(that's not really our phone number o_o )  I would hope not, as it's the wrong number of digits. |
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That makes a difference; I just read the post a few above, not the press release. Still, I doubt this will be a gamechanger.  By "highly parallel tasks" does that include two rounds of SHA-256?
Well, I'm sure Intel would say so, but GPUs are also excellent at "highly parallel tasks". |
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TBH I can't think of a good reason to lock a thread. If trolling becomes excessive, moderators will delete posts. Otherwise, it seems to me it's your duty as a business operator to answer any valid questions posed.
I haven't been following this particularly closely, though, all I've really seen is the name "Rugatu" spammed around the forum in various irrelevant threads. Rugatu/the_joint, can/will you provide an explanation for the thread-locking?
I have no affiliation with Rugatu. You linked it in your sig and seemed knowledgeable, so I assumed. Thanks for correcting me. Don't be so fond of thinking so graciously, but rather we're getting paid for it, maybe you'd like to join in on the earning. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=86633.msg952529#msg952529Thanks, but no. |
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exactly, and I would be far less bothered by BFL's scheduling if they did not very purposely word things so ambiguously.
Actually it's quite the opposite that has been getting them in trouble. If they gave more ambiguous ship dates for the singles we might have less people trolling them about the 4-6 weeks they promise. sorry, very poor choice of wording on my part. Not sure why I choose to say 'ambiguously', when what I was trying to convey was something along the lines of 'cryptic'. What's another word for being purposely vague? No, "availability" is an ambiguous term - BFL was specific on the singles, then did not deliver. I suspect they are being vague now just to avoid all the flaming (not all of it undeserved) they received over the singles. |
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Submarine sandwich.
Glad to see this in the works. To be honest, I think you should require PGP. It adds an extra layer of solid security, and would make me feel more comfortable than simple phone verification. I don't think it would be a major barrier to entry; most serious Bitcoiners already use PGP and those that don't really should.
There's an easy way to make phone verification very difficult to fake. Place a call with registrants prior to authorizing them. Record the conversation. Use the voice as reference for verifying future calls. That said, I don't oppose requiring a public pgp key. It can be done, and I have no problem placing barriers to entry. It's not as though I have more coins than I can put to work -- it's much more important those coins go to the proper home. True enough, but that starts increasing your workload quite a bit, unless you have an eidetic memory and can easily recall the different peculiarities of everyone's voice. |
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Submarine sandwich.
Glad to see this in the works. To be honest, I think you should require PGP. It adds an extra layer of solid security, and would make me feel more comfortable than simple phone verification. I don't think it would be a major barrier to entry; most serious Bitcoiners already use PGP and those that don't really should.
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Just ran across this on hardocp.com.
I was post the article till I seen this thread & ask the same questions.
What kind of results would this bring to Bitcoin and Litecoin mining?
I would guess nothing spectactular, especially for its likely price point. For comparision, a 5870 puts out ~2.7 TFLOPS. Bitcoin mining isn't floating point, but that indicates to some degree that this unit would likely have ~150-200 MH/s. (For comparision, one high-end Xeon core puts out around 3-4 MH/s; multiply that by 50) As an enterprise product, its pricing will be in the multiple thousands at least. With less than 0.1 MH per dollar, this isn't going to change anything. |
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That's only been up for - at least a few weeks. You're a little behind the curve, I'm afraid. This part here read differently just yesterday; 4. When will the BitForce SC be available, and how fast are they? Our ASIC based products ranging from 3.5 GH/s to 1,000 GH/s are currently scheduled for availability in late October, 2012. By availability I'd assume they mean taking orders starting then. Anyone wanna take bets on the first unit not shipping until Feb or later? "Availability" is just meaningless in my opinion, unless BFL specifies what they mean by it. |
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There's a more fundamental problem than choice of scale in those graphs - using current hardware speeds to predict times to crack of years or more is meaningless; hardware speed increases exponentially.
More characters in a password will certainly help, but you'd be surprised how high a percentage of users use 8 character or less passwords. Remember, we're not discussing how to secure your account - we're discussing the potential power and implications of the use of ASICs for SHA256 cracking.
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That's only been up for - at least a few weeks. You're a little behind the curve, I'm afraid. |
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Is there an end date on this auction? (I know you didn't label it an auction, but it seems to have turned into one.)
