Ahh, yes, the Martingale system. The eventual outcome is that you won't have the money to make the next bet. Besides, at what point do you consider it foolish to wager $1,028 to win back the initial $1 bet?

The only way that a Martingale is better than traditional wagering is if you start low enough to reduce your average bet size versus a traditional wager. This is because the house edge willbe in effect on a lower amount.

If I were to do the martingale on roulette,  I would do the column bets that pay 2:1. At least when you win, you profit the original amount you started the sequence with as well as an amount equal to the current wager. The tradeoff is that you hit a payoff less often and so the risk of ruin is higher.

I hope they get that manager that said it was due to you selling bitcoin hardware in a deposition so she can explain why she knows that.

I would like to earn some BTC/LTC the old-fashioned way...by earning it. I've looked at some of the sites where they pay you to do tasks but the payout is miserably low. I've got a lot of knowledge and am also very good at finding things online, researching, etc. I've got a regular full-time job that I enjoy which is installing satellite systems. Not sure how that translates into anything useful here but thought I would put that out there. So, basically, if you've got a task that you can't perform, post here and if I can help, I will give it a shot.

"Shave and a haircut, two bits"

A bit is about 12.5 cents in US money before the decimal system did away with it. Prior to that, one bit was 1/8th of a Spanish dollar. See pieces-of-eight.

When bitcoin peaked, 0.0001 btc would have been on par with the US bit.

If you google the word mtgox, the sponsored result takes you to smarthome-egypt.com/mtgox and looks exactly like mtgox. I haven't investigated it further but it might be a phishing site. It also says login to our official site and displays the mtgox url under the search result.

Always double check which domain you are on after  clicking a web search result.

Not logging in to Slush's pool after I stopped mining to retrieve what seemed like a small amount of bitcoins at the time. They sent me an email warning about dormant accounts being closed and to log in but I didn't.

How long would it take to make the coin I described and how much?

How about a coin that represents stock in a company?

For example, let's say I wanted to initiate a group buy on some miners. It might be difficult to get everyone to put up their money, etc., when required. It might also present problems for people who don't all agree on the final outcome of the group purchase. Some might want to cash out pretty quickly, others might want to reinvest, etc. A solution I've contemplated is a stock coin that is 100% pre-mined and offered at a specific price to those interested in the collaboration. The collaboration can post each month's mining success and expenses and a per stockcoin profit. Those who want out of the collaboration can sell their stockcoin based on what the market determines it to be worth based on the listed per stockcoin profit plus any perceived future value, etc. Others can choose to hold their stockcoins. Later on, the collaboration can buy back the stockcoin for a specified amount of bitcoins. Then a series 2 coin can be issued in subsequent quarters, etc., for future rounds of investing.

Possible solutions that I see:

New companies can seek a bond that guarantees their transactions. This bond would have to be issued by a reputable bonds company or insurer. This gives the customer the assurance that they can make a claim against a company's bond if they fail to deliver.

Independent association that vets the reputation of a business. Sort of like the Better Business Bureau (BBB). People can register complaints against a business and the association will work towards a voluntary resolution that satisfies both parties. Companies will be rated highly if they are complaint-free, next if they resolve complaints quickly, all the way down to scammy companies with "F" ratings. Companies can advertise their ratings. Association should be funded by current bitcoin businesses who want to promote the integrity of bitcoin - based transactions and businesses.

Filling out a 1040 is a waiver of your Fifth Amendment rights.

Make them prove you own the wallet.

The bitty.

Has anyone figured out the effect of the addition of 10 petahash to the current btc network?

Great responses guys. This is the information I was seeking.

Now if only I could pull the trigger on getting a good GPU. I was never really a gamer and my computers have NVIDIA cards. Anyone want to donate a GPU?lol

Looks pretty good but I have some suggestions.

You need to have it proofread because I see a lot of grammar errors and that might be a concern for some who want to make sure they are dealing with a legitimate operation. Perhaps you can offer some bitcoins to someone to proofread and give you revised script to use.

Some of the colors of text are hard on the eyes. For example, the INVEST page uses a green or yellow (I'm color-blind) for some phrases like "How to Purchase shares", also improper use of caps in that statement, see my first suggestion. The colors hurt my eyes, but you might want some more opinions on that first before trusting a dichromat.

Why not post a picture of your business location or office on the contact page? Are you in an actual office there or a "virtual" one because it looks like the real estate owner offers virtual office space out of that location.

I'm considering GPUs for LTC mining and have a question. I've noticed that some GPUs that might be comparable in the gaming arena are very different in terms of hash rates. For example, NVIDIA cards all seem to be piles of garbage for mining despite being powerful for gaming. So what causes the disparity between cards. I understand memory, clock, etc., but can't understand what features make for a good GPU for mining.

