USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/03/25/irs-says-bitcoin-is-property/6873569/

IRS Guidance: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/03/25/irs-answers-on-bitcoin-tax-guidance/6874925/

 

Applied about 30 minutes ago, and so far so good. They changed the interface and stats page a little (nothing major, just how the GH/s is presented).

Hash rate is at 1.4TH/s (power step '7'), which is more or less what it was at before...I'll give it a couple hours and check back to see if it stabilized any higher. If it looks good, I'll probably try stepping up the power a bit to see if I can get one or more of the cores to go offline like before (power step '8' and above triggered it for me).

Obligatory 'bump' to include Spondoolies  -- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=521520.0

Unknown how many units they're got on the books so far, but we may be able to speculate.

Sort of. The block reward drops to 0 in 2140, sure, but we'll be seeing the importance of a growing Bitcoin network (thus more transactions / revenue based on fees) far sooner than that. The next reward halving comes in 2016, following the drop that happens every 4 years or so. By ~2032, the reward will be under BTC1.0...so either the price per BTC has to skyrocket to cover expenses incurred by mining, or the amount of fees earned has to make up for it.

Few days, few months, or a few years. Focusing on the short term prospects always yields unpredictable results. If you believe in Bitcoin, both in the root technology and its global use, then invest for the long term instead. It may be that in 10 years, for example, $565 per coin could be incredibly cheap...

Great review, thanks Dogie.

Quick question (not sure if it has been mentioned elsewhere): When you say it's loud, how loud are we talking? I've got 2 AntMiner S1s, and at 1 meter it measures at ~61-62dB (using Android's 'Sound Meter' application, which seems fairly reliable). Room temp is about 20C or so right now.

I’d say that the difficulty will almost certainly be above 10B by then (though I’d happily be wrong).
June 15th is roughly 7 difficulty changes away (assuming the 12-13 days per 2016 blocks), which even at a low 15% increase per change would still result in a network difficulty of approximately 11B by then.

When you start taking a look at manufacturers who will be developing and shipping over the next few months (Spondoolies, CoinTerra, KnC, ASICMiner, BitMain, BitMine.CH, etc), seeing difficulty spikes similar to mid/late-2013 are not unlikely. Not to mention the unpredictable increase in private mining interests from individuals and companies that are looking to develop and use their own mining chips.

The average difficulty increase between January 1st, 2013 and March 13th, 2014 is 21.53%^[1]. Applying that average over the next several difficulty increases places mid-June 2014 around 16B.


^[1] -- https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

Will they then be paid with only transaction fees? / There is not enough ROI in fees alone now, so what is going to happen?

As the Bitcoin network grows and the block reward drops, transaction fees will become the primary source of income for miners. Theoretically, this shouldn't be a problem because the amount of accumulated fees will continue to grow along with the network. The more people using Bitcoin for everyday purchases, the more miners will collect in fees for processing those transactions. In a few decades, it may not be unreasonable to see transaction fees at BTC25, while the block reward itself dwindles will below BTC1.0...sort of a reverse to what we're seeing now.

Increased transaction fees?

An increase in transaction fees could also happen, and would seem likely as the network grows.

Will that cause everyone to drop bitcoin and move on to a cheaper coin?

I suppose it's possible, but it also comes down to how you view a "cheaper coin". At current prices, I can purchase a little over 172,000 satoshis for just $1!

I do not understand it after all coins are mined - how the system will continue on.

With the coins all mined, the system continues based on transactions throughout the Bitcoin economy, with miners processing those transactions. Those earned fees should still be able to marginally cover a miner's expenses (if they do, the network/difficulty slowly grows...if they don't, the network/difficulty slowly falls). The price per BTC (or mBTC, or Satoshi) will also adjust based on this.

I actually had my finger on the trigger to buy one until I saw this.

Unfortunately, I can't remember a time when the non-refundable / limited warranty approach hasn't burned a customer...so as shiny and well-engineered as your product may be, I'll sit on the sidelines until you guys have established yourselves. Nothing against Spondoolies, of course, but my tolerance for risk is quite a bit lower than it once was.

I echo these questions, but I haven't seen a response yet. Anything on these, SyRenity?

I suppose we're going to need more info on your datacenter setup to answer that. It can get complicated depending on how your NAT and IP forwarding was set up.

