News Reader

How the Internet Archive is having a great time with Bitcoin

blog.archive.org

120 pointsrtra54 comments

I have so much respect for the internet archive. To me the internet archive represents an entity that really understands the "Internet" and aligns closely with a lot of the ideals of free speech and information access.

Plus the wayback machine is super cool!

Wayback machine has to be the best thing created online. Its not just about the nostalgia it about the growth and keeping all necessary information always available.

I really like how they quickly and smoothly accepted bitcoins. They truly listen and understand the Internet.

I'm more interested in mining them. Is it too late to start jumping on the BTC train ? Do you need special processors? Last I remember, you could still mine Bitcoins using GPUs.

You can use GPUs, but you will have much better luck using an ASIC.

You can still mine with AMD GPUs but the difficulty has been rising fast due to the release of ASICs.

For example, right now a Radeon HD 7970 will earn you about 1.4 BTC per month.

ASICs are not for sale anywhere. You can preorder from butterfly labs but there is no indication when they will ship.

Why not an FPGA?

They did do FPGA, many of the companies selling FPGA boards to mine have ceased operations because interest has dropped off since ASICS are where it is at now.

/facepalm

The advantage to FPGAs is that they can be designed rapidly. ASICs are cheaper to manufacture and usually run faster.

FPGAs are the same speed as GPUs but cost more, so they're only better if you're paying a lot for power.

Actually, if you were serious about mining, FPGAs might still be a good choice. They are approximately as efficient as current ASICS, just much slower. Plus they will have resale value.

I don't see why decent ASICs will ever be for sale. It'll be more profitable to run them than to sell them so the manufacturers will keep them.

Because you need a large capital investment to get an ASIC made. taking pre-orders and selling some is one way to get that cash.

Besides the crowdfunding argument, it may be possible to sell an ASIC miner for more BTC than it will ever generate during its lifetime.

Yea that's what I'm saying. It wouldn't be worth it unless you have really cheap or free electricity. If you're considering buying ASICs you should be very careful.

In theory, miners will have a better estimate of BTC future values than the manufacture.

In practice, miners might even be a little generous in their estimates (because they are self-selecting).

And more importantly, the risk is reduced. If BTC tanks, the manufacturer will have already cashed out. If BTC goes up, the manufacture will have lost some potential profits, but will still have made a decent amount.

ASICs were for sale from Avalon http://launch.avalon-asics.com/ but they only took orders for a <1000 in 3 batches that sold out very quickly and are going for 20k + on eBay. Butterfly labs has been promising a lot for a long time but there is no evidence yet that they will actually deliver anything. They have taken a lot of pre-orders though. There is a third company that lets you buy shares and is running ASICs but doesn't sell them. I can't remember the name at the moment.

'ASICminer' is the third company.

During their first week of operation they paid out 3860 BTC (~$480,000) spread over 163,964 shares. [1]

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99497.msg1568242#msg...

CPU Mining is possible but not profitable.

GPU mining is the traditional and the best way.

The thing is, if you have a very bad GPU you might not make any profit. The electrial costs are going to be a pain in that case.

If you have a fairly decent GPU, you can still mine and shine but expect a really low profit. If you aren't worried about the electrial costs ( as GPU is running 100% 24/7 ) then you could mine very well.

If you really want to know how much exactly you could mine

Use a manual calucaltor - https://tpbitcalc.appspot.com/

Run a Miner http://bitminter.com/ ( Run the pool's miner for few minutes, it would calcuate an estimate for you )

GPU mining is on the way out thanks the imminent proliferation of ASICs.

I've heard it's more profitable to mine Litecoin then convert to BTC at this point.

ASICs are yet to penetrate well, thanks to the delays. Till then GPUs would still work. Mine out till you can.

Here is the thing, after BTC's success many such online digital currency came into existence.

As soon as BTC gets enough traction, there would be some regulation to handle the growing digital currencies. There are chances that not every such currecny would grow like BTC did. So putting time in mining should be well calculated. If you think LTC would grow then go for it, but if not then no point putting time and money in mining for it. Better mine, earn, sell off and move on.

Okay, fine. How do I buy some bitcoin?

Is bitinstant still cool?

edit1: Okay, MT Gox seems to be having some server problems, but things are going...slowly.

edit2: Mt Gox really wants my driver's license? This seems...not to be something that is a good idea. Should I really give them my driver's license?

