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I'm going old school... under the matress.
encrypted key paper wallet.. literally under the matress... only going this route cuz I have a waterbed.. Hence it is a non-trivial matter to actually get under the matress.
Sigg
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I just pulled up your site from work... FYI, its very formatting unfriendly to IE7.
The hand graphic holding the card moves up to the top and covers the redeem box.
Also.. not everyone who gets a giftcoin card is gonna have a clue what bitcoins are.. a link to a "bitcoin for beginners" section should be prominantly displayed on the landing page.
Otherwise.. AWSOME service.
Sigg
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c. De-Centralized Virtual Currencies
A final type of convertible virtual currency activity involves a de-centralized convertible virtual currency (1) that has no central repository and no single administrator, and (2) that persons may obtain by their own computing or manufacturing effort.
A person that creates units of this convertible virtual currency and uses it to purchase real or virtual goods and services is a user of the convertible virtual currency and not subject to regulation as a money transmitter. By contrast, a person that creates units of convertible virtual currency and sells those units to another person for real currency or its equivalent is engaged in transmission to another location and is a money transmitter.
See my emphasis. This is while not crystal clear but it is difficult to interpret any other way than as bitcoin miners are money transmitters if they sell for fiat. You can interpret it as you like, but what is important is how judges and regulators will interpret it and you can bet they will not be trying their best to bend over in favor of miners, the opposite is more likely. However, selling for fiat on an exchange is unlikely to make the miner a "money transmitter", because "money transmitting" function is performed in this case by the exchange. Soo.. if I contract with a mining pool to provide hashes, and get paid in BTC.. am i a miner? Or is the Pool Op the miner? After all, the mined coins go to HIS wallet when first "created" ... I'm just providing hashes.. he's the one who's building the new block, and broadcasting it out to the world to be included in the blockchain.... Sigg |
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Soo.. if I contract with a mining pool to provide hashes, and get paid in BTC.. am i a miner? Or is the Pool Op the miner? After all, the mined coins go to HIS wallet when first "created" ...
I'm just providing hashes.. he's the one who's building the new block, and broadcasting it out to the world to be included in the blockchain....
Sigg
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moved some workers to btcguild_donate
thanks for letting us help
Ditto when I get home tonight. Just moved one of my workers over as well.. Sigg |
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considering the development skill sets are COMPLETELY different (as in a programmer isn't typically a good business negotiator/strategist).. I wouldnt imagine TO much overlap. this Umm.. I'm not so sure.. the feeling I've been getting is that the hold up on HPC is not the client, but lack of paying HPC customers.. In which case it is a marketing/business issue which definately WOULD conflict with the resources needed for the MTGOX deal. Sigg |
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Start with a Bitcoin mining profitability calculator. there's a good one on BitcoinX.comThat doesn't take into account the two variables that no one can predict, Network Growth and Exchange Rate, so there's no use calculating anything with today's numbers. I alwasy just ignore exchange rate when I'm using that calculator. I figure it'll be a wash.. if the rate changes, your mined coins will be worth exactly the same as your bought coins.. Ultimately, the only use for the tool is figureing out if your various guess values for Network Growth would result in a profit or a loss. Sigg |
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Estimated...right. Measured readings vs theory. ...and how do you buy a product from ASICMiner? ...exactly?
I have ASICMiner shares btw, nothing against them, I just don't understand this Avalon is crap...crap.
I think most of the "Avalon is crap...crap" comes from them screwing the pooch so much on customer service. Like I said in another thread.. that may be the way things are done in China, but they're market isn't just in China.. its global... western expectations of customer service do apply here. I actually tried for over 2 hours to get in an order on batch #2.. At this point with their lack of communication, and ongoing lack of additional units in the wild, I'm actually glad I failed. Getting 2 prototypes out the door does not equate to "we've shipped" Soo.. yes, I DID allow my negative outlook on Avalon the business influence my inferior comment about Avalon the product. Sigg |
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[I'm not following. Avalon has shipped the most advanced mining device to ever hash the blockchain. Who are they inferior to? The only other working ASICs belong to ASICMiner and they're built on 130nm tech. Plus they're not shipping.
