If you have to buy hardware, is basically a low-risk, low-reward way to invest in bitcoins. It's low-risk because even if the value of bitfoins crashes tomorrow, at least you have the hardware and can resell it. It's low-reward compared to just buying bitcoins, because if the exchange rate improves the difficulty will soon follow---which doesn't matter if you already have your bitcoins, but matters a lot if you're still mining them.

Even with the current profit margin, I still think buying bitcoins is the better choice. If you're worried about the downside risk, you might see if someone will write you a call option.

Anyway, this problem will solve itself as mining gets more professional (which it's already doing). The sort of people who program FPGAs and get custom-built ASICs will not join a pool even as difficulty increases, because they're in it for the long haul and can wait out the variance.

So the age of the GPU is coming to a close? We knew it was coming, I just thought it would take longer.

Ah well... I went in hoping for a free video card, and I ended up making a pretty solid profit on top of it. I can't complain. Maybe I'll start learning about ASICs or something... or maybe I'll just enjoy the chance to play Portal 2 without feeling like I'm burning money.

Okay, so now I'm looking at third-party printers, because depending on how many of these we want it really won't be cost effective to do it from home.

How many of these do we want? Speaking for myself, if I spent a few hours in downtown Boston I can imagine handing out 500-1,000 of these things---and Boston is smallish as big cities go. With even a few distributors we could easily find ourselves needing 10,000 cards or more (probably in small denominations like 0.01).

It looks like, for orders over 5,000 cards, these guys will be at least as cheap as home printing, even for two-sided full color as in the mockup. I'm planning to send in a quote request, but first I want to see just how much interest there is. If you're planning to participate, could you post here or PM me with how many cards you'd want, in what denominations?

I wonder if we can still pay for this with advertising. I'll have to ask about minor variations in design when I send in the quote request. Meanwhile, as above, if you're interested in paying the printing cost for some cards, in exchange for ad space, let me know either here or via PM.

Hmm... some of these replies are very helpful, and now I don't know what to pick. The closest thing to a "guide" is the thread Mike linked to, which is pretty cool---I didn't realize how flexible the Bitcoin protocol was! I thought a non-standard transaction was just a "transaction" with possibly no bitcoins or addresses involved, and with some other data in it that wasn't part of the standard transaction format (a bit like XML, where readers are supposed to just ignore tags they don't understand). It seems they're far more interesting than that.

I was really looking for a general guide, not just an answer to these specific questions. So unless someone does a write-up and posts it online somewhere before I get home in... oh, an hour or so, I'll be sending Mike a bitcoin. Thanks! I'll probably ask more questions in that thread.

I was considering switching to my real name anyway... I value my right to privacy a great deal, but I'm already using one of my standard handles here. If I had something to say anonymously, I certainly wouldn't be doing it under this account---or, for that matter, from this IP.

They shouldn't be so bad with perforated sheets of business cards. But I still have to actually print these to make sure they're legible at business card size. If not, production cost will probably be a bit higher.

Truthfully, I don't have any special ability to do cheap printing---I'm planning on doing plain old overpriced home printing. Is there anyone here involved with an actual print shop who could get this done on the cheap?

Some workplaces are just easier to steal from than others.

@InstantBTC: What personal gain? I'm performing the service of printing and assembling these cards, and cuddlefish offered to pay for ad space to defray the cost.. I asked 0.025 because that's the point at which I'm sure my cash costs are covered, so that all I have to worry about are my time costs. It will allow me to send the cards at face value to people who want to give them out. Should I pay for the privilege of assembling these cards for other people?

If I were doing this strictly for profit, I'd have to surcharge at least 0.05/card to make it worth my while. By that standard I am expecting to donate at least 100 BTC worth of labor to this project, and possibly much more. If I get a high enough volume of orders, I will probably have to pay out of pocket for high speed production. I'm actually considering backing out as I think about this, and getting complaints that I'm daring to take money for it isn't making me feel much better.

I'll pay 1 BTC to the first person who either writes a thorough explanation of non-standard transactions for the intelligent novice, or links to one that already exists. I have a vague idea of what they are from context, but I haven't found any solid sources to confirm or expand on what I think I know, which is too bad because it sounds like they could play a huge role in Bitcoin's future value.

I'm looking for a guide that a computer-savvy reader could pick up having never heard the term "non-standard transaction" before, and have a good understanding once he put it down. At the least, it should answer these questions:

• Just what is non-standard about non-standard transactions?
• What's the difference between non-standard and invalid?
• Can arbitrary data be stuffed into a transaction? If not, what are the limitations?
• Need these be "transactions" at all in the sense of involving transfers between bitcoin addresses?
• How do I go about creating a non-standard transaction?
• What are some (actual or potential) use cases?