Also, I notice there are specialty manufacturers making ASICs but I'm not aware of anyone making specialty GPUs for scrypt-mining. I mean if some combination of GPU features makes for powerful hashing, why hasn't any company come up with a GPU that is designed to incorporate those combinations?

Maybe the answer is I'm a lot less educated on this than I previously thought.

Thats a class 9 warp core of an Intrepid-class starship. I can't post links but you can search the image on TinEye and get results that were crawled as far back as 2006.

The downside to ASIC mining is that outside of BTC and similar coins, the ASICs are pretty much worthless. You can spend $5000 on an ASIC and if difficulty rises to a point where you never recoup your initial investment, you're screwed. The only aftermarket is foolhardy buyers who have done even less homework than the initial purchaser of an ASIC who didn't accurately account for diminishing returns. Worse yet, everyone in that situation will be looking to unload their ASICs upon a very narrow pool of willing buyers. That will drive down significantly any aftermarket value of an ASIC.

With GPU mining you can hit a wall too. That wall is where electricity costs and maintenance, etc., exceed the gains made from mining. However, there is still an aftermarket for GPU's outside of cryptocurrency. Lot's of gamers who have no interest in cryptocurrencies would love to buy a used 7970 at a great price. This means a larger market. If you are also a gamer or otherwise have a need for a powerful GPU outside of mining, you can convert your GPUs to other uses. Basically, you could possibly buy a high-end GPU for $1,000, mine with it for awhile and sell it for $750. That makes your equipment cost lower. Just figure your purchase price and subtract your anticipated selling price and then figure out your breakeven point on equipment.

If you bought a AMD 7990 for $1000 and sold it later for $750, your equipment cost would be $250, making your breakeven point about a month out and then you are making money. With an ASIC, you would be waiting until probably April to get up and running and it isn't even known if you will breakeven. I imagine the difficulty mining BTC in April might be so high that breakeven might be several months out on ASIC miners, if ever. You want to break even in February or May and beyond?

You might not make as much money buying (10) 7990's as you would 1 neptune, but at least with resale prices on them being near retail, your risk of loss is lower.

I like the Bitpay and Coinbase ideas as they do make merchants' bitcoin holdings very liquid assets. I don't feel that they are the entire solution, though. My concern is that merchants are still faced with price fluctuations, making pricing of goods and services a very dynamic effort. When I wrote this thread, I checked Bitpay and their BBB exchange rate was $718 and some change. Right now, it shows to be $737.9524. This means that to price their merchandise in BTC to be on par with USD, merchants have to update their BTC prices of their merchandise constantly. For example, let's assume ACME Widgets sells a Widget for $1000. That is 1.35BTC today and 1.39 a couple days ago. There's even more variation considering that BTC peaked above $1,200 and lost a substantial amount of ground shortly thereafter.

This idea would complement services like Bitpay, which provide immediate liquidity of BTC. By purchasing a policy, a company can simply choose not to convert any BTC that they receive right away if the price moves unfavorably against them. If the price moves in their favor, they can use Bitpay and make some additional revenue from the price moves. Additionally, they can opt to have a sale on days where the market is up above policy redemption prices. Using the $1000/BTC redemption price in my original post, ACME Widgets could price their $1,000 widget for 1 BTC. If the policy was a 6 month policy, they could maintain that price point for the entire term instead of adjusting BTC prices daily or hourly or even by the minute. On days like today where the BTC exchange rate is low, they can hold BTC until redemption time or when the exchange rate is above $1,000/BTC. On days where the price moves above the $1000/BTC rate, the merchant can offer a sale price for customers buying in BTC and then simply use Bitpay for immediate exchange at the higher than policy exchange rates.

There is an added side benefit to all this. A merchant can show their everyday BTC price and on days where immediate exchange is favorable, they can post the sales price for customers buying in BTC. Such action places it in the customer's mind that they are saving money and getting access to sale prices by using BTC over USD or local fiat. This increases consumer faith in BTC when it gives the outward appearance that a merchant prefers BTC so much that they would discount prices for customers using BTC. Such consumer faith would strengthen the BTC market. With the subsequent market growth, merchants would be lowering their BTC prices to achieve parity with local fiat money. How is that for a reversal of the last 100 years....a currency that gains purchasing power instead of the reverse.

If cops come knocking, dont say a word to them, even if you are guilty of nothing and just want to profess your innocence. Say nothing and if they arrest you, say even less. Let an attorney or public defender talk to them.  Much of a lawyer's work is trying to dig their clients out of a hole they put themselves in.

