Bitcoin markets are far easier to manipulate than penny stocks though.
With penny stocks pump & dump you need media attention these days. It doesn't come free or easy.

With BTC all you need is a few cleverly placed forum trolls on certain sites including this one, and a mass sell order going downwards systematically after every sale, as to make it look like everyone is trying to get rid of BTC.

Then at the end of the line you have suckers selling BTC for $10 when it cost double that just a few hours ago. You buy back and artificially deflate the price by selling to yourself in incrementally larger & larger amounts. Stop when it reaches critical mass on itself & buy back at $18-$19.

Somewhat low risk and only requires maybe 10-20k worth of cash to pull off. Most sales according to Mt.Gox live feed are in the 0.10BTC to 5BTC range so they are small players who are very easy to scare.

Mt. Gox doesn't lose out either way, they gain 0.65% per trade. I'm just saying there'd be less profit for panic speculation if they limited trades to 5 per day on an account.

Why do you think PayPal exchanges on bitcoincharts.com continuously have ridiculous prices (even up to $30 while the rest of the market is at $18)?

Use your brain. PayPal is the lowest of the low when it comes to selling or buying online.
Most of these "customers" are poor as shit and will use any excuse possible to get stuff for free online by instant chargeback. They don't care if they get banned later for wrongful CB's.

I wouldn't touch PP with a sterilized 2,000ft wolfram pole. If you do then congratulations on becoming just another good-faithed victim.

PP is only good if both parties already have established some trust (like multi-thousand feedback on a reputable site), but even then there's a risk someone stole the acc.

I'd call it Green Saturday. Easiest $1k ever (give or take) thanks to mass hysteria.

That's not even counting the $10-11 dip earlier today.

Why would most serious traders switch from Gox to TH if you don't accept bank withdrawals?
Some people don't have time to play games with common jokes like PayPal, Dwolla and similar middlemen acting on their own terms and whims.

Hell, the vast majority of the withdrawal methods on TradeHill are credits for some online MMO's.


Farmville? Really?
This doesn't convey a particularly professional image when compared to Mt. Gox.

There aren't enough decent GPUs for 100k worth of rigs at once unless you order direct from a factory or the foundry at Taiwan.

Even then they will be 6970s etc.. That are much more expensive relative to 5xxx series GPUs.

Sure you can load the rigs with the newest available GPUs but it will be horrible return per mhash/s.

Why are all the above companies hiding the fact they accept bitcoins?

I'm just saying. Memorydealers doesn't even show anywhere they accept BTC. Wuala has the price option on a hidden page.

Only Virwox openly has a BTC logo along with paypal, mastercard etc.

I for one bought in mass at $11.9 just some hours ago.

Not saying whether I sell them all at the current price or save them in BTC wallet, I'm saying it's profitable.
The lower it drops in the very-short-term the more profit there is to be made.

Because a bunch of down's syndrome panickers in their moms basement kept pushing the price lower and lower because they had a compulsion to get rid of all their BTC.

That, and it's weekend so Dwolla and wire transfers are tacky at best. On Monday-Friday there is slightly less variance of this kind IMO.

If you want to profit from these swings, buy when price goes extremely low. I did so yesterday at $13, and again today at $11.9 (didn't expect it to go as low as 10.25 though).
Then either keep it all & withdraw to your BTC wallet, or sell at the current high.

That wont happen before ~10 million difficulty, when mining with 1 or 2 gpus will produce under 2 bitcoins per month.

Even then there are a couple scenarios:

1. AMD 7000-series GPUs are extremely fast for OpenCL calculations (not a big chance since it's just a die shrink but it's out there)

2. Bitcoin ASICS become reality and affordable. There are plans on the forum for 8Mhz processors running 1 hash per clock, and using under 10 watts of power. That's 800mhash/s, if it costs $30-$40 eventually, they will become a cheap alternative to GPUs.

Short term speculation is fun, though. Especially if you have some spare non-critical USD on Gox.
It's like watching plants grow and die in front of your eyes, super-motion.

Long term BTC value aside, yes it's a rollercoaster on a 24hr scale.

Yes, in the 4 digits. I expect price to rise to 16 within 20 minutes, or more. Then it's sell time again.

edit- Yes.

Made a mass buy at 14 again, lol.

No, everyone should sell. Ignore the title of this thread. Sell everything right now while you still can.

This is not reverse psychology or bad advice. Sell. Get rid of your bitcoins. Bitcoin = bad. The feds are coming and there's no going back. It's about to finish within hours. The sooner you get out the better.

If you do not sell now you will regret it for the rest of your life. It will plummet into $1 and less by the end of this evening. Do something now before it's too late. Deposit all BTC you have right now to Mt. Gox and sell it off as fast as possible.

I picked 11 pieces of 5830 up for $85 each (common price would be around $99 as far as I've seen on TigerDirect and others that had clearance sales in the last 2 weeks), and they yield roughly 290-310mhash/s per card. I don't see anything in the price range offering even remotely similar performance at the price.

A 6950 2GB goes for $150 used, at least $199 new, & only gives about 390mhash/s. That's double the price for ~80mhash/s more.

I can confirm the above. My earnings are also down about -50% since the last 48 hours, supported by the personal chart on mining.bitcoin.cz.

Since I commit over 10 ghash/s that's a lot of money lost.

E: Wrong topic..

Nm, thought you have an illegally acquired network.

Anyways, if you think you can get away with the power consumption, target both GPU's and CPU's (though if I were you I'd do due diligence and make sure the computers even have a decent GPU at all).

Bear in mind that only OpenCL enabled graphics accelerators will be able to mine. Besides those, you are limited to CPU power.
You can try installing Diablominer and setting low aggression on all the machines. In the best scenario you can net at least 1mhash/s per computer or more, which is at least 6000mhash/ 6ghash per second.

Stuff as many radeon 5830's in a motherboard as possible with optimal cooling.

Nothing comes close in terms of price/efficiency, unless you can get a really good deal on 5850s or a dual gpu.

They're mostly sold out though.

If BTC price goes down to $1 there will be nobody left to mine at current difficulty levels.

Since difficulty takes 2016 blocks to adjust and mining would consume more electricity than there is reward to be gained, the network would become unsecured fast.

Buying new rigs at this point is so-so at this point unless you get a lot of hashing power (talking 3-5ghash/s or better).

If price climbs with difficulty, you win and have zero risk (since you also get to keep your hardware & can sell it any time).
If it stagnates but diff. goes up to 1.3m - 2.0m, you are essentially mining for free, and in a few months earning 0.0BTC per month at 5m-10m difficulty.

I'm not bagging on miners, hell I mine at way past 10ghash/s. I'm saying it's becoming unprofitable soon, but time will tell if prices keep up.

Should prices stagnate at around $15 but difficulty goes past 5 million then I'm putting my rigs offline until difficulty decreases.