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Trying to explain bitcoin to parents

Go to solution Solved by SupaKomputa,

I'm not a mining expert but i'll try something very simple.

 

Ask them about how money came from, it's printed from the central bank.

The value of the paper in their hand rely on TRUST, a collective agreement, whereas the intrinsic value is only what the paper and the printing cost.

When the money is stored in a bank it will be converted into account, which will need database in the central bank to store the data.

 

Bitcoin has no centralize authority, rely mostly on the distributed computing, which are small people like you around the globe.

Instead of printing the bills, it prints digital signature in form of digital coins.

Without a centralize computing, it's your job to 'print' those bills which you are getting some compensation for the work.

Just like how a central bank pays the cost of printing the money + the cost of running the servers and everyone that it employs.

 

Ask them this : If a central bank decided to make money printing for everyone, would they do it?

 

They will ask how some digits can have any value. Well the same as people trusting the value of a dollar bills or the record in your bank (digital money).

If everybody suddenly lost trust in the currency it will loose it's value.

Same as bitcoins, it can gain or loose value overtime, just like any other currency.

They don't value bitcoin, because they don't have any trust in it.

Is like someone offering them to exchange some money from uganda for us dollars, would they do it?

 

They still don't get it?  Lets talk about trading money, Talk about FOREX.

You wanna start into forex, you gotta put some money in the table, that later you can decide which currency you want to buy.

Do you hold the currencies while your trading? NO, you hold the data, X amount of Euro, X amount of Pounds etc. All just numbers. Digital numbers.

In bitcoin, you buy the token, the entry for the whole trading, with real money, which then you can cash it out based on the value.

Each token are unique. Only the owner has the key to access those token.

Loose the key / wallet, loose the money (tell them about how a man lost 200m forgotten the password).

 

But what happens if everyone stops the server? All the coins gone?

Well the same as if ever someone  nuke the central bank servers, or all your money got burned, it will be gone. 

But is impossible to nuke all of the bitcoins servers, as they are spreads all over the world in a small basement like yours.

 

BUT WHYYY? why would anyone hold a made up money?

I go on further, but if there's any question they want to ask, i will try my best to answer that question with my limited knowledge.

 

so my parents are sus about bitcoin, wondering why "plugging something into a computer" will get me paid money. Ive sent them to like the nicehash website and how bitcoin works, but they still just dont get it. Ive looked everywhere but cannot find a good reason why to mine bitcoin, (other than the obvious) because they are like if its too good to be true, its too good to be true. Help? I need to try and come up with some info to convince them of bitcoin's legitness and why i get paid bitcoin for lending my gpu power to a pool.

 

**ALSO READ**

pls dont hate me just because i mine bitcoin lol, i just do it when im not gaming. Im kinda poor and so its a way for me to still buy fun things irl ie. rc cars

 

AND i dont torture my gpu i run at a max of 50 degrees celcius

 

i just need legit help and like this is one of the only places in the world that seems to have legit help

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Moved to F@H, BOINC, and Mining.

 

If you're needing to explain it to your parents then I assume they're the ones paying the power bill? How are you planning on compensating them for the power usage, and have you calculated if the profit you would earn is greater than the cost of the power used?

 

3 minutes ago, psmasterrace1332 said:

convince them of bitcoin's legitness and why i get paid bitcoin for lending my gpu power to a pool.

You're planning on mining Bitcoin with a GPU? That probably won't be profitable. ASIC mining is pretty much required for Bitcoin these days. You might be profitable mining another type of cryptocurrency that is resistant to ASIC miners.

CPU: Intel i7 6700k  | Motherboard: Gigabyte Z170x Gaming 5 | RAM: 2x16GB 3000MHz Corsair Vengeance LPX | GPU: Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1080ti | PSU: Corsair RM750x (2018) | Case: BeQuiet SilentBase 800 | Cooler: Arctic Freezer 34 eSports | SSD: Samsung 970 Evo 500GB + Samsung 840 500GB + Crucial MX500 2TB | Monitor: Acer Predator XB271HU + Samsung BX2450

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3 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Moved to F@H, BOINC, and Mining.

