Maybe the right response is a competing commodity market / pool rather than FUD about this "guarantee" of losses.

I'm not sure if we are in imminent danger of a 51% attack, however if there is a message we need to get out it isn't this drumbeat that it's a terrible service with no chance or an extremely low chance of making profit, since there is evidence that's false. The message should be that everyone with private hashpower pointed at the pool should be ready to pull it out quickly if it ever appears that we are in imminent danger of 51%. Selling GHS won't change the pool's power, but all this private power pointed at it is probably making some difference.

Of course the conspiracy theorist in me wonders how likely it is that the only hashpower they control is what is actually on GHash.IO. I tend to think they are not mining 100% of their capacity there in order to not spook the community. It wouldn't be in their best interest to destroy the currency, but then again a short term play where the value crashes temporarily may be in some people's interest.

I've got 3 dead USB Block Erupters. I'm not sure if it is even worth shipping them, but if you want to pay shipping (from Ohio, US) I'll send them.

Possibilities other than the obvious: People don't know what they are buying.

1. Playing the lottery - solo mine for a chance at 25BTC?
2. Hope for good luck - variance on their pool may be in their favor and they could return more than the return you describe
3. Wait until after the contract is over and then attempt a chargeback through Paypal/eBay. If the chargeback works even a quarter of the time they are ahead.
4. People pay a premium for BTC on eBay all the time. This is just a variation on that.
5. Typical eBay collusion - get your friends to bid you up, adding perceived value, and hope for a sucker.

Personally I wouldn't trust the contract sellers to deliver any more than I would trust a purchaser to not charge back. There's way too much fraud on eBay. Even worse are the preorder mining contracts. It's just insane really.

In for 5 shares. Sending 0.25 from 15KnTR9VUwpayLSG6bwg79nzShy9Y34BWJ also as payout address.

TxID: d976a949a66eb3ce83e8a6680186d8615b9dad9d48d1f263bb0820f7a8245ac7

Bulk as in you are selling these all at the same time for the negotiated price, or are you willing to split these up?

1 @ 0.7

You can move wallet.dat between machines easily enough.

They are all going to have to sync up the blockchain independently though unless you run it off a USB drive or something similar with the working directory pointed to that shared location.

Just remember that every place you put wallet.dat is another place where someone can steal your coin.

For a better solution check out the Armory client (there is a sub-forum here) which lets you create a read-only copy of the wallet (without private keys). This way even if someone steals it or your computer is compromised you haven't lost anything.

Sure thing. One thing that I think the Bitcoin community needs much more than extra mining power is more legitimate businesses that accept it. There is also, from what I can tell, a lack of a place to invest bitcoin in an interest bearing account that is not associated with some high-risk activity. Even just letting your coin sit in an online wallet is asking for trouble. See the inputs.io disaster and similar.

I'm really curious to see what the DZ coop people are going to come up with next.

I'm in the same boat with my kids. The way I'm looking at it is this: You've got ~15 years (typical) before the kid is going to be in college. You want something that will have a pretty continual return on investment over that 15 year period. The miner, especially a rented miner, isn't going to do that. The bitcoin itself has a better chance, so I would buy and hold. The only reason to purchase a miner or rent mining power at this point is if there is a very clear path to a positive return on investment in BTC not fiat. Otherwise just buy and hold.

With 15 years you can make some riskier investments. For example, I bought some penny stock with one of my kids when he was 1 and that stock is now in the several dollar range. The kid is now 5.

Just a suggestion, but try out multi-coin sites like Multipool.us. I was mining LTC as well until I found that place. I get better returns, plus it is interesting to read about the other coins instead of just selling them.