I used to have it set up that way, but CANBUS is way too flakey to run reliably with 8 boards chained. I'll give it a try again.

Lots and lots of USB errors:


I have two 8 board stacks of bitbury boards. One stack has 2 broken usb connectors so I run 6 USB cables to it and have the other two connected via CANBUS.

I had this stack connected to a PC running Linux and it worked pretty well (average about 370-380 GH/s for the whole stack).  That Linux PC recently died though and now I have it connected to a raspberry pi using a power 7-port hub.

The raspberry pi is running rasbian and the latest cgminer build for bitburner and I got lots of errors like:
 [2014-01-13 16:49:12] BTB 4 usb transfer read error(-1): LIBUSB_ERROR_IO

Performance is also signficantly worse, at about 325GH/s (about a 50GH/s drop).

I have another stack of 8 bitburner boards connected with 5 USB cables (the rest via CANBUS). It has always performed worse than the other at about 340 GH/s. It's been connected to a raspberry pi too.

The worst part is that a couple times a day, they wiill just crash with a USB error and I'll have to power cycle the boards and restart cgminer. This never happeend with the Linux PC. Only with the raspberry pis.

Has anyone had any success getting the bitburners to work reliably with raspberry pis or do I just need to invest in some more linux PCs?

The fbi didn't steal those coins. dpr broke the law and the fbi was entirely within it's right to take those coins. The law is very clear on this. They were drug profits and had to be surrendered. The US govt does a lot of shady and marginally legal things. This was not one of them.

Any news on the portal?

If your idea of a retirement fund is playing the lotto every week, then go ahead and solo mine.

Otherwise, please join a pool

Yes, it is a nightmare. Technically, you would owe taxes for every block that is mined that you get a payout from at the exchange rate at the time the block is mined. So, yes, that would mean you would need to keep records of every block you get a payout from and all of the exchange rates. I am doing it on a daily basis as I only record the exchange rate once per day and all the coins I've mined that day. It should be good enough for the IRS even though it might not be technically what is required.

And yes, if bitcoin drops in value you could owe taxes and not have enough money to pay them. That is why you need to sell a little everyday when you mine. You can deduct the loss as a capital loss, but unless you have capital gains you can deduct them from you are very limited as to how much capital loss you can deduct from your income (I think it's like $3,500 a year or something).

Still, this situation is better than paying income tax when the coins are converted to fiat. Here is an example:

Say you mine 10 coins when bitcoin is worth $500. After mining them, the value of bitcoin rises to $1000.

If you declare the income right away, you would owe income tax (say 30% on $5,000). Let's say you sold the 10 coins over a year later for $10,000. You would owe long term capital gains on the $5,000 of appreciation (15% fed tax). So you would owe 30% on $5,000 and 15% on the second $5,000 or about $2,250 in taxes.

Now let's say you only owed income tax when the coins were sold. Say you still held on to the coins until they were work $1,000 a coin.

In that scenario you'd owe income tax on the whole $10,000 or roughly $3,000. You would get no long term capital gains benefit for holding on to your coins as you never established a basis when they were mined.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/cameronkeng/2014/01/06/bitcoin-is-not-anonymous-and-is-always-taxable-part-2/

There are some things that don't make sense though.

First, I was told by my accountant, and it also seems to be the commonly accepted belief on the forums and elsewhere, that a bitcoin miner owes income tax on the coins he mined at the time he mines them. This article is implying that the tax isn't owed until they are sold. I wish he did a better job justifying why he believes that is true because because it is counter to everything else I've heard.

Second, he doesn't really talk about why it is worthwhile for a bitcoin miner to set up a corporation (LLC or otherwise). How does it help on taxes??

It seems like many people are not aware of this but you don't have to make your refund request by Jan 15.

That date is arbitrary and not enforceable.

If HashFast has not shipped to you yet, you can get a refund AT ANY TIME>

They have not yet shipped, so no sale has taken place and you have not agreed to any contract.

They can't just say, "sorry, you ordered a product but didn't ask for your money back soon enough so we get to keep it regardless of whether we ever send you anything"

Don't believe their lies!!!

Look, I bought in at $10.80. When I saw it going up exactly a year ago, I decided to double my investment and buy more. It was in the high 13's. I wanted to wait until it dropped to $13.25 so that where I put my buy order in at. I think it dropped to $13.30 or so, so my buy never got filled. I waited, and it went to $14, then $15... finally a few days later, I panic bought at $17.25, worried that I would miss out.

Had I just bought at $13.30, I would have 80 more coins now.

Had I continued to wait till it dropped to the low 13's again, I'd still be waiting.

Lesson is, if you believe in bitcoin, buy NOW. Do NOT try to time the market or you will get screwed.

Yes, they should declare bankruptcy if it comes to that. In the meantime they should begin honoring their refund promises.  I'm sure they don't want to refund the total amount in BTC, but they may have no choice.

Think of it this way:

BTC was at about $100 when orders were opened. Let's say BTC was still at $100. It's obvious that right now a babyjet has no chance of ever mining 56 BTC, so EVERY SINGLE ONE of hashfast's batch 1 customers would request a refund and hashfast would be quickly bankrupt. Bankrupt UNLESS, they decided to bump up the MPP so that their customers would at least have a chance of breaking even. Now that their R&D is complete, the easiest and cheapest them for them to do is ship more chips. The only thing that is saving HashFast's asses right now is the current BTC value. Otherwise they'd be in a tough spot.

It isn't. First, it needs be established whether that clause is valid and what circumstances it covers. It is not legal to put a clause in a contract that says "you can't sue me". You can always sue. And if it is the case that HashFast is guilty of fraud, that is not going to be settled under arbitration but by a real court.

Has anyone tried going through arbitration with them? If not, I might try it out.

Of course not. The TOS for the first week of ordering or so were very different than they are now. Unfortunately, no one seems to remember exactly what they were :-/.

Another thing that is bothering me is if someone does fight HashFast and HashFast agrees to give them their full BTC back, they will likely ask them to sign something that says they are not allowed to disclose the terms of the settlement publicly. That means we'll probably never know if someone wins the fight and if it is worth going after HashFast .

It would be really funny if BTC dropped to $100 or so, and everyone submitted a refund request because we would all get our full BTC back and hashfast would quickly go out of business...

The ONLY thing that is saving them right now is the fact that BTC is nearly 10 times to price it was when most of the orders were placed.

And why not?? I seriously hope it's not just a website and there is some coin available. At least the 6% or so the others got.

On day 1, August 8, they were $5,600. Shipping for me was $169.57. Total cost in BTC was 61.0864.

Are the AM people able to redeem shares and get bitcoins out at all?

In other words, when the portal comes up, will there be some bitcoins available for us? Or just a website :-/.

Visa and mastercard have minimum fees which are like $0.25 or something. So it's still less.

I only spent $150 on my jalapenos.


Also, don't use a laptop! Use a raspberry pi. They only cost about $50 and draw less than 5 watts!