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I realize this is a significant amount of outstanding BTC. This offering is targeted toward the longer term buy & hold type of investors. It's not as if millions of BTC is going into a wallet to be hoarded. The invested BTC will quickly return to circulation, as it will be used to purchase more mining equipment as soon as possible. I am going to be placing a portion of my personal holdings, and a portion of my ongoing personal mining profits into this operation and I plan on being here years from now. That's a good point. More circulation would certainly be good for the system. I currently have wind-down instructions for all of my ongoing projects listed in my will and a "dead man's switch" set to email instructions to my close & trusted friends, as a method to tie up any loose ends. Having the majority shareholder take over is an interesting proposition, which I will consider in more depth. Sounds like you've got this covered. The majority shareholder is a novel concept, I agree, but unless it ended up being someone you knew well, I could see a lot of hassles ensuing. After the first tier has sold out, using only estimates based on current generation hardware, we would have over 3/4 of a THash mining away, as well as assets such as land, various electronics, office supplies, insulated shipping containers to house the mining equipment in a distributed fashion, cooling equipment, battery backups & the list goes on. Office supplies? What office supplies are you planning on utilizing, exactly? We could look into going solar or wind powered, but those would have a hard time competing with the $0.03 per kWh or less prices currently available in certain locations. Mining hardware is very much trending towards efficiency; I agree, solar/wind power likely won't be viable for awhile yet, but it's a good option to keep in mind. Branching out into other areas & diversifying our income streams is a possibility which I will leave up to a vote by the shareholders when the time is right.
Hmm. Any areas in particular you're considering? |
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At that port it forks, and everyone who hasn't updated will be on one fork while everyone who has updated will be on the other fork. What actually happens next ... well that depends on the % of who decides what. I guess those with asics and the security problem may stay on their risk fork and everyone else will be on the new fork. Though if asics are most of the network by then and they want to keep the security risk, I guess BTC stays a security risk - bye bye BTC  If a fork actually occur, I think many people will decide to follow the chain that the leading exchanges (MtGox, etc) will support. No, both the users and the exchanges will follow the chain that the leading pools and solo miners will support - the other one will be too vulnerable to a 51% attack, regardless of the algorithm. |
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I may be looking at it wrong, but this just screams "pyramid" to me.
A pyramid with no dividends? I think you're a little mixed up, good sir. |
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This is a mining growth organization designed to aggressively increase shareholder value and help secure the Bitcoin network through consistent reinvestment of profits. Be careful with this. Strictly speaking, if you never payout dividends and never liquidate the hardware, investors receive only on-paper benefits. They should be able to cash out their profits through share sales if they wish. Should we run up against any issues with continued growth, such as maxing out electrical capacity at a site and having to wait for new lines to be put in, or preparing a new site for installation, and we end up in a position of not being able to invest in new mining equipment, I will initiate a motion for dividend payments to commence until such time we are able to continue reinvestment. In theory, yes, but that requires a fairly stable share price and good liquidity in order to be appealing, both of which tend to be in short supply unless you're planning on providing them. With that model, investors take two major risks: (1) that you actually own the hardware and (2) that you will make enough Bitcoins mining for reinvestment to actually increase the value of the stake in hardware owned by a share. (1) is a serious concern with no identity verification, but I know I've harped on this already. (2) is an important issues as well. Regardless of any particular companies and how much you trust them, I think most of us can agree that significant increases in MH/BTC are coming soon. Hardware purchased now may actually depreciate in value faster than it mines coins.
I understand the concerns with identity verification involved in an IPO such as this, where shareholders have a stake in the hardware involved. I will likely verify in a few different ways on GLBSE, but I am not sure if I will ever be comfortable with a scan of my ID sitting in someone else's database online. I can't predict the future. ASICs may hit the network in weeks or months, bitcoin devs could decide to change the hashing algo, causing a massive asset devaluation if we're moved over to ASICs, transaction fees may not be enough to cover profitability in the long term... there are a lot of variables to consider. What I can do is offer my word that I will do what I believe is in the best interest of my shareholders, and I will gladly listen to their opinions of the best path forward. The good thing about the position I'm currently in, is I have hardware on hand to begin mining immediately for OBSI.ABMO, and I have further hardware on order which I may be willing to sell into the operation once it arrives. Butterfly Labs has stated that they will take dollar-for-dollar trade ins on this hardware when they release ASICs, and it will be up to shareholders to vote on the motions as to when or if we trade in. You can verify with GLBSE through a mutually trusted middleman, if that's less unappealing. (Or at least, it's been done before) If you could predict the future, you'd have much more profitable ways than this to earn money. I'm not suggesting you can, I'm just playing devil's advocate and hoping it will at least help anticipate possible problems. Share release is as follows:
1 Million Shares @ 0.1 BTC
1 Million Shares @ 0.2 BTC
1 Million Shares @ 0.3 BTC
1 Million Shares @ 0.4 BTC
1 Million Shares @ 0.5 BTC
1 Million Shares @ 0.6 BTC
1 Million Shares @ 0.7 BTC
1 Million Shares @ 0.8 BTC
1 Million Shares @ 0.9 BTC
1 Million Shares @ 1.0 BTC
What what what? Assuming you expect hardware value per share to increase (the whole business model), shouldn't new shares be priced according to hardware value, not arbitrary numbers? What's the incentive for me to buy a share now instead of in a month for the same price and more value? Am I missing something here? The incentive is to make sure you get in while the share price is still low, you can wait it out and hope there are still shares available at that price later, but you're playing a game of chicken with other investors who may not care to wait. Each tier of shares represents a milestone in our growth, and it should result in a vibrant secondary market and opportunity for early investors to cash out at a profit if they wish to do so. As shares are purchased they will quickly be invested in further mining hardware & supporting necessities. The share value should maintain a fairly steady growth as a tier of shares is sold, then grow quickly once a tier is sold out and profits are continually reinvested. The concept is fine, it's the execution I'm concerned about. Requiring the sale of 100,000 BTC of shares before moving on to the next tier will realistically mean a few years at a very optimistic minimum. To be honest, I doubt you'll ever raise that much - that's about half a percent of all the Bitcoins which will ever be in existence. Issuer reserves the right to cease operations and liquidate assets without motion. If you want to do this, I think you'll need to elaborate on the procedure. How would assets be liquidated? For what reason(s) would you cease operations? This is mostly a catch-all in cases of death or disease where I or my heirs may simply be unable to continue operations. Liquidation speed would depend on the circumstances of course, as I could not control the situation after my demise. I have no plans to cease operations at any point, and once we become a large enough operation to have multiple employees, I will enter a motion to have this part of the contract updated to reflect our position as an entity that can continue on for the foreseeable future. I would of course abide by a passing motion to cease operations, but I sure wouldn't like it I'm just suggesting you implement at least a framework procedure, e.g. name an executor and the like, or state that the majority shareholder would manage it, or something similar. Again, as investors are investing in physical hardware, this is an important point. I know I'm negative; don't take it too harshly. Best of luck in any case. |
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Wrong subforum, bro. This should belong in Meta.