Just so I'm clear, you're trying to connect to the 240.x.x.x address (the public facing IP given to you by the datacenter?), and then access your CoinTerra unit (which is addressed on the 192.168.x.x subnet)? Nothing in between (a firewall, for example), and nothing happens when you try to SSH directly to the 240.x.x.x address?

This is essentially what I've done as well and so far it's worked out quite well. Since we've got other servers in our rack, I was able to spin up a Windows 7 VM...cleaned it up, and the only things on it are Chrome, PuTTy, and AVG. I'm behind my company's firewall with an exception for my IP, so I connect up via direct RDP, but I'll probably switch over to an IPSec tunnel soon.

I also use the 'Bitcoin Mining Monitor' Chrome extension set up with my API key from BTCGuild, so I constantly see my current total hashrate. Any fluctuations below the norm and I usually see it, and act on it, pretty quickly.



There are a few ways, but if you're using a Windows-based machine you can use PuTTy, which is a fairly popular SSH and Telnet tool. Assuming your unit is configured to allow SSH (which I think it is by default) and you know the IP of your CoinTerra unit, select to connect to it via SSH / port 22. I believe the default login info to the unit is: root / cointerra
Once in, just type reboot to restart the device.

Should be about "Two Weeks^TM"

Quick updates:

-- Purchased an additional AntMiner S1 this afternoon, which hopefully will be shipped out soon. Another 180GH/s will be nice!
-- Moved away from BitMinter and back to BTCGuild. Keeping with the spirit of Bitcoin, I always enjoy supporting smaller pools, but the bad luck we've been experiencing hasn't helped us. I'm sure the switch to a larger pool will result in a much more stable income.
-- Cashed out all Namecoins earned on BitMinter to BTC-e, a total of 60.52944775. Converted those coins @ BTC0.00542 each (as of 9:33pm EDT). After a 0.2% fee, the resulting Bitcoins were BTC0.32741346, which has been added to our mining address for the upcoming dividend.

Alright, let's see if we can answer some of those questions.


Not necessarily. Other than your hashing speed vs the network's, there are a few other important variables when it comes to mining; 1) The cost of your equipment in Bitcoins, 2) the price of a Bitcoin in fiat, and 3) the cost of a kWh in your area (or wherever the equipment is situated).

So long as running a 600GH/s machine is profitable, it will more than likely stay online and hashing. Maintaining profitability comes down to covering energy and space costs, which typically comes down to a payment in fiat (at some point). Even at a 10x difficulty increase (to 38B), a 600GH/s miner using 600W will still be marginally profitable, netting about $20 each week ($35 in BTC at current prices - $15 in electricity @ $0.15 / kWh).

It's not much, sure, but it's also not negative, especially if you live in an area with cheaper (or free) electricity.



If the price, size, and energy efficiency match your needs/wants, then sure.



As HellDiverUK already noted, those addresses typically belong to the largest mining groups.



You may want to check out BitMain and their AntMiner line of products -- https://www.bitmaintech.com
They ship out gear every few days from their stock, no need for pre-orders.



So long as there's a cost effective way to develop a faster, cheaper, more energy efficient ASIC for mining, yes.



Not quite sure what you're asking here...


The 900TH/s is part of the network total 35,659TH/s, so no, it wouldn't create more hashing operations than the rest of the network...if that's what you're asking?

Indeed, seems we're in a stretch of bad luck :: https://bitminter.com/livestats/big

1 day, 10.5 hours since the last block.

Hashing power is typically only added (en masse) when profitability is possible, even if it's long-term. As you've already surmised, a falling BTC/USD rate not only reduces the amount of power being brought online, it also increases the amount of gear being taken offline as well.

As more and more equipment is turned off, the next / expected difficulty will decrease as well, but the current difficulty will stay the same until all 2016 blocks are found. For example, if half of the miners powered off today, the difficulty would still be '3815723799' until the last ~230 blocks (and counting) are solved.

Just to quote myself and state the results, the firmware upgrade has helped with stability quite a bit. Bumped up the power to '6' last week and maintained 1.4TH/s since then (no reboots, yay!). No cores have gone offline, and there's been less fluctuation with hashrate (both from the device 'status' page and from the pool). I'll try increasing the power a bit more over the next few days and see how it holds up.

If only, if only...

I'll just leave this here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=472000.msg5625165#msg5625165