Says 4 to 6 weeks.  Looks like a scam to me. Really like the speeding train on the front page though. Looks so corporate.

To future-proof why not use CycloneV?  Too expensive? Can you add something to your site saying exactly where you are regarding $$ and/or BTC? Essentially you want a collaborative project. In that case you need to be open about all the funding details. A funding thermometer seems to be a simple approach to letting people know what's been raised so far.

Looks like you may have either a network issue or a disk issue. Make sure that your blk.dat file isn't fragmented. How much space do you have on your HD? What's your net traffic look like?

Which is why free energy should be on everyone's mind that's interested in mining efficiency.  If you have to only recoup HW costs than mining becomes profitable much sooner.

Western govts. not worried about BTC right now. They're too busy trying to prop up failing paper currency. I heard they are running out of the special paper they use to print Euros. There is talk in US about negative interest now. That $$ in your account is actually going to be sucked dry as they charge negative interest.

Latest is CycloneV
You want to future-proof whenever possible. But I'm not convinced the Cyclone is the right HW.

But really the key is free power. If you can vampire power for free then you are ahead.

I wanna see a TeslaMiner. There's free energy everywhere!
I predict Iceland will use geothermal to mine a huge portion of BTC. (if they're not already)

So the ultimate rig would be one that costs nothing to power it.  FPGA or GPU wouldn't matter.
Maybe BTC will be beneficial to society in that it will force people to improve novel ways to mine free energy.
(or at least freer energy than 0.03 kWh)

Sounds like extortion. But it is also ridiculous. How could they ever verify that what you send them is legit? Just do a search online for a bill photo and passport photo and email it. Or maybe you work for a competitor of moneybooker and are just trying to spread FUD.

There's a guy on these forums trying to get pre-orders for an FPGA rig based on an Altera. The devkit is $86.
I may try it but not sure I want to wait until July. His project isn't starting until he's funded. That chip was announced in 2009 but appears
to be lower power than spartan6 (which other fpga miners are using).

In what ways is the bitcoin market manipulated? Are the big exchanges involved in the manipulation? Defer payments, etc., etc. I don't understand how BTC exchange rates are determined.

If you're doing it for fun, fine, but if you're really trying to obtain BTC then it's not even worth the effort. Cpu mining isn't worth much and you'll just make the electric bill higher for your company. And yes mining causes more wear/tear.

Bitcoin is a gray market, gray markets mean lots of risk. Govts still not even catching up to bitcoin. If mtgox is a bank then take your complaint to your banking regulators.

How exposed are you?  It seems to me that unless you need the $$ just hold on to them. If you do need some $$  try to calculate what portion would make you feel less exposed and sell that. Keep the rest. The price can only go up. Or it could go to zero. There will only ever be 20 mill. BTC.
and there are 7 bill. people.

It all comes down to what risk you want to take.

I don't understand what MtGox is. Do you keep your BTC there as you would regular currency in a bank? If so it seems like they don't just store the bitcoins you deposited than give those same BTC when you request but instead they send you BTC as they come in. Maybe the transaction rate is so high at mtgox that you have to wait for all those requests that are queued before you. So the time to payment is impacted by the BTC network itself. If you're request comes during an "unlucky" phase than you just have to wait longer. I may be completely wrong! But I am proud of my newbeeness.

Define cheap? I'm cheap too and it would be fun to play with something that was $50 or so. That way if I destroy it I don't care that much. That's why I was asking about how to determine if a given FPGA would be suitable for doing SHA256. But maybe there are other cheap devices that could be put into service for doing the SHA256.

I've read about orphaned blocks but not sure about orphaned shares. It may just mean that you had shares that you were working on but while you were working on them the solution was found so they were no longer relevant.

Maybe bitcoin is govt scheme to kill p2p networks. They will point to bitcoin, claim anarchy, and convince everyone that all p2p can be used for bitcoin so all p2p must be shutdown.  It's a common tactic used by govt.  Sort of like a false-flag operation.  Take an old aircraft carrier near an enemy, get them to attack and sink it. Then point the finger and say "see, they're bad". (in this case you also dispose of the carrier)

Now there's a real waste of cycles and then they ask for donations. A classic boondoggle backed by nonsense science.

I dunno how I first heard of bitcoin might have been on LKML.

Ignore.

Sounds interesting will have to look for that.


Don't do my own taxes now but I thought it was shorter than 5 years.  There may be some creative searching needed to find the correct characterization of the mining hardware losses due to increase in difficulty.  I'm trying to think of an analog in another field. Hmm, the IRS pays mileage and part of that is wear/tear. It may require a special case. A craftsman can depreciate tools that are required for their trade.
They key issue for bitcoin miner hardware is how fast and by how much can the HW be depreciated. It would have to be coupled to increase in difficulty of course.

I just got into bitcoins. Recently, before bitcoins, I have been looking at mining energy. What I mean by that is looking at ways to make heat for the home, etc.  Passive solar is nice and eventually free once you recoup costs for the creation of the passive device. But I also came across a design that uses $200 of materials and can generate 90,000 BTU. using grass clippings, kitchen scraps, straw, paper, just about anything it seems.

1 watt = 3.41 BTU
90,000 BTU = 26,400 watts = 26.4 kWh

So if you pay to heat your home already but instead use this device to do the heating and you have access to enough materials you could use those watts toward mining.  There are all kinds of numbers to be played with here of course, but you get the idea.

To generate 90,000 BTU requires lots of material, I think the rate of material exhaustion was ~4 hours. But even doing 22,500 BTU or 16 hours
would mean more free watts that you saved from using to heat your place. There's also some waste heat from the mining rig.

Mow lawns to make bitcoins!  I think manure works well. Municipalities could generate lots of BTUs from human waste.
Maybe we could mine bitcoins by using the toilet. Energy is everywhere!