I actually use 3.1.1 CGMiner now with very customized sentry software that I wrote that automatically detects errored-out erupters and reconnects them so they can be restarted in CGMiner.  It's a thing of beauty.  242 Erupters all online, full-speed, 1 Quad i5 running the whole show, and about to double the erupter count over the coming weeks

I actually started with VMWare workstation, but there's a small limit on the number of allowed connected USB devices to a VM, and don't even get me started on the stability issues.  I can't definitively speak for the MS hypervisor but I don't expect there to be much different results as the underlying hardware support that facilitates virtualization is probably the limiting factor.  For mining with many usb erupters, there's really no efficient way to virtualize this process because it does take quite a bit of CPU power and the virtualization overhead and limitations won't let you get too far.  Currently without virtualization, I'm running an Intel quad i5 3.2GHz with 2GBs of ram and it's constantly at 45% CPU, and about 1.1 GB of ram, using 3 separate USB buses to run 181 erupters.  I expect ~300 erupters to be the capacity for this CPU.. hope to find out in the very near term

You mean to say that the router is the host of BFGMiner?

I finally managed to get it all working.  Reinstalled the drivers and that fixed the COM ports not registering issue.  Then I had to write custom software to spawn multiple CGMiner instances

Here's what I finally did to get 181 erupters online in Windows 7 64

1 - Reinstalled the operating system
2 - Installed all the drivers
3 - Installed any and all software
4 - Created a RESTORE POINT (IMPORTANT: Do not insert a single erupter before this point)
5 - staged 10 erupters in their usb slots at a time, up to 100 per bus (don't be fooled by separate ports on your computer, they may still be on the same bus).  A high number of USB devices will make your USB buses quite cantankerous and you should allow 30 seconds at least between device stagings
6 - Make sure they are showing up without error under the COM ports in the Device Manager. 
7 - launched a separate instance of CGMiner 3.1.1 for 10 erupters each (I find 3.1.1 is much leaner and more stable than later versions)

If for any reason I need to bounce my rig, I've found that the COM port allocations get messed up and eventually CGMiner can't find all my miners.  To fix this, I actually perform a system restore to my saved restore point.  This is the only way that I've been able to guarantee purging of COM port allocations and have a fresh start at step 5 above.

T'is a thing of beauty

Is anybody running more than 50 Erupters successfully with either Windows 7 64-bit cgminer or bfgminer? (latest versions...)  If so, how do your erupters appear in Device Manager?

Can't get CGMiner to work with more than 50 erupters...   Please see

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=283475.msg3032453#msg3032453

I have a massive Erupter rig that I want to run from a single x64 Win7 computer, but I can't for the life of me get any of the mining software to work with them in large numbers.  

Using:
C:\Users\Miner\Desktop\cgminer-3.4.0-windows\cgminer-nogpu.exe -o http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:9332 -u xxxxxxxx -p xxxxxxxxxx

I've been able to get CGMiner to recognize up to ~50, but if I have more than that connected, it blows up with:
USB all: failed, err -8

Even split over different buses, or specifying exactly which USB bus:address to use, or even running multiple instances of CGMiner (10 erupters each), nothing will get past the -8 error if there's more than ~50 erupters registered in the Device Manager




Now I'm going to try out BFGMiner instead using:
C:\Users\Miner\Desktop\bfgminer-3.1.4-win64\bfgminer.exe -o http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:9332 -u xxxxxxxx -p xxxxxxxxxx -S all --icarus-options 115200:1:1 --icarus-timing 3.0=100 --disable-gpu

gives me:
All devices disabled, cannot mine!

I tried the -G option, the -S erupter:all option, removing the Icarus stuff, etc.  Nothing works, even if only one device is plugged in.  The erupters all show up in Device manager under the Universal Serial Bus Devices as CP2102 USB to UART Bridge Controller.  I installed both the ZTex  driver and the CP210x drivers.  Strange thing is, I had a smaller computer as my original miner, and these devices show up as COM ports in that computer, but not on this one, which is probably the issue, but not sure how to correct it.

I am entirely on USB 2.0 (3.0 doesn't seem to work at all with the erupters...)



Any help would be greatly appreciated

Daily chats with the MtGox support...  Be the squeaky wheel!