Known Avalons in the wild: 154 Ghash with another _possible_ 66 for a total of 220 Ghash at approximately 10 watts per Ghash Known ASICMiner: 2,000+ Ghash at an estimated 8 watts per Ghash At this point with what is publically known, I'd say yes, Avalon is definately inverior. 110nm vs 130nm is not the end all-be all of who is more advanced. Sigg |
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Wow, this blows. If I ordered an ASIC right now, by the time I actually received it, the network hash rate could possibly be up to 500 TH/s, putting difficulty at around 69.8M. So a single 60 GH/s ASIC would only make around .43 BTC/day  don't forget to factor in that just cuz you finally got your ASIC, there aren't more comming online soon after... that .43 BTC/day is gonna go down fast. go over to bitcoinx.com and user their profitibility calculator.. put in a starting diff of 69.8 M and play around with the "decline per year" field.. putting in .25 means that in the 12 months following when your start, diff will go up by 4x. I recently ran through the same line of reasoning you did, and pretty much came to the same conclusion.. "This Blows, better off to just buy BTC" Sigg |
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It's the market finally catching up with the organic growth & big speculative news we've seen over the last few months. Just look at google trends, the casino announcement in the US, wordpress etc.
I disagree. This is not the market catching up. This is something else. Feels like a classic bubble brought on by irrationality. I hope I am wrong. It feels to me like someone "knows something" and is accumulating in anticipation of some major announcement.. If I had to make a completely unsubstantiated guess.. I'd say some major online gambling site is going to start taking bitcoins soon, and the insiders are stocking up in anticipation of the major price spike they expect this will cause. Sigg |
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Fuck. I think I'd be better off just buying BTC.
Hrmm.. my entire post reduced to one line...  |
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Sigg - if you think ASIC mining is unprofitable medium/long term then consider the situation where everyone agrees with you.
The difficulty will stay lower and people will stick with existing graphics cards to make money. But then someone decides to get an ASIC going and makes a lot of money because no-one else is doing it.
Any market (as well as a mining market) is made of hundreds or thousands of people with graduations of opinion, the market finds a balance. Some will mine, some will invest.
Or.. I could have already ordered several rigs and am just trying to convince everyone else not to, maximizing my mining income.  Umm.. seriously.. I think we are quickly approaching (or have already reached) the overshoot where buying ASICs _at the current price_ will no longer be profitable.. I'm basing this on the amount of Ghash I think has already been ordered and paid for. This would be the medium term. In the long term, Once ASICs bottom out in price (2x ancilary component cost) I think mining will once again be very worthwhile. This assumes that one's cost of electric is <25 cents. As is now with GPUs, $/Mhash is going to reach an equilibrium with $/Kwh. When that happens, I'll be jumping back in with both feet. The longer I think about it, the happier I am that the Avalon batch #2 was such a cluster I was prevented from ordering. So yes, I am in violent agreement with everything you said. The only question is which side of the mine/invest decision is most profitable medium term. Sigg |
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It is simple, never sell your bitcoins . Then there is no tax to pay. Instead use them as a collateral for loans just like Oracle's Larry Ellison does with his Oracle shares. Unfortunately, one might have to wait until Bitcoin's "market cap" hits 10 billion USD for "stock loans" to become available.
