Bitcoin Forum

what are the big earners in bitcoin right now?

1) the exchanges.
Cavat = regulation in most countries

2) silkroad, and i'd guess weed would be most popular

What else is there? What is the next level down and how much are they earning?

The large pools make a lot, but when the price falls sharply their margins become very thin. The smaller pools are pushed into the red and miners, who are then making a lot less, try to maximize their profits but migrating to no fee pools.

By my estimates Mt. Gox is paying the bills and the rest have not made a dime unless there is a lot of dark-pool activity, but as best I can tell there is not.

Bitcoinica is probably doing OK as a low-overhead show.  (Due to low headcount and shunting the cost of the financial hassles to the exchanges.)
 

Ummm...the scammers and thiefs?

Graphics card manufacturers..

Big Pools, Big Exchanges, Big whatever.

I'm earning mad donations from my site...  ;)

Yes, it's sad but I also believe the ones who really made money quick with bitcoin are a few early adopters that cashed out last year and scammers/thieves.

Bitcoin is not the tool to make money quick. At least not legally. Hope this news is not too disruptive for most that hold Bitcoin or plan to do business with it.

Power company ;D

INeededALoan is doing pretty well :)

What makes you think they cashed out?  It's easy to look back at the price history and imagine how you or someone else would have or should have done this-or-that at some particular time, but in reality these things only make sense in hindsight.

http://bitcointorrentz.com

not big money, but seems like a good match

Strong speculators. In those price swings, there was a lot of money being thrown around.

I started out as a newbie and with small amounts and it went well so far... imagine what an experienced pro starting with six-digit sums might have done.

Well, I'm sure there are enthusiasts like me who see the price go up and conclude they should mine more or see the price crumble and send money to Gox. I would only take my money out if I really needed it but I fear a bit that by the time I have to take it out, I will be in for a great loss.
But there are sure also people that know how to trade and recognize a bubble when they see one. These guys are not emotionally connected to the idea of BTC but see this as gambling. If all the BTC were owned by enthusiastic supporters of the project, I wouldn't loose faith that easily ;)

 8)   <--- 'nuff said

+1

"I find [some people's] lack of faith disturbing."

I find [some people's] blind faith disturbing.

Actually, that is not exactly true.  I'm glad to see it because these people may help me end up in the green, but I suspect that Bitcoin will ultimately survive, if it survives at all, on the back of people who have a more coldly pragmatic view of the world around us and who are innately aware of both the virtues and the warts of the solution...and of alternate solutions (i.e., gold, or even the USD for that matter as everything has it's strengths and weaknesses.)

We want bitcoin to succeed, not to protect bitcoin against valid criticism.

If we don't address valid concerns, bitcoin will just end up dead.

Agreed but what do you see as unaddressed valid concerns ?
When they say at Def COn that they dont believe the bitcoin network can scale up to the number of transactions processed by Vias/Mastercard, I wonder if thats a concern or if thats even a valid statement?
I trust the community can come up with a BIP to fix that if its a valid concern.
 

I'll bet Casascius is doing alright for himself.  Maybe he's made 5-10k?

I believe there were talk of pruning old transactions but that is not done yet.

We can approximate the money that MTGOX makes and it is pretty big.  16 million dollars volume in the past 30 days.  So they made about $160,000 gross in that time period. 

Tradehill did $600,000 so about $6000 gross.  Not shabby but with the costs of running a business and some big losses and you can see the outcome. 

A big pool is doing about 600 BTC a month gross if it does 2% of 30000 BTC in blocks found, so at $6 a BTC that is a paltry $3600 a month compared to gox but still not bad.  You can tell in the past, at BTC peaks, a pool could have done pretty well. 

And he even sold hosting & domain name for bitcoin.

thanks for passing back that ball: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI8GEidaMMI  :P

to be serious:

of course blind faith is always bad, that's not what I meant. lately I have been reading a magazine about the biggest inventions. some genius ideas took decades to take off. time was running slower a couple hundred years ago, but still. the concept of cryptocurrency is huge and I am quite sure it will prevail.

the question is, will it be bitcoin? network effects help a lot, so if there are no big mistakes it could be.

I heard that Facebook has applied for a Money Transmitter Licence for their facebook credits.
If its become perfectly legal to trade in FB credits I wonder on what ground ANY government will forbid its citizen from trading in bitcoins ..refusing them what they granted to FB (I can run my own free software social network, including bitcoins)