I've scoured the net for this info but haven't found anything conclusive.  I ask because I'd like to know if someone listening to my Internet traffic can see what my payout address is.  I don't want to use Tor due to latency issues.

Alright!  Good for you man...  I think it's important to post failures/successes in this forum so that others can decide for themselves what level of risk they're willing to take with these exchanges.

Hi Canary; order received   and I wanted to express my gratitude for your professionalism and unwavering ethics in adopting the role of erupter distributor.   Thank you.

I disagree with #1..  Surely you've heard in the news about the feds tapping all these corporate databases (Apple, Microsoft, Verizon, etc.) for their customer information.  As it stands now there's no law forcing companies to proactively supply info to the feds, but I can't imagine a reason they couldn't legislate something like that.  They already have tons of mandatory reporting (accounting, payroll, etc.) so this would just be one more thing on the list.  Once this reporting requirement is in place, it will be easy to have a cross-reference database that correlates addresses with name/address info.  For non-tech-savvy people (the majority), they wouldn't be cautious enough to anonymize their addresses when making purchases, and they would expose their accounts in their wallets. 

for #2, I was only referring to technically-challenged US citizens and how they will be subject to US income tax

for #3, Prism

for #4, this falls into the same category as well-anonymized transactions, requiring knowledge the average person isn't privy to and thus couldn't capitalize upon.


Definitely this court case was more sensationalist than definitive, but it's the psychological impact this kind of case has that makes it transitional in the sense that it's a step in the direction of becoming a bona fide currency.  I believe the only thing that distinguishes Bitcoins from a real currency, is its taxability.  If and when (and how?) they start to tax your bitcoins, that will be the official day it becomes a real currency.

My point was that for technically-challenged people, they won't employ the tactics required to assure anonymity, thus the government could run a very simple algorithm to correlate bitcoin addresses to people, and then run a quick sum to see how much those balances are.  It's nearly as simple as looking at someone's bank account.  This wouldn't cost the government a thing, especially if they legislate (and they will) that all companies accepting bitcoins must report address/person data to the government.  Once the 'income' is calculated from the blockchain, the govt would pursue precisely the same recourse as if someone had claimed less income than their employer's reported.  Nothing really changes from the current system of tax enforcement.  Your scenario where the person refuses to pay taxes is no different in a fiat scenario.  People go to jail all the time for not paying taxes, I see no reason why this would increase where bitcoin was the currency.

Your second point refers to the tech-savvy segment of society that can exercise these precautions, which I think is a shrinking minority as more newbies join the bitcoin circuit.

Until the bitcoin-qt client evolves to better protect your addresses and intuitively points the user into best-practices, the government will still have a strong hold on income taxes.

It's not so much that regulation will be possible, but it will now be unlawful not to declare bitcoin income, which can escalate into a felony for egregious violations.  This alone will psychologically deter a majority of technically-illiterate bitcoin users from capitalizing on the very point of Bitcoin: anonymity.  And the simple truth is, Bitcoin transactions are not truly anonymous if the Bitcoin-qt client is used as most people use it, for example, consider this scenario:

- you have a bitcoin wallet on your computer
- you have 100 mined bitcoins that were delivered to your private bitcoin address A
- you then purchase something online for 20 bitcoins using your bitcoin-qt client
- your name and address are recorded by the website where you made the purchase (necessary for product delivery)
- the bitcoin transaction in the blockchain shows 20 bitcoins coming from address A going to the website vendor's bitcoin address
- the government taps the website's database for purchase history, correlating bitcoin transactions to name/address
- government reviews bitcoin transaction and now knows you own your private bitcoin address A and can see all your mining income and will tax that income

I suspect most people are oblivious to this and they'll get popped

So, you may say, well create another address!  So let's play that scenario out

- you have 100 mined bitcoins that were delivered to your private bitcoin address A
- you have 20 bitcoins that someone sent you to your private bitcoin address B
- you then purchase something online for 20 bitcoins using your bitcoin-qt client
- Bitcoin-qt indiscriminately chooses to send 20 bitcoins from address A instead of B, exposing your mining address just like the first scenario above

The fundamental problem is that, at this time, Bitcoin-qt does not intuitively give control of which of your accounts your outgoing bitcoins will come from, and this leads to exposure.

