A question to Dai:
What did you expect to get from Bitcoin in the first place? Why did you start mining, and why does the fact it's quite difficult to get bitcoins by mining make it not worth your time to bother with the currency at all? It sounds like you saw a way to get free money and now that you're told that's not how it works, you lost interest. Is that the case?
To be honest I expected it to do what it said on the tin. Give up some computer power and get rewarded for it. Well after doing this for 3 months and I'm on my computer a lot 8/10 hours a day but, after 3 months nothing. Now my computer is not a low powered computer nor is it a high powered one about middle so after doing this for a quarter of a year that's the time scale we are talking, nothing. So bitcoin seems to be having a hard time living up to it's basic premise. Now there are other ways of generating bitcoins but, I've not looked into them but, here is the rub it would seem you have to use real money to buy bit coins to start trading in them, sort of defeats the object of bitcoins as an alternative currency (bit like buying shopping vouchers). This is what the FAQ states would take a year on average to generate 50 coins with a typical PC well after 3 months not a sausage and I have a typical pc. So this rings us back to trading. It would seem you (or a group of people) have to buy the bitcoins with real money to generate enough of them for the community to be able to trade as a community. We are back to the shopping voucher principal.
Question for you guys where do the bitcoins exchanges get there bitcoins from?
I understand your disappointment Dai--I'm afraid that earning bitcoins through computing power is not really the main point of the system. It
is something that people have the opportunity to do, but that task (called "mining") has become quite competitive and technical, using specialised hardware to produce the greatest possible amount of security to the network at the lowest price--which was how that part of things was always designed to work so that it keeps bitcoins safe for us all.
Mainly, bitcoins are about earning, spending, and transferring money the same way you would any other type of cash: only faster, cheaper, and more securely. Bitcoins also maintain your saved value because there are a limited number that will ever exist and no one has the power to issue more. Another advantage is that there's no central authority to break down or make bad decisions--the math is the only thing in charge and it's been very carefully worked out. I understand if you thought that bitcoins were going to be something else, but it truly is an amazing, beautifully designed system. One day it may replace Paypal, Western Union, and more! Don't be afraid to leave bitcoin to the rest of us for now if you don't have a use for it yet. As we all work on growing and building the bitcoin economy, we hope to make it the most effective way to do money digitally. When it is, I'm sure you'll be back!