To be fair the network transaction fees are high right now. If you want to send a timely payment of any significant amount, especially if it is made up of several smaller inputs, it will easily cost $7 right now even when transferring from your own wallet. Expecting an exchange to simply absorb this cost is rather unrealistic, and you would still be complaining if they chose to send your withdrawal via a low fee that took several days to complete.

I could only see it happening if some major bank chain or one of the Visa/Mastercard type businesses were to fully embrace it.

There are many debit cards though right now issued from various companies that can withdrawal cash and debit your bitcoin balance, and they can be used at most ATMs right now. I guess if you are looking to buy BTC from a ATM you will need to wait unless you live in or close to a large city.

Myself, I am not looking forward to an Bitcoin ATM on every street corner as much as I am looking forward to no longer even having the need to use one, which will happen once most shops and businesses accept BTC.

I was also going to point out the fact that it is normally called FOMO and not really panic buying, although I suppose it can be considered as such.

Anyway, just remember that so far no one has lost money by buying the "top" in Bitcoin, although they may have had to wait some time to breakeven again. Case in point, people who bought at the absolute peak back in late 2013 probably felt pretty bummed out in 2014 and 2015, assuming they didn't sell at a loss. However, right about now anyone that managed to hold their 2013 peak purchase is probably feeling pretty good about themselves.

I am not saying this will always be the case, but so far Bitcoin has been a pretty safe bet even for those who are inclined to FOMO (panic buyers) occasionally.

Panic sellers on the other hand, it is a different story. Those who may have panic sold after the 2013-2014 crash at sub $200 levels would have had to buy back in at a loss. Same thing earlier this year when bitcoin rose above $1000 and under again, people who sold at sub $800 again had to buy in higher. No telling how high it will eventually get, and taking some profits off once in awhile is a good idea, but I wouldn't recommend playing the shorting game as in the long run it seems risky.

Although I think it is a bad time to get into building rigs right now (you probably would be better off buying ETH directly while its down), I do agree that if you are going to do it anyway it is better to build it yourself. While the temptation may be there to buy a ready built and pre-configured rig, you will be putting yourself at a disadvantage on both component selection and knowledge to troubleshoot the rig should problems arise down the road (which they eventually will).

By researching the build process, selecting and purchasing the components, assembling the mining rig, and the configuration of both the system and mining software, you will be in a much better position to support the rig yourself versus simply buying it and plugging it in. While for the most part when properly setup they are reliable, issues do arise from time to time and it is best to know how to handle it yourself than having to call the person who built your rig.

Enjoy it while it lasts. The one two punch of more miners noticing this and switching their rigs over and the resulting difficulty rise that comes with it, along with a decline in demand will probably mean in a couple of days the profits will be back down to normal.

Yeah, you should be fine flashing them while they are still on the PCIe risers. I have done this many times, both to modify the BIOS and to flash it back to the original image in case I am troubleshooting or selling the card.

It really doesn't pay to solicit input on interest when you leave out the most important details. I am sure a lot of miners are interested in a decent hosting provider but they need to know a few things, such as general location and cost. Also, can the rig owners come on-site or is it strictly a send you the miners and trust you type of operation?

To test and be sure that all their equipment and settings are correct before the actual launch. The first few minutes/hours of mining after a launch often produce the most lucrative earnings so you don't want to be wasting that precious window of time setting things up. Also, you don't need to spend hours on the testnet, just a few minutes of mining will verify you have everything setup correctly for when the real thing launches.

I have a few of these boards too and have so far experienced no issues with them for over a period of several months. I use powered risers on all the slots so I do not plug in any of the Molex connectors on the motherboard, which is maybe one difference. Also, I do not use the SATA power connector as according to the manual it only serves to "enhance the power of rear USB ports".

However, I suspect your issue is more to do with the open box nature of the motherboards than anything else. Realize that most open box items are returns from customers and NewEgg probably does a very basic functionality test, meaning pop in a CPU and ram and check that it boots. It is possible some exhibited issues with the first owner who then sent them back, or even the first owner may have done something with it to damage it in a way to not easily be detected right away.

CPUs, RAM, Motherboards and PSUs are items that I stay away from on refurbished and open box items, as they are products that can hide defects initially even though they may already be on their way to failure. GPUs aren't as bad to buy secondhand as they will usually fail right away if you subject them to 3D graphics testing such as Futuremark's line of benchmarks and of course mining. Most bad GPUs can be fleshed out within a day or two and sent back, however the other components I listed can sometimes take weeks/months before exhibiting strange issues or outright failing.

The problem is not with the Whattomine or similar "calculator" sites as much is is with the general ignorance of most of the people on here and in the general population. It is a contagion of laziness, as there are countless posts of people asking what equipment shoudl they buy, how much will they make, what coin will make them a millionaire by next year.

My advice is to first bone up on some basic mathematics you *should have* learned in school. Next spend more than 5 minutes researching the subject before posting stupid questions. Research terms such as Network Difficulty and Game Theory to start to understand how things work in mining and the markets. Go to Investopedia and other similar sites to learn about basic trading terminology and skills. Understand that most people are going to mindlessly flock to whatever coin is most profitable to mine in any given moment, even though most of them will not be able to sell their coins until several days after when all the variable will have changed by then.

