i'll confess that i don't understand this.

leaving your client running 24/7 is an invitation to a hack.  you know -- port scanners?

and what's the difference if your pooled mining proceeds show up in your wallet more or less instantly?  they're in the blockchain.  that's all that matters...

i mine pooled.  i open my client maybe once every two or three weeks.  from the account of a separate user with an extremely restrictive firewall.

so are you mining solo?

why else would you run the client 24/7?

My best math teacher said that if you ever wrote "obviously..." or "clearly..." you could just as easily write the supporting statement. Do that. Your argument will have this form: A thing is a currency if and only if it satisfies these requirements.... Bitcoin does not satisfy this particular requirement... therefore it is not a currency.

so it's really only representative of solo miners, right?

i mean, how many people start their client even once a day - or once a week, for that matter?

pooled miners probably never (effectively) run it.

i've gotta think we're approaching half a million users.  it just doesn't show up on this chart.

Perhaps. Or perhaps doing things like designing working/secure phone apps, shop POS systems, ATMs, competent and easy exchanges, and easy-to-use secure wallet software just takes a bit more time.

What do you do on very short (30 second) rounds then, then the number "N" has not yet been reached?

So you seriously think US Dollar would be accepted as a currency in 2033? Highly unlikely, as a museum exhibit - maybe. So the question about "cost" in 2033 is moot. It will be exactly 1 bitcoin per bitcoin.

If you haven't mined at deepbit then you won't understand.

You know why I do it?  I'm getting less than *HALF A PERCENT* rejects.  That's right.  Half a percent.  Not five.  Not six.  Half. 

That right there (plus not being down randomly, plus being credited for all submitted work) is why they're my #1 pool, with all the others as backups.  And screw variance.  If I wanted to risk it all I could solo mine.

Day trading can be very risky and I honestly wouldn't recommend it with 8000 dollars on the line.

I'd also like to point out that with hardware he has a way to recoup some if not close to all of his money back. If he buys coins then he doesn't get that security blanket.

Here's another way to look at the OP's investment.  He could have spent $8000 on bitcoins.  I'm sure they'll be $13 again this weekend, so I'll use that as the price.

8000/13 = 615

At 7 gigahash the OP should be mining around 3.5 bitcoins a day, at a power cost of at least .5 btc/day.  Now assuming no difficulty increases we're talking 200 days to earn that many BTC.

Look at prices and difficulties right around the end of last year (200 days ago) to guestimate how likely it is your hardware will *ever* generate anywhere near 600 bitcoins over its lifetime.  You've just bet 8000 dollars no ASIC of FPGA miners get introduced until well into next year, and the 7 series radeons won't be very good at mining -- both very poor bets.

LOL!  you're such a troll!

Many from the states will quit, but there are still countries like China who is and will keep profiting from mining for a long while.

My question is, what would happen when mining eventually stops? What would become of BitCoin? Would it still be functional? I don't fully understand how this works.