BFL isn't fishy they make perfect sense. But for them to make perfect sense, you have to step out of the bitcoin world.

People wonder why BFL would make these great miners and sell them instead of use them to mine. They wonder what the long term viability is. Why would they act this way.

It's very simple: catering to Bitcoin miners is just a way to get the capital to build up a custom processing unit business that in no way related to bitcoin. Their url doesn't have "bit" or "btc" in it. If you look at the FPGA firmware download page, they talk about custom loads for medical research. Their hope is that their future only has bitcoin as one of many accomplishments. And delivering a custom ASIC solution to a wide marketplace that will have people 2 or 3 months from now dancing for joy on public forums around the world in multiple languages is a good starting point.

So no, they don't really care that much about your friend's purchase order for their cheapest product line.

The increase in difficulty started before the halving. The halving was supposed to be at 1pm, and it got pushed up 3 hours overnight.

I don't think it's ASICs, it's people turning on their dusty miners for a shot at history.

Many people will continue mining in spite of non-profitability. Some do it because they believe in bitcoin, others because they believe bitcoin price will rise and justify their actions (this is actually wrong because they could instead just buy some bitcoin if they think price will rise). Meanwhile, on the price side of things, you can really only expect it to rise at most at a rate that would eat through the order book at half the average volume.

Get ye to a localbitcoiner.

Just so people know, this block could be found within 2 seconds of the prior block or 2 hours. That's unlikely, but I did see a block once take over 60 minutes. Because of this, bitcoinclock can give an approximation, but you really need to stay tuned to blockchain.info.

The problem isn't even the capital costs, it the operation cost of running all those servers. Not worth it IMO.

This could probably go either way. No gambling eventually gets you depressed and thinking about all the money could could be winning. If you gamble a little, then it reminds you that it's not so easy to double up, but then there's the temptation to try to win back what you lost.

However, I agree that putting say $20 a month to it may work. It's enough to keep you realizing that it's not so easy to just win your way to millions, but if you go into it saying that it's going to be a loss then you might not get the urge to try to win it back. I'm not really sure though as I've never been addicted to gambling. It kind of sounds like "smoke only 3 cigarettes" which doesn't seem feasible to me either.

I see it as more opportunity for bitcoin. The reason I got into bitcoin was because of Poker Black Friday and I had heard that I could play using btc. Cute Cat Theory says that the more regulatory the environment, the more normal people will take time to learn the tools to circumvent the regulation.

Moved over part of my miners to test.

You can illustrate that you are incorrect through induction. On the first flip you start with 100 coins and have 50% chance of losing or 50% chance of winning. If you lose, then your expected outcome is 998, if you win then you expected outcome is 1002. Because .5*998 + .5*1002 = 1000, you see that the expected outcome is the same as your starting coins.

Now assume that after k rounds, your expected value is 1000.

Prove for k+1. This is pretty simple, you know that E[k+1] = E[k] + .5 * -bet + .5 * bet, thus E[k+1] = E[k]. This holds true for any bet so long as they are equal size because the positive balances the negative.

Therefor by induction, the expected value after any arbitrary number of rounds is 1000.

I can't really speak for Britain, but in the U.S. there are barter laws that cover this. It's actually pretty common for people to barter trade (I'll cut your lawn if you give me some vegetables from your garden), but doing it a lot gets very difficult from an accounting perspective. This also has the effect you're describing, but I'm not sure if it's really that intentional or just a side benefit.

I think that this would be the next logical step to localbitcoins. If you were a bitcoin seller and you very often have people contacting you to buy, then you could just set one of these up outside your home or wherever and people could self service. It would be great if the machine would rebalance automatically on the cheapest exchange. Then it's all fees.

I thought it was cute and catchy. The only thing I didn't like was the use of the term "gravy" for bitcoin. I understand that this is lingo for money, but this term is often associated with greed and gain for no work. See "Have a Cigar" by Pink Floyd for a cultural reference to this interpretation.

The reason it's not exact is because as more mining power comes online, it pushes each set of 2016 blocks to be completed faster than 2 weeks. This cuts out a small amount of time from the 4 years total. In the past month you could watch the exact time for the halving creep sooner.

It would go farther out if less people were mining, and this was seen in bitcoin in late 2011 as the difficulty dropped, and has also been seen in alt currencies.

I think I don't understand how to select shipping. I put a laptop in my cart, and it gives me all of the below options. I'm pretty sure a laptop won't fit in a "Priority Mail Flat Rate Envelope", but how am I to know on the other ones. And what's the deal with "Flat Rate"? IMO, this part needs to be more clear for a non-beta site.


United States Postal Service

        Priority Mail Flat Rate Envelope $xx.xx
        Priority Mail Small Flat Rate Box $xx.xx
        Library Mail $xx.xx
        Media Mail $xx.xx
        Priority Mail Medium Flat Rate Box $xx.xx
        Parcel Post $xx.xx
        Priority Mail Large Flat Rate Box $xx.xx
        Express Mail Flat Rate Envelope Hold For Pickup $xx.xx
        Express Mail Flat Rate Envelope $xx.xx
        Priority Mail $xx.xx
        Express Mail $xx.xx
        Express Mail Hold For Pickup $xx.xx

Federal Express

        Express Saver $xx.xx
        2 Day $xx.xx
        2 Day AM $xx.xx
        Standard Overnight $xx.xx
        Priority Overnight $xx.xx
        First Overnight $xx.xx

Flat Rate

        Fixed $xx.xx

I know it's not really what you asked for, but you can trade nmc on bitparking. You could get some btc there, and then trade that btc for ppc (I'm not so sure of the exchange rates, though)

I wonder if the OP got paid, seeing as though they posted in July.

I'm a deal hunter. I don't buy everything that's on sale, but for items I was going to buy anyway, I'll take the time to search out the best deal possible. There are times, I find, that people put stuff up on Bitmit or on the goods forum for an excellent discount. I got a year of Netflix for 1 bitcoin. That would be like if bitcoins were worth $98. Yeah, sometimes the deals are better in fiat, but if you don't have bitcoins, then you are going to miss out on some stuff.

Innovation is allowing us to mine harder to get oil, but it isn't at the cheap price it once was and it is only getting more expensive. It used to be that oil had a 100 barrel return on every barrel of energy used to get it. Now, we're pushing under 3 barrels energy return on energy invested. This is with mining the most amiable geologic sites for kerogen. The US and Mexico continental shelf only has enough oil in it for 6 years of present day usage, and the demand for oil is only increasing.

Peak oil isn't just the hubert curve. It's when the increases in demand outpace the ability to increase supply. And we are already seeing that effect.

yeah I saw it come in ans was wondering who it was. Then I looked in blockchain.info and saw your vanity address

I don"t see a transaction from danieldaniel to 13373CuvtwQGgDWYv28pm3mTxy2bGS5U4D for the appropriate amount on the 20th. danieldaniel, please post your tx details.