Currently, my perception of Bitcoin ownership is it is filled with people who fit into one or more categories.

1. Alternate Currency. Want an alternative currency (don't like banks or don't trust current fiat currency).
2. Speculate. Believe that bitcoin is going to go up in value in the future relative to fiat currency and want to make a profit in the fiat currency.
3. Regular Economy. People who want to buy and/or sell regular items goods and/or services in bitcoins because it is more efficient, convenient, etc...

These are the outcomes of bitcoin with only these people's motivations:

1. Alternate Currency.  Without any speculators or Regular Economy folk, it is going to wind up a "monopoly money".
2. Speculate.  Without people to transact "real" economic activity (exchange bitcoins for something other than another currency) it will be a cycle of bubble & crashes.
3. Regular Economy.  I suspect most people "in the world" fall into this category.

Using the price of bitcoins compared to fiat currency, it is clear there is a demand for bitcoins.  However, the question is what are you going to do with bitcoins once you have them?  The current answer is either hold them for a while and sell them at a profit or hold them for a long while and hope for an even bigger profit.

However, there is not a good way to get bitcoins out of the hands of the original purchasers/miners except to trade back to a fiat currency.

I have perused the bitcoin related offerings on several sites and IRC and find it "thin" at best.  There is nothing local to me (town of 200,000, 1 hour drive to a city of 1,000,000+).  There are only people willing to buy or sell bitcoins for cash.

These are some of the purchases we all make that could be converted to bitcoins:
Pay for housing (rent / mortgage)
Pay for transportation (bus fare, gas, car repairs)
Pay for food (grocery store, restaurant)
Pay for reglare goods (books, lights, beds)
Pay for standard services (plumbing, shipping, ISP)
Pay for gifts (toys, flowers, rings)
Pay taxes (good luck!)

So my ask is that everyone encourage local businesses to accept bitcoins.  There are payment systems that can instantly convert that to fiat currency.  And, if enough local merchants start taking bitcoins, then the need to cash out is reduced.

When I can find a local plumber that takes BTC, I will know it has "arrived".

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Hi, hoping to understand why I cannot use a second GPU on a mining rig:

Used this as a basis for my mining rig: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_rig  (Two ATI 5850s, Approximately 600 Mhash/s)

900 W power supply
MSI 870-G45  motherboard
2 GB DDR3 RAM
CPU AMD SEMPRON 140
2x XFX 6850 - 1GB GPUs
400 GB HD

I installed ubuntu 11.04 and all of the software as documented in this post: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=7514.msg110334#msg110334

poclbm works fine on the first GPU (-d0) and on the CPU (-d2) and can see both devices


I did run aticonfig --initial -f --adapters=all

If I stop all poclbm and then run poclbm on the second GPU (-d1) it will connect to the pool but does not start any processing.  CTRL-C and kill does not stop the poclbm and kill -9 crashes the entire computer. Once poclbm -d is run any software "reboot"" will crash the computer as well.

In googling around, I found that the motherboard physically has 2 x16 slots, but one is x4?   I know linux pretty qell, but don't know PCI-e too well.

From msi.com for the mobo:

PCI-Ex16:  2
PCI-E Gen: Gen2 (1x16, 1x4)

Questions:  Should this configuration work?  If so, how can I troubleshoot it?

Not sure if this is the issue - the motherboard has 2 PCI-E x16 slots, but one is x16 and one is x4 (It is a MSI 870-G45).  This is what aticonfig is reporting - note the lower bus speed and channels... can I run two ATI 6850s in this configuration?  I used this site for 2x5850s and replaced the 5850s with 6850s.

~/bitcoin/scripts$ aticonfig --pplib-cmd "get activity"
Current Activity is Core Clock: 875MHZ
Memory Clock: 1000MHZ
VDDC: 1150
Activity: 99 percent
Performance Level: 2
Bus Speed: 5000
Bus Lanes: 16
Maximum Bus Lanes: 16

~/bitcoin/scripts$ DISPLAY=:0.1
~/bitcoin/scripts$ aticonfig --pplib-cmd "get activity"
Current Activity is Core Clock: 300MHZ
Memory Clock: 300MHZ
VDDC: 950
Activity: 0 percent
Performance Level: 0
Bus Speed: 2500
Bus Lanes: 4
Maximum Bus Lanes: 16

Yes, did this in ~/.bashrc and they are in the environment.



I got this output back as well - two devices as expected.


This is the output with a miner running on adapter  0:




I also did do the aticonfig --initial --adapter=all

Hardware specs for my mining rig:
Power Supply  900W
Motherboard  MSI 870-G45 AM3 AMD 770 ATX
CPU  AMD Sempron 140  
Memory  2GB DDR3  
2 x Graphics card  Radeon 6850

Running ubuntu 11.04 x64, using poclbm miner version "20110709" (also tried phoenix).

There is only 1 monitor connector to the 1 monitor I have.  DISPLAY=:0

Ran all of the steps in this article: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=7514.msg110334#msg110334

Ati config shows the 2 devices


Running poclbm.py without a device shows the 2 devices:


I can run a miner on d0 and d2 without any trouble, and I am getting normal hash rates for the GPU and CPU


Every time I run poclbm.py with -d1, the program never shows it as processing hashes.  CTRL-C and kill will not stop poclbm.  kill -9 on the poclbm process crashes the entire computer.

I tried setting DISPLAY=:0 and =:0.1 before running poclbm.py with no luck.

Do I need a connectore out the back of the other graphics card?  How else can I troubleshoot this?

Thanks




EDIT: I am running x-windows, do I need to shut it off to run 2 card mining?

Back when I was just learning about bitcoin, I was not secure with my wallet.dat and there is a small chance it may have been compromised.  How should I fix that?

My understanding is that a wallet.dat actually has many keypairs for recieving addresses in it and when you create a new recieving address, it uses one of the precreated addresses, so simply creating a new recieving address on your original wallet is not enough.

Would this process work?

1. Stop bitcoin client
2. Move original wallet.dat offline.
3. Start bitcoin wallet - creates a new wallet?
4. Generate a new recieving key for new wallet.
5. Stop bitcoin client
6. Move new wallet.dat offline.
7. Move original wallet.dat into place
8. Start bitcoin client
9. send bitcoins to new recieving address.

This site works as advertised:

I used the service with Interac e-mail - money was deposited in 1.5 hours - website says 1 - 3 hours.   

Bitcoins purchased without a glitch. 

Trade volume definately seems light - hopefully this will pickup when more people join. 

No transaction fees (for now) are really nice!