I saw really hard working and sweaty dwarves down at the Eligius mines. The temperature was boiling hot, too. Small chips of 0.01BTC were lying on the ground along with rubble and broken pickaxes.

Took a cart to deepbit. Heard the last black dragon visited 6 hours ago. Stopped all miners, they fled to slush's kingdom.
Most are cautiously returning now, though.

It's been a chaotic start of the week for Bitcoin.

...






Ebay

100 british pounds is $163 dollars.

Those are semi-hard to find though (new and boxed), and you need the rest of the system around the cards.

The farmer and his entire family will always need food, for the rest of his life at steady 4 to 12 hour intervals, and if he was too hungry to drive his daughter might just as well have died.

Just because I currently value a bitcoin as worth more than 5 breads does not mean bitcoin is more valuable as a commodity. Bitcoin has no value for most people in the world.
I will always need bread, even if my internet access is cut off or there is a massive shortage of electricity, I'll manage without bitcoin.

However, you or I can't manage without bread or other food. We can manage without bitcoins. Hence bitcoin has subjective value (up to market to decide) but food is always worth *something*.

If fuel runs out globally, cars become worthless. If there is an attack on electricity networks, all gadgets become useless.
But food can't become useless as long as someone is alive.

The car has only temporary value because the farmer's daughter is sick. But when she gets better, the car becomes useless if the farmer's family doesn't need to travel or they are happy with horse carts or walking.

However, they will always need their harvest or other sources of food to stay alive. The need is constant as long as someone in the family is alive. Hence it is always worth a certain portion of their income that they are willing to part with (be it 2%, 5% or like in many poor countries, over 50% of their income will go into food)

Unless material replicators or other sources of synthetic food are invented, food will always be a commodity that has infinite demand (as opposed to other commodities which only have limited, increasing or diminishing demand, such as certain consumer goods) but only a limited supply.

You could argue Bitcoin and gold are limited in supply as well, which is true, but they do not have infinite demand over time (infinite meaning as long as humans are alive), at least yet. They are not essential to the vast majority of people.

Therefore a thing of absolute value must be something that has a worth for everyone.

0.8 to 1.2% so it's not that

The client can be set up literally in 20 seconds and you are ready to recieve cash, so even a hippie selling alpaca socks or a site selling beef jerky (just using forum examples) can start their business right away.

Namecoin requires a lot of tweaking and technical understanding, and does not even work on the 'real' internet.
There isn't even a native 64-bit version for windows.

The cards will require 300 watts total just from the motherboard PCI-e slots, and 900 watts in total from the PCI-e 6-pin dual connectors.

That's true. Everyone needs to eat something though, even the camel riding merchant with the single grape, or a baron at a banquet.
While food has relative value in these scenarios, food is worth *something* to everyone.

Bitcoins or gold bullion are only worth something to people who choose to buy them either as an investment, curiosity or shininess (gold).
Most people have no utility for either of them even if the market price is thousands of dollars.

However, every single person in the world has utility for food.

Necessities do have absolute value.

These include food, clean water and in some cases housing (though many people in the world live on the streets). People are always willing to invest a certain amount of their income in those things, because they are required for sustaining life (unless they are self-sufficient farmers). People that refuse to, will die, or will have to resort to the charity of others, or stealing.

Bitcoins, gold, home theatre systems, computers, jet ski's and desktop fans have only arbitrary value.
Anything beyond the initial cost of labor+materials is just a percieved value due to their utility, rarity, etc., but everyone in the world can survive without them and has survived for thousands of years.

Nobody can survive without nutrition or drink though.
Clothing and shelter are very critical needs as well, depending on the climate they might have absolute value as well (especially in colder countries).

Namecoin is too nerdy to ever 'take off' in the public. I do understand how it works but I don't expect 99% of people to 'get it'.

It's a good project though.

I have to tip the balance and say my only XFX card in use currently is pretty crappy in terms of temps & noise.

Runs constantly 3-4c hotter than other brands in my rigs, and the noise makes up for at least 5 cards combined.

But it was cheap (5850, $95) so can't really complain.

My earnings have been almost -50% for the last 72 hours on slush for no specific reason so I've switched all my miners to deepbit and BTCguild.

Electricity is electricity. Whatever urban legends you've heard about molex -> 6pins being unsafe, are just that; Legends.
They wouldn't ship with the cards if they weren't fit for use.

I've had molex to 6-pin adapters in 2 of my cards for ~8 months 24/7. They work just fine.

As long as you get the 150W total from both cables, it doesn't matter whether it comes from a native PCI-e 6pin or a molex to 6 pin adapter.

Well, it used to be $9,999 in the US a few years back. I no longer hold US bank accounts so I didn't know about the lowered limit.

Even so, more reason to be careful if it's just a few thousand bucks (or whatever is statistically abnormal for your account)

Whose fault is it, if kids panic and just look for the lowest possible price to get rid of their little 0.2BTC's they gained in a few weeks of cpu mining.

They have only themselves to blame if they sell at 10 bucks and cry to mommy after it's back to 22 the next day.

Really, it's this simple: Stop being cowards if you don't want to experience losses.
Stop pushing the price lower and lower in your desperate attempt to get rid of all your btc as you think the world is about to collapse and btc will come to an end.

Then again, more power to you if you continue to do so. You are doubling the money of speculators in steady intervals.
Many people will be thanking you after you continue selling your BTC at $11-$13 week after week..

By all means, do F5 bitcoincharts.com every 20 seconds and sell everything when it notches down a dollar.

lol.

That table is wrong because it lists the entire power consumption of the system.

Come on, think. A 6950 has 2x 75w power connectors. And it draws a max of 75W from the pci-e slot.
That comes to a total of 225 watts. There is no way it can *physically* go above that.


4x 225W = 900W

You could run 3x5870 on that PSU and still have plenty to spare, especially if you use a low-end CPU like a sempron or pentium 4.