Make the police do their own work. I'm never surprised at how many people are so desperate to avoid the next few days in jail that they try to talk their way out of it,  only to give the police enough info to seek charges. Those same people end up pleading guilty to lesser charges because they didn't give their attorney anything to work with.

My first post here, btw. I tried searching to see if this idea had been proposed but to no avail.

Problem: Some retailers and merchants scared to transact in BTC due to volatility.

Many retailers would likely be willing to transact in BTC but they fear being left holding the bag, so to speak. Retailers place orders for their merchandise in the local or global fiat currencies. They also pay their taxes, employees, R&D, etc., in those same currencies. That ties them to the exchange rate between fiat and BTC. It can be difficult to pay $700 for some piece of merchandise and then try to sell that merchandise in BTC only to see a major correction possibly wipe out their profit on that transaction.

Scenario: Merchant unprotected against loss of value in BTC

A contract is offered to retailers by a Company seeking to sell protection against volatility and erosion of Bitcoin's value. The company analyzes the retailer's day to day business volume and determines that the retailer is likely to hold at most 10 BTC in their wallet at any given time. The unprotected retailer has a maximum risk of loss of $10,000 if BTC were to become worthless in that case. Company offers protection (insurance) against such losses by guaranteeing to buy their bitcoin at a specified price at a specified time. Company charges a fee for this service and retailer can offset this fee by pricing their goods and services to account for this additional business expense. An example fee would be $1,000 for up to 10BTC of buyback protection for a period of 6 months. Retailer can renew this contract policy after 6 months.

Solution: The policy functions similar to a put option where a buyer of a put contract has the right to sell the underlying stock at the strike price at the end of the contract but does not have the obligation to do so. In this case, the Company will be the one with the obligation to buy the BTC at the end of the contract. This would likely only occur if BTC declined in value below the buyback price at the end of the contract, otherwise the retailer would be better off using exchanges if BTC is trading higher than the buyback price. I would suggest that the policy be non-transferable. Also, redemption would be limited to the end of the contract on a pre-determined settlement date. This means contract lengths would have to vary according to the desired liquidity of the retailer. If a retailer can hold those coins for a year during a down market, they might desire a 12 month policy but if they need more immediate ability to sell their coins, shorter term policies would be a possible option.

Benefits:  This idea protects the retailer from loss of value in BTCs, thus allowing him to price his merchandise knowing that he has a minimum redemption value on any coins he takes in from transactions. In the above scenario, an unprotected retailer would have to adjust the BTC price of his merchandise if BTC lost value. If BTC suddenly went down to $500 in the above scenario, he would have to double the BTC price of his merchandise to stay on par with fiat currency. On the other hand, if BTC went above $1000 in that scenario, the retailer can offer a sale on his merchandise for those customers paying with BTC since he will make extra revenue from the exchange rates. The benefits to the Company offering the policy is that for as long as BTC keeps gaining in value, redemption will be unlikely to occur, keeping losses to a minimum while earning profits from policy premiums. If BTC is on a long downtrend, premiums will have to adjust according to risk. The public in general benefits from more retailers accepting BTC as a result of having protection against loss of value of BTC. Also, with more retailers accepting BTC as a result, the demand for BTC is likely to increase, benefiting investors and those holding BTC for the long term. It may also smooth out volatility to a minor degree if protected merchants don't have to worry about panic selling their BTC holdings.

Implementation: I'm a fan of competition as it keeps prices down and companies more honest. I would like to see some startups run with such an idea with their own improvements, offerings, etc. If no individuals or companies exist or jump on this idea, another way to implement this would be to crowdsource funding for this project. Because the Company would have to pay out in fiat currency, it would be best if they had liquid assets in that form or possibly some form of bonding. Whatever redemption price the Company sets on it's policies, it would be best to convert BTC assets to the currency described in the policy during periods of higher BTC value. In the above scenario, again assuming $1000/BTC, if the Company had multiple policies issued with 100BTC at risk for redemption, they could sell BTC holdings if BTC went above $1,000. Assuming the Company had BTC assets exceeding that 100BTC redemption risk, they could choose to exchange a portion of those assets at ideal times. So, if BTC suddenly went to $1,200/BTC, Company could sell 100BTC at the $1,200 price, thereby assuring that they make an additional $200/BTC against all redemption that occurs at contract expiration. This would eliminate the risk out of the currently issued policies. However, I suspect that the Company may only want to exchange a portion of their BTC holdings depending on the state of the market. Policies could be varying term lengths, have a premium that is based on the number of redeemable BTC, and redemption prices could be below/at/above current market rate with adjusted premiums.




I'm open to feedback and suggestions/improvements on this idea as well.