Missing Bitcoin... IT man dumps hard drive worth millions if he can find it

[wylie]

After learning about Bitcoins (I had heard the word used, but had no idea what it was until last week) I heard on the news this morning about a chap who lost millions when he threw his hard drive out. Here is the link

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/27/hard-drive-bitcoin-landfill-site

And another similar story -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25120902

 

[quoll]

Yep, read that, he had 7500 BitCoins in his wallet on that HDD, poor bugga.

 

[dex]

More here...

Some-Fool-Threw-Away-a-Hard-Drive-with-7-5-Million-of-Bitcoin-On-It

Tyler Winklevoss, one half of the duo known in popular culture as the Winklevii, thinks that the cybercurrency Bitcoin may be a better long-term bet than gold.

The hole in bitcoin

This article is interesting

Bitcoin Mining Is Getting Out of Control

The fool who threw away $7.5 million dollars did it when it was much easier to mine them but these guys in HK are taking it to a new level. Some interesting comments below the article with one guy describing how he mines them.

Well, I can't say that it's late to join in on the game. But generally, I had to 'spend a lot initially' and 'wait what seemed like an eternity' to get what I've got now. Currently my rig supports five 10 port USB powered hubs that power 50 ASICMINER Block Erupters (333Mh/s each). ~16.5 GH/s. That at the time cost me $3400 or something, at $70-100 a piece for each usb device. But now a days they are going for $20 or something, so it's a pretty cheap getup if you want to spend the money for it. Now I've also added 3 Butterfly Labs (I had to wait 8+ months of pre-order time to have them finally ship the damn things [cost about $1000]) Jalapeno SC miners, which do about 8 GH/s each, or ~24 GH/s. Overall, my bitcoin hash rate is ~40GH/s. That brings in about ~0.03 bitcoins per day. Or about $25 a day. Then I've also got a lot of other 'mining' operations on other cryptocurrencies. For example, I use my GPUs and Rigs of GPUs to mine things called 'litecoins' which are an offshoot of bitcoins that use the Scrypt algorithm instead of the sha256 algorithm. My overall hash rate for that is about 3MH/s (as Scrypt is about 1000 times slower than sha256), which brings in about $20 a day, as it mines ~2 LTC a day, which, with these uncontrolled exchange prices, I can't really determine if the current price is legit or not ($14+ per LTC).

On top of that, I also use a CPU mining operation to mine XPM or, Primecoin, as well as PTS, or Protoshares. Which allows me to glean even more money from my computers that don't do **** all day. Wewt. Both of those activities are really odd and I can't really give you an accurate guesstimate of what they bring in. But yeah, Mining is a damn big and huge *** thing with lots of little things in it too.

 

[Blacky]

I wish I had some idea about what he just said... but I dont.

 

[westminster]

I wish I had some idea about what he just said... but I dont.

me too. My eyes glazed over at what seemed like amazing amounts of something to earn a bit of a bitcoin

 

[Colin Rice]

Id be happy if I could get "pdf exchange viewer" to work on windows 8.1?

 

[willair]

The 3 photos are the set-up for cooling towers discharges,the mechanical ventilation pipework plant-rooms,and i'm unsure what the control room is or what it controls,, how they make raw $$$$ is anyones guess maybe out of hot or cold thin=air..

 

[westminster]

The 3 photos are the set-up for cooling towers discharges,the mechanical ventilation pipework plant-rooms,and i'm unsure what the control room is or what it controls,, how they make raw $$$$ is anyones guess maybe out of hot or cold thin=air..

If his computing systems to solve the equations need that much cooling he has spent serious coin (bit or not!). I'm not convinced it's worth it with such excessive outlay and ongoing energy requirements but he presumably has a serious setup

 

[handyandy]

If his computing systems to solve the equations need that much cooling he has spent serious coin (bit or not!). I'm not convinced it's worth it with such excessive outlay and ongoing energy requirements but he presumably has a serious setup

Also the function the 'miners' do is to validate the chain and are compensate by being paid in bitcoins. These are created brand new.

There are only so many more million available to be created. A total of 21 million can exist - ever, as this is mathematically based.

So if the miners are an integral part of the bitcoin process how are they going to be compensated ones there are no further bitcoins to be got.

I think possibly a major flaw in the longevity of the process. Unless I am missing something.

Cheers

 

[ZOMG]

I thought about buying bitcoins when they were ~$50/coin but the process was too long. Should've stuck it out...would be in a good place now!!