 

If you're needing to explain it to your parents then I assume they're the ones paying the power bill? How are you planning on compensating them for the power usage, and have you calculated if the profit you would earn is greater than the cost of the power used?

 

You're planning on mining Bitcoin with a GPU? That probably won't be profitable. ASIC mining is pretty much required for Bitcoin these days. You might be profitable mining another type of cryptocurrency that is resistant to ASIC miners.

Yes I have. I havent really even gotten to that part of the conversation because I havent been able to come up with any good reason for why bitcoin should be mined. I have a 3070 and I calculated it would be plenty profitable for my needs, and I would simply pay them back the difference for the power bills like I pay them back on 99% of the things i own because I dont have a credit card

 

also thanks for moving it to the right discussion, I didnt see a mining section on the homepage.

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16 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Moved to F@H, BOINC, and Mining.

 

If you're needing to explain it to your parents then I assume they're the ones paying the power bill? How are you planning on compensating them for the power usage, and have you calculated if the profit you would earn is greater than the cost of the power used?

 

You're planning on mining Bitcoin with a GPU? That probably won't be profitable. ASIC mining is pretty much required for Bitcoin these days. You might be profitable mining another type of cryptocurrency that is resistant to ASIC miners.

ASIC mining is terrible and a stupid investment, if you;re going to mine get 13 mid range gpu's and use a profitability calculator to give you a rough example of your potential profits. Buying ready made mining machines get outdated quickliy and are impossible to upgrade.

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4 minutes ago, Quadro said:

ASIC mining is terrible and a stupid investment, if you;re going to mine get 13 mid range gpu's and use a profitability calculator to give you a rough example of your potential profits. Buying ready made mining machines get outdated quickliy and are impossible to upgrade.

I have/use a 3070

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2 minutes ago, psmasterrace1332 said:

I have/use a 3070

I do not advice that. If you were to buy lets say 13 rx 570's it will be around £1300 which will take around 2 1/2 months to break even and the rest will be pure profit. Mining on 1 card is pretty much a waste of time.

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2 minutes ago, Quadro said:

I do not advice that. If you were to buy lets say 13 rx 570's it will be around £1300 which will take around 2 1/2 months to break even and the rest will be pure profit. Mining on 1 card is pretty much a waste of time.

He's not an adult.

He probably doesn't have the money, and the used GPU market has stupid high prices, so 13 RX 570s won't be $1300.

elephants

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8 minutes ago, Quadro said:

ASIC mining is terrible and a stupid investment, if you;re going to mine get 13 mid range gpu's and use a profitability calculator to give you a rough example of your potential profits. Buying ready made mining machines get outdated quickliy and are impossible to upgrade.

I'm not recommending using an ASIC, which aside from the reasons you mentioned actually getting your hands on an ASIC miner while it is still profitable to use is basically impossible as they're all bought up by major mining farms before they're even available. Typically the only ASICs you'll find are the older ones they're getting rid of because they're no longer worth running.

I would recommend looking in to other cryptocurrency options as there might be ones that are more profitable to mine on a GPU. I haven't kept up to date with cryptocurrency but if you're looking to get in to it then definitely spend the time researching some of the other coins. For example Ethereum or Litecoin might(?) be more profitable to mine on GPU than Bitcoin.

CPU: Intel i7 6700k  | Motherboard: Gigabyte Z170x Gaming 5 | RAM: 2x16GB 3000MHz Corsair Vengeance LPX | GPU: Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1080ti | PSU: Corsair RM750x (2018) | Case: BeQuiet SilentBase 800 | Cooler: Arctic Freezer 34 eSports | SSD: Samsung 970 Evo 500GB + Samsung 840 500GB + Crucial MX500 2TB | Monitor: Acer Predator XB271HU + Samsung BX2450

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4 minutes ago, ragnarok0273 said:

He's not an adult.