Again, the only thing wrong with Whattomine is the lazy and ignorant's expectations that a visit to a single site will given them all the answers they are looking for without having to put in any effort themselves.

Yes, I realize most hobbyist type coders cannot make such a program, but like I said with the amounts of money it appears Claymore is pulling in you would think some professional coders would take up the challenge. There are people who work for Nvidia and AMD who I am sure would be more than capable of such a thing and they could earn a sizable income on the side, possible enough to quit their full-time jobs.

I am surprised that no one else has coded a competing miner yet with all the money that can be made. Even if someone charged 0.5% fee they would still make a lot of money assuming their miner's performance was similar. I know many coders in the professional world are no where near making $50k a month, so where is all the talent hiding?

Prices are not normal yet. I just looked up a 8 GB RX580 selling for $269 on New Egg. Before the run-up in prices this last spring you could get the same card for $209 and sometimes on sale for $199. I have invoices from that time period to back this up so I am not just succumbing to false memory. I have stopped building new rigs for the time being and letting the market sort itself out. I think the premiums on hardware need to come down quite a bit yet from their highs and maybe when this has happens I will take another look.

Also, similar to the poster above me, if I were to build a new rig I will probably go with Nvidia for their better power efficiency and more flexibility with which algorithm you can run. Once payback periods start pushing out to a year or longer, you cannot ignore such factors like you could back in the days where anything you bought could be paid off in 3 months.

I don't use them so I was only going by what their Seller section shows on payments. If that is the case I would definitely open up a ticket with their support department. Seems bitcoins price goes up all of these shady pools and exchanges get even more greedy. Once you get your money off of them I would avoid using Nicehash in the future, as there are a lot more trustworthy pools to mine at and which don't gouge you with 3-4% fees.

I think this is indeed the issue as I mine on ethermine and only have a few % total stales, but I have a fair amount of miners pointed there. If I look at an individual miner's stats they can range anywhere from 0% stales up to 8%, but the average of all my miners is only 3%.

So while the shorter block times are causing more stales in general, I think it is just more noticeable for smaller hashrate users than it is for larger miners. It's probably just normal variance and you don't notice it when the stale rates are lower, but when you see a 8 or 10% in the stales column you think suddenly something is wrong. Check back in a few hours and I suspect it will have dropped again.

This just shows that Nicehash needs to update their withdrawal policies. I suppose at one time 0.01 BTC wasn't that much (~$10 when BTC was $1,000) but now with BTC setting new highs that 0.01 BTC is worth $60 and may soon be worth $100 with $10k BTC.

It's one thing to leave a couple of dollars stuck on an exchange or pool, but quite another to have them freeze close to $100. Best thing the OP could do is complain to them and also the authorities in their jurisdiction. One person might not make a change, but I suspect there are others in your situation or at least would like to see the minimums reduced since the value of BTC is soaring.

EDIT: I was thinking more about what I posted so I checked out the Nicehash website as it did seem hard to believe they had such a high withdrawal amount, and the first thing I seen was "Payments from 0.001 Bitcoin". So something doesn't add up with the OPs story.

This is indeed a nice project, but like with most nice DiY projects, you relied on having a lot of existing stuff on-hand to begin with in order to make your final product so cheap. For those of us without laser etchers, chemicals and the like it would be quite a bit more. This isn't to detract from your project in anyway, just an observation.

I think the best idea for those who only need to store only one or two private keys would be to get one (or more) of the Cryptosteel products. The nice thing about these is you can assemble any address and reuse it once you send the funds off your old private key. They do cost more than the DiY method, but again it is a scale thing. If you are going to make 10 or more homemade keys then yes that is probably the cheaper method once you acquire all the ancillary equipment and chemicals to make it possible, but if you are only looking at one or two keys than i think the commercial  products are probably the way to go.

This was actually a good read and I feel the same way as the author on a good portion if it. I also feel bitcoin gold is going to amount to nothing and I am looking to sell it off as soon as I can.

Between Bitcoin and Bitcoin 2x however, like the author I feel it may be harder to make the correct call right away, so I am contemplating on just converting into fiat on both chains if the opportunity(high prices) arises. Once chain may eventually dominate and I would be taking a slight risk, but also I believe sooner or later the winner will also have a significant dip where I can buy back in. I also think, as does the author, that the 2x camp will artificially pump their coins value at first, so in reality I should get at least 150% combined value by selling off both chains, this increasing my chances of being able to get back in the winning chain at a later time at or under cost.

I lean toward this assessment as being the case in the future as well.  If Bitcoin survives that long, the fees will be more than enough to incentivize miners to keep the network secure. Also, the current amount of hash rate securing the network is actually quite excessive, so in the future you only need enough to make it cost prohibitive to keep the attackers at bay. Anyway, as been mentioned, I doubt many of us will still be here in 100 years to worry about it and with 100 years worth of forks in between, it's hard to even imagine what Bitcoin would even look like by then.

Well we would never have 21 Million coins in existence as many Bitcoins are locked up and/or lost. I think some estimates are that only ~ 19 million Bitcoins would even be available to spend, unless Satoshi's locked coins one day would move. Also the last coins will be mined in the year 2100 something, so it is still a long way off to worry about for most of us. So for most intents and purposes the majority of Bitcoin has already been mined and is available, so the relatively small trickle that will continue until mining is no longer viable should not be a cause for concern.