I'll leave that question for others. I have no experience scrypt mining.

You're confusing day trading with mining. Yes, you can sell back your GHs at cex.io. You might even make a profit doing so. But this is a textbook example of the "greater fool" scenario. The price of a GHs at cex.io goes up and down on a day to day basis, but the overall trend is down. And there's an especially sharp drop a few days before every Bitcoin difficulty increase. Thus, the longer you hold those GHs at cex.io, the less they'll be worth. So you buy overpriced GHs at cex.io that will never, ever return 100% of your initial investment in mining returns, and you're hoping that you'll be able to find a greater fool to buy those GHs later on, when they are clearly worth less because of the increased Bitcoin difficulty.

Some individuals might profit from this scheme (buying low and selling high) but since the overall trend in GHs prices is steadily downward, most people will in fact lose. If you could execute short sales at cex.io, you could win from that arrangement. But I hold it as self-evident that day trading shares that have a steady downward trend with no way to execute short sales is the greatest foolishness of all.

Generally speaking, renting hash power is a scam. I'm sure a bunch of people will appear out of thin air to tell me I'm totally wrong and that they're making money at cex.io, but those people are largely retarded incapable of basic math or otherwise understanding the difference between "mining" and "day trading".

If you owned some mining hardware (of any variety) that was capable of returning X coins per day, would you rent it out for less than X coins per day? Why? You'd be losing money.

On the other side of the fence, if someone wanted to rent some hash power, and that hardware was capable of returning X coins per day, would they pay more than X coins per day? Why? They'd be losing money.

IMHO, there aren't any scenarios where the arrangement of renting hash power is mutually beneficial to both parties. Either the buyer or the seller will get screwed. Given that one party holds the hardware and the other party does not, guess which one is more likely to get screwed!

Nope.

Mining hardware meant for Bitcoin (and a few other coins -- more on that later) uses highly-optimized SHA-256 ASICs. That hardware isn't capable of doing anything else. In the olden days, one could mine Bitcoin with an ordinary CPU, and then with a GPU. Those days are gone. To be productive at mining Bitcoin these days, you must use ASIC-based hardware, or you'll be burning more electricity (a LOT more) than you'll be earning.

There are a few other altcoins that can be mined with SHA-256 hardware -- Peercoin and Namecoin come to mind -- but the vast majority of altcoins use Scrypt to compute the block hashes. Scrypt mining can still be done with GPU, and in fact isn't well suited to ASIC design.

So there's a sharp division between SHA-256 and Scrypt-based coins in terms of the hardware they need. The hardware at cex.io (if it really exists -- I'm kind of starting to doubt that they really have hardware) is SHA-256 based. It can't be used to mine anything except SHA-256-based coins.

Which altcoins were you hoping to hash? Generally speaking, most altcoins aren't compatible with the hardware that cex.io [allegedly] has.

Nope. That's not at all how alternators work. There's no "extra" power -- the voltage regulator found in every single alternator-equipped car is varying the excitation current in the brushes of the alternator in order to get a relatively constant charge at the battery terminals. The more load you draw, the harder the alternator will have to work to replace that load, all under control of the voltage regulator.

For instance, drag racers -- who are trying to eke out fractions of a second over their competitors -- use techniques such as electric water pumps and electric cooling fans that they can turn off for the duration of a run (less than 10 seconds, generally) and then turn back on again to cool down the engine once the run is complete. They don't do that for shits and giggles, they do it because it reduces the load on the engine, which allows them to deliver more power to the wheels.

(And in serious drag racing -- well above the hobby racer level -- I wouldn't be surprised if they did away with the alternator altogether and just used a battery).

No idea what everyone is talking about. The one in the app store is the one I currently have. It sends, receives, shows transactions, scans QR codes, imports paper wallets, etc.

Works for me.

The Blockchain.info app works great on the iPhone, even without jailbreaking it. I made a payment to someone today, and he received it nearly instantaneously.

No problem.

That's definitely not what he said.

Next time, state them more clearly. With the additional details you've posted, you seem to be indicating that the initial projections were faulty. This still has nothing whatsoever to do with the price of BTC.

Not that I'm defending BFL here, but you appear to be blaming BFL for the rise in the value of Bitcoin against USD. That seems rather stupid, frankly. Asinine, even. BFL received their payment in USD from Bitpay, so it's not like they profited from the rise, and there's nothing else to be done about it.

There are plenty of reasons to dislike BFL. This isn't one of them.

Also, buying mining hardware with BTC is pretty stupid.

I don't do a lot of day trading, and I certainly haven't lost any money at it. But then, I can do math, so that works against me.

Also, your insistence at putting your sleazy referral link in at every opportunity makes it clear that your primary motivation in this conversation is to gain more referrals. Kinda douchey, IMHO.

Oh look, another sleazy referral link in your sig.

For every individual that makes a profit, someone else takes a loss. And since the overall trend of GHs on cex.io is downward, more people will lose than will win.

If you want to day trade, go play on the stock market.

Shocking!

Up to a point, yes. Heat sinks made of aluminum do in fact use surface area to help dissipate heat. However, once the aluminum becomes too thin (ala a beer can, or aluminum foil) it becomes much more susceptible to melting.

So mass is important, but so is the configuration of that mass. Basically, melting aluminum foil with a match is "a trick". In general, that trick only applies to aluminum foil and things that are similar to aluminum foil.

Considering that they're claiming the have BFL Monarchs -- the ASICs for which are being bumped / sliced / packaged at this moment, and which have not shipped in any way, shape, or form -- I'd say it's a pretty good bet that this is a scam.

My estimation is somewhat irrelevant at this point, since cryptocards has already weighed in with the results of his test. However, I'd like to point out the chief difference between a beer can and an aluminum card: the aluminum in a beer can is spread over a very large area. The card is not. This makes all the difference in the world.

The two biggest risks to what you propose are as follows (and this applies not to any particular company):

a) The company is a scam, and is merely taking money. Do you have confidence in this company? Do they have a track record? Are other customers happy with their products?
b) The company can't actually deliver what they are selling immediately. This is common. Are you confident that the company has product in stock and ready to deliver? If not, then when? What's the likely difficulty increase during that time? Will you ROI, given that difficulty increase?

Again, this is not directed at any one company, and I have no idea if this particular company is trustworthy or not. But these are the standard risk factors when purchasing hardware.

More like all day, every day.


This doesn't quite ring true. If you invested coins into ASICS, and the calculations showed you that weren't going to break even, then the eventual price of Bitcoin does not matter. It absolutely, positively DOES NOT enter the equation. If you paid (I'm making this up) 10BTC for your ASICS and you get back 5BTC, then the price of BTC (in USD, EUR, CNY, GBP, Whatever) is completely irrelevant. You would have been better off holding the 10BTC.

If you got back more BTC than the number of BTC you put into the ASICs, then you made a legitimate profit. If you paid fiat and got back more in BTC at the eventual exchange rate, you made a legitimate profit. But your story doesn't read that way -- in fact, your story sounds downright dishonest.

Which, of course, is what I've come to expect from the bulk of the people in this forum. Dishonesty and outright lies seem to be the norm.