He probably doesn't have the money, and the used GPU market has stupid high prices, so 13 RX 570s won't be $1300.

You dont have to buy 13 its just an example, and he says he has a 3070, so he cant be too broke. You can start of with 3 or 4 and scale up.

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Just now, Quadro said:

You dont have to buy 13 its just an example, and he says he has a 3070, so he cant be too broke. You can start of with 3 or 4 and scale up.

 

42 minutes ago, psmasterrace1332 said:

so my parents are sus about bitcoin, wondering why "plugging something into a computer" will get me paid money. Ive sent them to like the nicehash website and how bitcoin works, but they still just dont get it. Ive looked everywhere but cannot find a good reason why to mine bitcoin, (other than the obvious) because they are like if its too good to be true, its too good to be true. Help? I need to try and come up with some info to convince them of bitcoin's legitness and why i get paid bitcoin for lending my gpu power to a pool.

 

**ALSO READ**

pls dont hate me just because i mine bitcoin lol, i just do it when im not gaming. Im kinda poor and so its a way for me to still buy fun things irl ie. rc cars

 

AND i dont torture my gpu i run at a max of 50 degrees celcius

 

i just need legit help and like this is one of the only places in the world that seems to have legit help

Read the bolded text.

Edited by ragnarok0273
x =/= s

elephants

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3 minutes ago, Spotty said:

I'm not recommending using an ASIC, which aside from the reasons you mentioned actually getting your hands on an ASIC miner while it is still profitable to use is basically impossible as they're all bought up by major mining farms before they're even available. Typically the only ASICs you'll find are the older ones they're getting rid of because they're no longer worth running.

I would recommend looking in to other cryptocurrency options as there might be ones that are more profitable to mine on a GPU. I haven't kept up to date with cryptocurrency but if you're looking to get in to it then definitely spend the time researching some of the other coins. For example Ethereum or Litecoin might(?) be more profitable to mine on GPU than Bitcoin.

Yes, ether is far better to mine than btc.

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Dogecoin! 🌑

 

In all seriousness though, a lot of boomers just don't have the ability to understand these things. You're more than likely never going to get them to understand it.

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1 minute ago, TempestCatto said:

Dogecoin! 🌑

 

In all seriousness though, a lot of boomers just don't have the ability to understand these things. You're more than likely never going to get them to understand it.

Well if you was 40-50 years old and your 18 year old son told you, 'hey mum and dad, you dont mind if they electricity goes through the roof do you, dont worry i will pay you back by mining all these blocks' would you trust it?

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I'm not a mining expert but i'll try something very simple.

 

Ask them about how money came from, it's printed from the central bank.

The value of the paper in their hand rely on TRUST, a collective agreement, whereas the intrinsic value is only what the paper and the printing cost.

When the money is stored in a bank it will be converted into account, which will need database in the central bank to store the data.

 

Bitcoin has no centralize authority, rely mostly on the distributed computing, which are small people like you around the globe.

Instead of printing the bills, it prints digital signature in form of digital coins.

Without a centralize computing, it's your job to 'print' those bills which you are getting some compensation for the work.

Just like how a central bank pays the cost of printing the money + the cost of running the servers and everyone that it employs.

 

Ask them this : If a central bank decided to make money printing for everyone, would they do it?

 

They will ask how some digits can have any value. Well the same as people trusting the value of a dollar bills or the record in your bank (digital money).

If everybody suddenly lost trust in the currency it will loose it's value.

Same as bitcoins, it can gain or loose value overtime, just like any other currency.

They don't value bitcoin, because they don't have any trust in it.

Is like someone offering them to exchange some money from uganda for us dollars, would they do it?

 

They still don't get it?  Lets talk about trading money, Talk about FOREX.

