Because unicorns, of course.

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
– Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

"We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
– Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
– Bill Gates, 1981

Right back atcha there, buck-o.

You can believe whatever you want. I believe that you're a fuckwit.


Of course it is. Did I ever dispute that? No. You're stating the obvious because you've apparently got nothing else to say, except this shit-talking about bourbon.


Right back atcha there, buck-o.

I believe he was speculating, as his sentence begins with "If". That's different than trolling.

If I owned the site, I certainly wouldn't even consider this, not for one nanosecond.

I do own a different forum, and I am certain that if such a thing were suggested there, my response would be an unqualified "fuck off".

Maybe they're suspicious of your motivations.

Actually, that was directed at the hardware-owning miners using the ghash.io pool who apparently are unconcerned about the 51% problem, as long as they get their BTC with 0% fees. I don't have anything against anyone doing day trading (unless they're dishonest about it and insist that they are "miners").


That's not quite correct either. I've been saying that if you buy GHs at a price that will never, ever ROI (and that's where cex.io GHs shares are priced at the moment) then you are signing up for a guaranteed loss. The only way to mitigate that loss (and maybe even come out of the deal with a profit) is to day trade the GHs shares. The mining part is absolutely going to be a loss, definitively, unquestionably, and there's no room for debate. Anyone still trying to debate that part is a blithering idiot. It's all about the day trading.

So cex.io is providing a platform for people to pretend they're mining while they're really day trading. I don't think cex.io is bad because of that. I think the customers of cex.io, though, are pretty stupid.

Let me put it another way: If they were good at mining and did the math properly, they would see that as a mining investment, there's no ROI. If they were good at day trading, they would realize that the built-in loss on mining can only reduce their potential up-side from trading. They are, therefore -- being neither particularly good at mining nor day trading -- just a bunch of idiots deceiving themselves into thinking that they're "helping the cause" or some nonsense like that.


I have no idea if ghash.io is going to attempt a 51% attack or not. I have no opinion on that, though I'd much rather that no pool operator was anywhere close to that threshold. I once provided a link to someone talking about a double-spend allegation from ghash.io when someone else asked if there was any evidence of the allegation. That's the extent of my "exhibits" on that subject.

But let's be clear: I'm much more critical of the people using cex.io than I am about cex.io itself, or even ghash.io.


Bullshit. My proposal does nothing but steal BTC from dimwits, unless it also includes a real pool on the side for disguising the absence of actual hashing power. If I was going to go to all the trouble to creating a pool, I would just, you know... create a pool and earn BTC the old fashioned way.

Let me re-iterate that point: the cex.io exchange does not actually help "the cause". Those GHs shares they are selling are going to be online and hashing whether anyone owns the shares or not. As long as they produce more BTC than they use in electricity, cex.io has no reason to turn them off. The only "service" cex.io is providing is a vehicle for stupid people who aren't good at mining or day trading to pretend that they're doing both, while (in the aggregate) giving more of their BTC to cex.io's operator than they get back. Some of the "miners" may in fact turn a profit, but they're too stupid to realize they could have turned more of a profit if they actually just engaged in day trading of virtually any other security or commodity on the planet, other than GHs.


You need to re-read my proposal, then. You don't need facilities. You need an AWS server or really any lightweight web server, as there's nothing special about the site that will run on it. You don't need a data center. You just need a web app that pretends to allow people to trade GHs while you're actually stealing their BTC. It's simple, really.

You don't need an initial outlay of BTC, either. You really didn't read the proposal, did you? You need to set an IPO price on the shares of GHs that is slightly more than twice what a real GHs would earn in one month at the current difficulty level. The continuing ASIC arms race going on amongst the actual miners will take care of the rest for you by halving the expected return on a GHs every month until a single GHs is essentially worthless. In other words, the asymptote will never reach 1.0, and you (or whoever attempts this in earnest) will pocket the difference.

And as an aside, I don't sip crap. So fuck you.


I'm genuinely interested in helping people. That's why I posted my proposal. I'm not interested in giving people a fake exchange, though. I outlined this "idea" in order to help people realize in a slightly satirical way that the only person who really profits from an arrangement like this is the exchange operator, and the people giving the exchange operator their BTC are, by and large, fools.

I hope that helps someone keep some of their BTC, but the way this thread is going, I kind of doubt it. So be it.

In a twisted kind of way, mining at a level that is less than or equal to the cost of electricity is essentially using the electric company to convert fiat into Bitcoin. You get untraceable Bitcoin for fiat, which is definitely not a bad thing.*

*for various definitions of "bad".

I'm in the habit of building websites (and web apps) and then... losing interest in them. I'm far too lazy to actually implement something like this and then -- more importantly -- maintain it, even though it is very much within my technical skill set. Still, I have neither the stomach for deception (even for a guaranteed profit) nor the desire to spend my copious free time coding instead of drinking bourbon.

But by all means, more power to whoever wants to run with this idea. I'm certain that it would be profitable. The math is definitively on my side.

In my proposed "virtual mining" setup and GHs exchange, some people undoubtedly would earn a profit, between the "mining rewards" and any profit realized by buying low / selling high. But as I (and many others) have pointed out repeatedly, for every person that wins at that game, someone else loses. So that part of the payouts are a wash and thus inconsequential to the exchange operator's profit margin. The only BTC that comes out of the exchange operator's IPO nest egg are the "mining rewards". As long as the exchange operator sets the IPO price at slightly more than twice the first month's "mining rewards" per GHs (at the current and expected difficulty rate) then the total cumulative "mining rewards" will never actually reach 100% of the initial investment.*


Frankly, I don't think it matters. I've heard over and over in this very thread that people are playing day trader for GHs. It doesn't seem (to me) like the people flocking to cex.io really give a rat's ass whether their mining rewards are actually tied to a particular block or not. And if it was really that big of a deal -- if people really won't buy into the concept without at least the strong appearance that they're actually "mining" -- then simply pick out the blocks from some dark mining operation in China or Ukraine and tell everyone that those are the blocks they helped "mine".