If you're just getting started, I wrote a book for you. You can buy it and get some bitcoins back, too.

http://www.bitcoinbeginner.com

If you (or anyone else) would like a free copy of the book, email me: john@bitcoinbeginner.com

MtGox requires a fair bit of verification, but they've also been around pretty much the longest, and have already had to deal with all the security issues that other bitcoin sites are only beginning to discover. I trust them.

(That is to say, I trust them long enough to do the exchange, and then I transfer the bitcoins to my private offline wallet as soon as possible. And you should too.)

Did you give them your license, though? That seems to trip every single "identity theft" alarm I have.

So you want to open a bank account but you don't want to identify yourself?

Are they regulated as though they are a bank?

Yes, AML (anti money laundering) and KYC (know your customer).

Is that all?

Not in the slightest. Look up what MtGox actually means.

If you're in US try Coinbase.com. If in Europe, you could try Bitstamp.net, but you need to set-up a SEPA account at your local bank. Then use that to buy from Bitstamp.

In UK without using your bank account details:

1. Go to Co-op and buy some UCash for cash 2. Exchange UCash to Bitcoins at https://btc-e.com/

#bitcoin-otc on freenode. You can buy BTC with cash deposits at banks or with dwolla.

MtGox will take weeks to actually get working.

If you want some bitcoins to play with and you are in San Francisco, then just come by the Internet Archive and use our bitcoin converter box (honor based ATM). If you are not in SF, then please set these up in hacker spaces. It is fun, and currently it is going up so it is even profitable.

Uh, who cares?

I wonder how much pressure IA feels to convert its donated bitcoin holdings to cash, given the run-up in exchange rates that has happened recently. Does IA prefer to support Bitcoin as if it were, as its proponents suggest, a real currency with sticking power for the long-term future? Or is there more real and permanent good to be had from converting that money to dollars to support the Archive's excellent programs today?

Clearly the latter must trump the former at some price. I think that price may be well below the $/BTC exchange rate today.

IA is using bitcoin to support its programs, by paying its staff (in part) in bitcoin. In other words, the institution is getting the services it needs in return for bitcoin.

The recent run-up is nothing.

The price will be $300/BTC by next week and $3000/BTC by next year.

I need to start recording bold predictions like this in some sort of journal.

EDIT: I meant in general, not just for bitcoin.

Don't! It will take more space than the entire blockchain!

The better ones could be added to an extension I was thinking of for the newsreader I still need to write. Basically it would take your karma on HN, and then pick a random (important) event that happened on the year that your karma currently corresponds to. (Years would be common era.)

I was thinking after the current year I could start using stuff like that one XKCD comic that predicts the future based on stupid stuff people google search for.[0]

[0]: https://xkcd.com/887/

EDIT: Oh yeah, I forgot to say what it did with the event. It just displays it somewhere on screen, like in the top corner or something.

Make sure you record the people a few weeks ago shorting it. And the ones a few months ago.

Want me to write a browser extension that submits such quotes to the Internet Archive in their WARC format? :)

I'm not really sure what the internet archive would do with them. It'd make more sense from their perspective to just save the whole page.

Does the IA even support such functionality? I thought they only took WARC dumps from outsiders in special cases of big batches.

http://www.predictionbook.com

http://longbets.org/

The week just started and the price is already double what it was this time last week. It only has to go up 50% more before the end of the week.

Looks like my first prediction wasn't such a long shot, eh?

The Internet Archive is holding on to the bitcoins to keep the currency experiment going. I bought $1,000 worth of coins so I could make the bitcoin converter box at the Internet Archive and be able to give my friends 0.10 BTC when they got an address so they would ahve something to play with. the sushi place might cash in their BTC's into our converter box (honor based ATM), but maybe not. For me, the key to make a currency is to have it trade around before getting redeemed. We are in this for real.

Are the employees being paid in fixed Bitcoin amounts, or amounts relative to a USD-based (or other local currency) salary?

Nobody would be brave enough to pay (or work for) fixed bitcoin amounts right now.

My guess, is that they just split the donations.

I don't think they are paying the complete salary in BTCs. A part of their salary is paid in BTCs ( from the donations they received ).

That value definitely would be calculated based on the present value.

we paid in $-equiv: the Internet Archive calculated the price of bitcoins on April 1 and use that (rounded down to $100/btc). seemed fair.

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