You wanna start into forex, you gotta put some money in the table, that later you can decide which currency you want to buy.

Do you hold the currencies while your trading? NO, you hold the data, X amount of Euro, X amount of Pounds etc. All just numbers. Digital numbers.

In bitcoin, you buy the token, the entry for the whole trading, with real money, which then you can cash it out based on the value.

Each token are unique. Only the owner has the key to access those token.

Loose the key / wallet, loose the money (tell them about how a man lost 200m forgotten the password).

 

But what happens if everyone stops the server? All the coins gone?

Well the same as if ever someone  nuke the central bank servers, or all your money got burned, it will be gone. 

But is impossible to nuke all of the bitcoins servers, as they are spreads all over the world in a small basement like yours.

 

BUT WHYYY? why would anyone hold a made up money?

I go on further, but if there's any question they want to ask, i will try my best to answer that question with my limited knowledge.

 

Ryzen 5700g @ 4.4ghz all cores | Asrock B550M Steel Legend | 3060 | 2x 16gb Micron E 2666 @ 4200mhz cl16 | 500gb WD SN750 | 12 TB HDD | Deepcool Gammax 400 w/ 2 delta 4000rpm push pull | Antec Neo Eco Zen 500w

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47 minutes ago, psmasterrace1332 said:

so my parents are sus about bitcoin, wondering why "plugging something into a computer" will get me paid money. Ive sent them to like the nicehash website and how bitcoin works, but they still just dont get it. Ive looked everywhere but cannot find a good reason why to mine bitcoin, (other than the obvious) because they are like if its too good to be true, its too good to be true.

That's because it is too good to be true. For Bitcoin, you should have got in on it back in 2013. There are dozens of alt coins on the market these days that would be better choices for mining. But that's a whole 'nother other discussion... that I am ill equipped to have.

 

As for finding a reason to do it: You already said it yourself, it pays for your hobby/ies. I mean, why mine: you shouldn't, in my opinion. But like... I'm just a string of text on the interwebz. Someone like @Moonzy (who I'm surprised hasn't popped in here yet) will give you 12 thousand reasons why it's a worthwhile hobby. And from what I have seen them post, it's allowed them to upgrade their PC pretty consistently..

Spoiler

CPU: Intel i7 6850K

GPU: nVidia GTX 1080Ti (ZoTaC AMP! Extreme)

Motherboard: Gigabyte X99-UltraGaming

RAM: 16GB (2x 8GB) 3000Mhz EVGA SuperSC DDR4

Case: RaidMax Delta I

PSU: ThermalTake DPS-G 750W 80+ Gold

Monitor: Samsung 32" UJ590 UHD

Keyboard: Corsair K70

Mouse: Corsair Scimitar

Audio: Logitech Z200 (desktop); Roland RH-300 (headphones)

 

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16 minutes ago, The1Dickens said:

Someone like @Moonzy (who I'm surprised hasn't popped in here yet) will give you 12 thousand reasons why it's a worthwhile hobby.

Lmao, I am busy setting up my 3070s, sorry to disappoint

 

But in short, if your parents are against it and you're in their house, it's in your best interest not to do it

 

The way mining gets money is by processing transactions and getting paid for the "work"

You may just be plugging in your PC and it's earning money, but you still pay for pc parts and electricity so it's not entirely free (and risk free, if you invest in hardware dedicated to mining)

 

Do your research, find out how the mining ecosystem work and explain it to your parents, if you already own a decently modern gaming rig then you can pretty much pretend it's just utilising your PC to get more out of it while you own it.

Make sure you're mining more than the electric fee and you actually fork up cash for the electricity.

 

I take it as a hobby because I love tinkering with hardware, and as I said before I'm actually sitting infront of my mining rig tweaking my GPUs now, for several hours

 

If you do want to mine, make sure you do it right is all I'm gonna say.

 

-goes back to fiddling with hardware-

-sigh- feeling like I'm being too negative lately

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