Better yet, start a mining pool on the side -- make it 0% fee to attract lots of actual selfish profit-hungry greed-bags miners -- and then piggyback off the blocks that they find. Problem solved.


Oh, the exchange operator should definitely fluctuate the price a bit to give people the illusion of highs and lows, and maybe even drift generally downwards with Bitcoin difficulty. Still, I have a strong feeling that you're wrong about whether people would notice manipulation or not, or whether they would even care. For support, I present as evidence Exhibit A, Exhibit B, and Exhibit C.

*Of course, if the Bitcoin difficulty ever went down, the exchange operator would be screwed. In all correspondence, be sure to use an implausible name like "Jeffrey Smith" or "Satoshi Nakamoto" so that nobody can find you if or when you have to suddenly disappear.

Yup. In fact, here's an interesting idea for someone more motivated than I am:

Virtual Mining

Create a "virtual" GHs exchange. Sell the initial shares of GHs (an IPO, if you will) at a price comparable to cex.io. Now, pay "mining rewards" to all the people who bought shares in proportion to their virtual GHs holdings, in accordance with the current Bitcoin difficulty level. Let the customers buy and sell virtual GHs shares to their hearts content, but by all means continue to pay out "mining rewards" to the people who are hodling virtual GHs.

You now have something that is completely indistinguishable from cex.io, and you need risk nothing on hardware, a data center, or even pay for electricity. You just need an AWS instance running a simple web app. Assuming you set the price of the initial shares properly, you're guaranteed (as the owner of the exchange) a tidy profit -- the virtual GHs shares will never ROI for the IPO price, and any trading after that is inconsequential to your profits. And the best part is that you have an infinite supply of GHs to sell to all the math-challenged "miners" day traders that will apparently flock to anyone selling the chance to get their feet wet speculate on the price of GHs! Just be sure to keep the price per GHs artificially controlled (so as to give them all peace of mind that they can always sell to the greater fool), and you can laugh all the way to the bank.

(I defy anyone to tell me why this would actually be different than what cex.io is currently doing).

Nah. I tried. The jalapeño makes a lousy coffee warmer.

Be my guest. I still think y'all are just giving the fuckwit troll exactly what he wants.

(And you're probably not going to single-handedly save Bitcoin by defending it against every random fuckwit that wanders in to this forum. "Tilting at windmills" is the term I would use to describe it).

See, I run a forum elsewhere, and I recognize this kind of comment. You're taunting the people here. Goading them, even. For that, you're a fuckwit and a troll and I care not one iota whether you think BTC has intrinsic value or not. I don't need to defend the concept, because there are enough people that value Bitcon such that what you believe is meaningless.

The people who are attempting to actually defend the concept of Bitcoin in this thread are arguably dumber than you are, FWIW -- we both know the effort is futile and that you're not actually here to debate the subject -- you're here to troll. So seriously -- go fuck yourself.

Then you're day-trading GHs. Which is all fine and good, but let's be clear about the nature of day trading: every time you win, someone else loses. Since the trend in GHs price is clearly downward, this leads us to one inescapable conclusion: On the whole, more people will lose than will win.

You need to stop smoking crack before posting. No, seriously. Put down the crack pipe.

The companies selling hardware only care about re-usability if -- all other things being equal -- they perceive it will give them some temporary edge against a competitor. Hey, it might even shorten their production lead times for the next product.

But if you think manufacturers are holding back for any reason other than they can't ship the product, you're smoking crack. The notion that they're holding back to avoid obsoleting their own product is the most mind-numbingly stupid thing I've heard this week.

Capitalism isn't solely an American concept.


Fantastic. And if Bitmine at any point holds back their next, faster product because they still have previous models in stock (or worse, because they're still making the previous model) do you honestly believe that the miners who currently own a modular Bitmine product won't jump ship to a faster product from someone else? I mean, we're talking about mining here, where hashing power drives difficulty, rendering smaller hashing power obsolete very, very quickly. We're also talking about a community that willingly gives ghash.io enough hash power to get close to 51%, because they are entirely driven by greed and care not a single iota for the health of the community, let alone the environment or any of the other bullshit reasons that you're fantasizing about.

So go on: try to tell me how all the miners will just wait for Bitmine to get their act together, even while other manufacturers produce better product.

But I call bullshit.

Apples to oranges. You're developing a product that has a selling point (a feature, if you will) that resists obsolescence. And that's great. But your effort is driven by good will, not by profit. I applaud that. Publicly-held companies rarely pay anything more than lip service to good will, for the simple reason that their shareholders expect them to put profit ahead of public service. Even the privately-held companies are, by and large, driven by profit. Reducing obsolescence is only a viable strategy when you're the underdog and you want to steal market share from someone else, and then only for a short period of time.

Cannibalization only applies to products that are still being manufactured. The application of the word "cannibalization" to something that is merely in stock is questionable, at best. But regardless of what you want to call it, any manufacturer that delays the Next Big Thing in order to stabilize sales of the Previous Big Thing is an idiot. They might not want to cannibalize their own product, but their competitors are most assuredly willing to cannibalize their sales for them.