There are bitcoin 'mixing' services out there that can anonymize your transactions for you

Time to tighten up friends   Use BitMessage and https://localbitcoins.com/

http://rt.com/usa/bitcoin-sec-shavers-texas-231/

Court officially declares Bitcoin a real currency
Published time: August 08, 2013 15:54

A federal judge has for the first time ruled that Bitcoin is a legitimate currency, opening up the possibility for the digital crypto-cash to soon be regulated by governmental overseers.

United States Magistrate Judge Amos Mazzant for the Eastern District of Texas ruled Tuesday that the US Securities and Exchange Commission can proceed with a lawsuit against the operator of a Bitcoin-based hedge fund because, despite existing only on the digital realm, “Bitcoin is a currency or form of money.”

Trendon Shavers of Bitcoin Savings & Trust (BTCST) was accused last year of scamming customers out of roughly $4.5 million worth of the cryptocurrency through his online hedge-fund. Shavers promised investors a weekly return of 7 percent, according to the federal complaint, but shut-down his site after collecting upwards of 700,000 bitcoins. When the SEC charged Shavers last month with operating a Ponzi scheme, he fought back by saying Bitcoin is not actual currency and can’t be regulated.

“The SEC asserts that Shavers made a number of misrepresentations to investors regarding the nature of the investments and that he defrauded investors. However, the question currently before the Court is whether the BTCST investments in this case are securities as defined by Federal Securities Laws,” Judge Mazzant wrote this week. “Shavers argues that the BTCST investments are not securities because Bitcoin is not money, and is not part of anything regulated by the United States. Shavers also contends that his transactions were all Bitcoin transactions and that no money ever exchanged hands. The SEC argues that the BTCST investments are both investment contracts and notes, and, thus, are securities.”

Despite Shavers’ argument, Mazzant weighed in this week with an opinion that’s not only quite the contrary, but could have widespread repercussions in the world of Bitcoin.

“It is clear that Bitcoin can be used as money,” Mazzant wrote. “It can be used to purchase goods or services, and as Shavers stated, used to pay for individual living expenses. The only limitation of Bitcoin is that it is limited to those places that accept it as currency. However, it can also be exchanged for conventional currencies, such as the US dollar, Euro, Yen and Yuan. Therefore, Bitcoin is a currency or form of money, and investors wishing to invest in BTCST provided an investment of money.”

Bitcoin investments "meet the definition of investment contract, and as such, are securities,” the judge added.

Now with the magistrate’s blessing, the SEC can continue with its case against Shavers and his site. With that same ruling, though, the government is for now getting the go ahead for what could lead to the rampant regulation of Bitcoin.

“The ruling, while certainly a victory for the Commission, is also likely to have farther-reaching ramifications as federal regulators increasingly encounter investment fraud based on non-traditional investment vehicles,” securities and business law attorney Jordan Maglich wrote in a Forbes op-ed this week.

“The case is notable in several aspects. First, it is the first known enforcement action predicated on a Bitcoin-based investment scheme, and comes at a time when US and foreign governments are devoting increasing scrutiny to the unregulated nature of the Bitcoin currency structure. In addition to these issues, the case may also have deeper ramifications going forward. Indeed, the case comes as federal regulators are increasingly tasked with policing non-traditional investments that share few characteristics with traditional investment vehicles such as stocks and notes,” Maglich wrote.

Even if this week’s ruling is a landmark decision with regards to Bitcoin, it certainly isn’t the first time as of late Uncle Sam intervened in the digital marketplace. In May, the US Department of Homeland Security seized a payment processing account Tuesday belonging to the largest international Bitcoin trader, claiming the monetary exchange service falsified financial documents.

Awesome!  What's your home address?

US tax laws consider trading bitcoins to be the same as 'bartering', and bartering is still taxable for the fair value cash equivalent.  Person-to-person bartering is not regulated (they expect you to report on your taxes though), but any company that facilitates a bartering exchange has to report all activity, which makes their activity subject to AML.  

http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420.html

Foreign companies and even their governments risk US sanctions for not complying, even if not under US jurisdiction.

https://localbitcoins.com/ !!

Maybe I'm late to the game, but I just discovered https://localbitcoins.com/ !!

Death to Gox...