It's okay if the guide assumes some underatanding of what a standard transaction is and how the block chain works, though at least a link might be nice for that. Ideally there should be concrete examples to look at.

Personally, I'd like bitcoin.* to be far more laissez faire than this forum, so that the moderators here can act with a clearer conscience. Way too many discusions here start out interesting and devolve into warmed-over ideological contests. I think this gives us an image problem, but I don't want to stop people from speaking their mind. It would be nice if the moderators could say, "Hey, take that stuff to bitcoin.holy-wars," when such things came up.

Likewise, I see no reason why something like bitcoin.trade.drugs couldn't exist. Bitcoin and Usenet are both international, after all, and Usenetters know enough not to judge Bitcoin based on one or two newsgroups.

For 0.025/card I will include any text that is legal to hand out in public in the United States, including "Don't join Deepbit."

All right, here's something I mocked up over a couple of hours.

 

(The full size files look somewhat better than these.)

I think the copy on the reverse could use some work---it's hard to cram much information onto a business card. As it is, the typeface is already pretty small. Maybe we should go with something bigger? Or maybe I should aim for intriguing rather than informative?

Also, the redemption URL is blocked out because I haven't got one yet.  

Ubitex, how does the "banner ad" look? I think it could be improved, and I'm happy to work with you on that. I'll print 1000 cards with your ad for 25 BTC, or 200 for 10 BTC. (The "extra" will cover the cost of shipping and my time.) The same offer goes out to anyone else who wants to sponsor some cards.

Hm... by my calculations, I ought to be able to produce a batch of 1000 cards for $128, so about 12-13 cents apiece. Maybe I'm underestimating the cost of ink, though.

In fact, if we do want to have a mass bitcoin giveaway, I'd be happy to design and manufacture the scratch-off cards and sell them to the "money-givers" at face value. (I'll also accept donations to defray the printing costs, if I do this.) I think they ought to have a quick explanation on the reverse, at least.

For the next release, it would be nice if the minimum number of decimal places displayed is either increased to 3, or decreased to 0.

To clarify: if the exchange is digitally signed, it will prove a lot. If it isn't, it won't prove anything, since it could just as easily have been fabricated on the spot.

Since eMansipator said it is signed, I'm hopeful.

Downloading it now... and watching this thread.

bitcoin2cash, that's great! How much did these cost to make? (It looks like they're just business cards with scratch-off stickers applied, so maybe not too much.) Did you include any explanations or anything on the reverse?

I think this event could use something similar, but 0.1 bitcoins---or maybe a mix of 0.01 and 0.1---would be more reasonable than 1 at this point. The smaller the denomination, the more cards can be handed out.

EDIT: I see wb3 just beat me to this idea.

If you're handing out marked dollars, here's an idea: hand out bitcoins at the same time.

That is, stamp the notes with a statement that they can be redeemed for 0.1 bitcoins---or some other amount, I don't know. It should probably be somewhere around 2/3 of a dollar's worth at the time you do this. Get weusecoins.org to put up a section on "Redeeming your bitcoin-backed dollar," which will probably involve sending it in to them or to some other redemption agency you've set up.

Hmm... what could the stamp say? It needs to be simple but pithy. Something like:
"Redeemable for 0.1 bitcoins -- weusecoins.com"

Or:
"Backed by Bitcoin -- weusecoins.com"
and only mention the amount on the website.

The great thing about this is that it gives the recipients a very easy way to get a small but predictable amount of BTC. Admittedly it's an expensive way, but maybe they'll hold onto that dollar and check the exchange rate again a month or two later, and find that buying bitcoins with it is a good idea after all.

The not so great thing is that an unscrupulous person could try to imitate the stamp and get some cheap bitcoins, once the exchange rate improves. This could be somewhat mitigated by keeping a record of the serial numbers of all bills stamped in this way.

Well, it wasn't today, but it should be some time next week. We'll probably be told the date of our ultrasound appointment tomorrow.

doood is right: you can just use BlockExplorer to see the running totals. Here are all the boy bets and girl bets. (Note that I accidentally used a previously-used address for the boy bets, as the transaction record shows...)

As you can see, not much activity... at this rate, my cut is 0.13, and that's assuming the books balance themselves out before the end.

This hasn't gotten very much of a response at all, so I'll just point out that at the moment the books are unbalanced! There's a total of 0.1 riding on "boy" vs. 1.25 riding on "girl". Someone ought to come in and balance this out and make a positive expected profit in the process!