Sooo... this works if you have a FIAT income large enough to cover the loan payments.. but I don't see how it helps if you actually want to use your bitcoins to say.. _pay off_ a mortgage... you'd just be substituting one loan for another. Maybe you could get a better interest rate, but prolly not much. And its not like you can just default on the BTC loan, as any unpaid balance becomes unearned income for tax purposes. The only way I can see this working, is if you have enough bitcoins that you can continually roll the Principle & Interest payments into new loans. If you kept this up till you died, then repayment is no longer your problem  Unfortunately, there are very few with Ellison like reserves of collateral. Seems to be a recuring theme of mine in this thread... What am I missing here? Sigg |
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ASIC's are quite different from ALL previous generations of mining hardware. The major new factor is that the manufacturers will be able to produce huge quantities of chips at very very low price per chip. I will tell you now that this basically guarantees that for a typical mining server it's price will asymptotically approach 2x cost of its auxiliary components (case, PSU, control boards etc).
I.e fully packed analog of the the avalon box will be sold for something around 300$. The price will be higher of course for new generations of more powerful mining chips.
OK.. so currently, a GPU + supporting hardware for the slot will come in at ~$450, and consume ~150 watts. This is basically a 3:1 ratio .. Assuming auxiliary components on BFL products are comparable to Avalon, that means that BFL should also settle in at around $300 per 100 watts, also a 3:1 ratio ... Or in other words, if your electricity costs are such that you could make a decent amount mining now with purchasing GPU's, just wait a year or two and you'll be in the exact same position, only with ASICs. I'd also like to thank you for the " 2x cost of its auxiliary components " figure.. I knew there had to be a floor, but I had no idea where it was. Sigg |
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I hope Yogafan is right. This would be the first good ASIC-related news for me since well, ever! All three of my units would be in the first batch. 7/26, 8/7, and 8/13 were the order dates.
Umm.. have to burst some bubbles here folks.. but that was 6,000 CHIPS in the first batch.. This does not equate to 6,000 orders. each unit has multiple chips .... Sigg |
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They could even have more than 6000 if yields are good. They've said that if a single hashing core was nonfunctional they can disable it and increase clocks on the other cores to compensate, so baring gross errors their yields shouldn't be terrible.
Hrmm.. I'm wondering if they could have up to 50% of the hashing cores bad on a chip, and use those chips in the 30Ghash version by just disabling 1/2 the cores in each chip ? ( I've always wondered just how they were gonna make the 30Ghash version.. slower clocks? fewer chips? ) Sigg |
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If Bitcoins continue to appreciate then that keeps miners profits higher and could offset the huge increase in difficulty. Once all that capacity comes online, Difficulty will be around 65 million.
If Bitcoins continue to appreciate then that keeps miners speculators profits higher. In the "buy ASIC" vs "buy BTC" debate, I see appreciation as irrelevant. In both cases, appreciation means profit. The only point to buying ASICs and mining, is if you get more profit than just bying BTC directly. (OK, yeah, there is that whole secure the network thing.. at 500Thash I think that is safely covered already) Sigg |
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If they want to keep selling the asics, they will need to lower the price.
This is a cicle that will end when you can buy 1TH at 1000$ and the biggest cost of the TCO will be the eletric energy.
When this happens, I will buy.
Yeah.. this is kinda what I was thinking also.. With current GPU mining, there is a balance between cost of hardware and electricity.. With the current state of ASIC, that balance is gone. The only way that balance will be restored is for the cost of ASICs to nosedive. That nosedive is going to cause all kinds of ROI pain for anyone (except early, existing orders) that purchase at current ASIC prices. If you aren't already in line, to late. Best to just sit things out, get a big tub of popcorn, and watch the blood flow. Once things are back in balance, we'll be back to the historical "mine if your cost of electric is 25 cents or lower" At this point, I'll be looking to pick up a bunch of 2nd hand ASICS at serious discount prices.+ Sigg |
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When Bitcoin becomes a value store worth a hundred billion dollars in todays value I will sell 1/2 of my holdings to purchase myself a yacht.
The remainder will be comfortably lived on.
100 000 000 000 / 21 000 000 = 4761.9047619
actually, quite similar thinking here.. except I'll be cashing out enough to pay off all my FIAT debt (including mortgages) when it hits $4,000 per BTC. the rest will be providing hookers and blow a very comfortable retirement. Sigg |
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