I put it here as it's a request to users of this particular subforum, not moderators or administrators. I'm not asking for a change in forum functionality or moderation. This seemed to more closely fit the target audience, but if you think it should belong in meta, you're the expert here. |
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It has been whispered about in the darkest corners of the bitcoin world but I honesty doubt it will happen unless it is clear someone will get a 50% attack going. Someone should start a thread on the forum.
What, proof-of-stake? There have been many protocol changes proposed, which are you referring to? If sha256(sha256(x)) gets replaced by something else, like scrypt or sha256(scrypt(x) + sha256(x)) then ASICS are dead in the water. Scrypt, interesting. That would certainly change things. Is there a thread about this, or has it just been mentioned on IRC? From what I've read though, Scrypt would actually be more vulnerable than SHA256 to custom hardware, though, as it's specifically designed to be inefficient on standard CPUs/GPUs. |
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I'm not going to name names or point fingers, but this is starting to get annoying. We can all read the thread titles, we can all follow your signature links. Do you really need to clutter up threads unnecessarily with blatant advertising for Mining Bond/Pirate Pass Through/Other Security X? It just annoys those of us who want to see any updates on something we've invested/are interested in without wading through pages of irrelevant nonsense about other bonds, wait time on whatever magical next-gen product BFL has put out, and whatever new variation on an HYIP Pirate is being accused of. I don't know if we can really do anything about the latter two, but it seems the first would be easy to correct.
Please, keep your advertising to your own threads. Keep debates about an asset to the actual thread on that asset. If you have an issue with someone's business idea, post it once, not all over five different mostly unrelated threads. If you think yours is better, fine. Demonstrate so in your thread, and people will come to you. Trust me, it'll make the forum a better place for all of us.
Alright, I'm done whining and ranting. Fire away.
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It has been whispered about in the darkest corners of the bitcoin world but I honesty doubt it will happen unless it is clear someone will get a 50% attack going. Someone should start a thread on the forum.
What, proof-of-stake? There have been many protocol changes proposed, which are you referring to? |
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This is a mining growth organization designed to aggressively increase shareholder value and help secure the Bitcoin network through consistent reinvestment of profits. Be careful with this. Strictly speaking, if you never payout dividends and never liquidate the hardware, investors receive only on-paper benefits. With that model, investors take two major risks: (1) that you actually own the hardware and (2) that you will make enough Bitcoins mining for reinvestment to actually increase the value of the stake in hardware owned by a share. (1) is a serious concern with no identity verification, but I know I've harped on this already. (2) is an important issues as well. Regardless of any particular companies and how much you trust them, I think most of us can agree that significant increases in MH/BTC are coming soon. Hardware purchased now may actually depreciate in value faster than it mines coins. Share release is as follows:
1 Million Shares @ 0.1 BTC
1 Million Shares @ 0.2 BTC
1 Million Shares @ 0.3 BTC
1 Million Shares @ 0.4 BTC
1 Million Shares @ 0.5 BTC
1 Million Shares @ 0.6 BTC
1 Million Shares @ 0.7 BTC
1 Million Shares @ 0.8 BTC
1 Million Shares @ 0.9 BTC
1 Million Shares @ 1.0 BTC
What what what? Assuming you expect hardware value per share to increase (the whole business model), shouldn't new shares be priced according to hardware value, not arbitrary numbers? What's the incentive for me to buy a share now instead of in a month for the same price and more value? Am I missing something here? Issuer reserves the right to cease operations and liquidate assets without motion. If you want to do this, I think you'll need to elaborate on the procedure. How would assets be liquidated? For what reason(s) would you cease operations? |
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