80*C might be okay for a 2-hour gaming session every couple days, but I sure wouldn't want an expensive GPU running like that 24/7. Heat's a serious danger -- heat and time is a dramatically more significant danger. Exposing GPU to significant heat ultimately reduces MTBF by increasing electromigration. I don't have enough info to know how non-linear heat increase and MTBF reduction is over time, though. I ate the power cost when I was GPU mining and set up some window fans in Summer to keep them around 72*C.

Like someone else said - undervolting's a good solution. A lot of the time, you can keep stock clocks and reduce the voltage a bit while keeping it stable for a few degrees less heat as well as a boost in power efficiency. Aside the cost reduction by increasing efficiency, you're also effectively extending the life of your card, which can be significant if you have a very expensive and efficient (where you pay more up-front for paying less long-term) newer card.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=192854

Apparently misinfo. OP is now edited to show 10 days. My bad.

Agree with that. Especially nobody with a family should even consider getting paid in Bitcoin while it's so volatile. If you're working to increase your money score - sure, why not? Long-term, Bitcoin's has a ton of potential, so it's pretty easy to be bullish. If you're working to survive, absolutely not. I'd definitely convert a good chunk of USD to BTC for retirement, but I'm very young, so I have the benefit of being able to recover relatively quickly and easily.

This has been talked about before, though. I think the most logical way of this playing out is to have employer direct deposit into a "Bitcoin bank" which can immediately convert the USD to BTC (BitInstant style). A lot of employers let you divvy up your pay to different banks/CUs, so you could put, say - 20% "automatically" into Bitcoin, and still have 80% in USD. The employer doesn't need to do anything different than they already do - they still get their paper trail, taxes are still withheld as required, etc.

Seems legit.

We shouldn't conclude anything, because the information sucks.

That's probably true. Maybe they buy others' drugs and weapons with a share of the profit and put revenues to cover costs back to USD -- Idunno their mindset. Even if they are speculating, though, they obviously have a long position, so that would increase the price because those coins will probably be out of circulation for a significantly longer duration than just the time for escrow to release.

Usage % does not normalize how large the purchases were.

For all we know, 80% of Paypal users bought 1 month's worth, and 80% of BTC/CB users bought 2 year's worth. Especially because I think Bitcoin users would be more eager to show their support and exacerbate the results of accepting BTC (through CB), the results don't really mean anything except that Bitcoin usage among customers is insignificant compared to other means.

I think that's pretty hard to say. Sellers aren't necessarily converting their BTC to USD upon receiving, and may hold, since they're obviously interested in cryptography and Bitcoin itself to at least some extent. It's not like they're using BitInstant.

It should probably be noted that Bitcoin was released as an extremely incomplete product, and the default Bitcoin client's made a lot of progress over its earlier releases. It's like writing off computers because it's a two-ton machine which takes a small warehouse to hold. Kickstarter's probably a fair example, but I've never heard of Pinterest, so I'm either under a rock, or it's not as popular as you think.

Bitcoin has one of the biggest hurdles of ANY venture - and that's education and social acceptance. It's the hallmark of a revolutionary product. Bitcoin is an educational challenge because there's a LOT going behind the scenes. Few people really know the mechanics of how USDs are made and regulated, but the government's gone around that obstacle with their product by just declaring it the only legal tender. We don't understand it, we just use it - because in most cases, we have to.

Bitcoin has a particularly bad time handling education, because when it was created, there was no press coverage. Compare that to something like "Mint" coins from Canada, where everyone figured they might encounter it since it came from the government, and the press started off by explaining what it was and how it might affect us. The press has started doing that with Bitcoin, but generally not in "everyman" media. There wasn't that initial hype -- media outlets didn't spend a few days talking about the implications of Bitcoin and how it worked, so it's really been all on the devs, businessmen, and evangelists. Bitcoin didn't really have a honeymoon period in the media, it just has a writer every now and then finding it interesting how dramatic some of the financial numbers are, either in the exchanges, or with illegal goods - and every now and then, a talking head will go on about how Bitcoin's going to enable criminals in a revolutionary new way, stopping just short of making a public call to action for government regulation.


-But yeah, merchant adoption does suck. With a lot of anonymous products Bitcoin users are familiar with, there's acceptance for donations and payment, but rarely outside that. It's kind of silly that I first shop for a store on the Bitcoin Trade Wiki before shopping for products, and I don't think it's reasonable to expect consumer adoption while that's still happening - but there are a lot of VCs who are aware of this and working on the next big thing. They really are out there (and by "there," I mean here), so if you have a very clever idea and release it publicly with a pseudo-resume saying why you and whoever you're with can implement this well, then ask for funding, someone will likely tap you eventually. They're looking at services like BitPay and BitInstant, because ease-of-use (reducing the education burden) is key to Bitcoin adoption, even moreso than just talking about Bitcoins publicly - because the Bitcoin infrastructure right now is not a collection of products ready for the public. Buying Bitcoins shouldn't be something you need to "plan" for... The way Gox and other exchanges make you wait (because we haven't found enough good, cheap, quick ways around AML regs), it's as bad as filing your fucking tax returns. Legal tender, AML, and tax laws all burden Bitcoin in ways more profound than almost every other product, and ease-of-use suffers because of it, which hurts adoption rate.

I really think, when we see either a Bitcoin ATM or a debit card which can take and give both fiat and BTC - or even just a legitimate bank/CU, merchant adoption (esp. B&M, where Bitcoin has practically no presence) is going to start soaring. When I can use my BTC in the Bank of BitInstant - or whatever - and use it like USD with a debit card, I can basically use BTC everywhere. Right now, I can't really take my Bitcoins with me. I don't want to store coins on a phone, and I definitely am not going to be pressing my phone against a cash register dongle like the world's biggest douchebag. Physical coins are unsuitable for reasons I don't think I need to get into - and I gotta poop, so...

Yup.

"'Usage %' is what percentage of the quantity of transactions were using that processor, and "Revenue %" is the percentage of the actual revenue came from that type (since you can buy anywhere from a month of gold to multiple years in one transaction)."

Err. Wait. So the miner with a lower difficulty and higher hashrate is sending LESS shares?

The idea behind share difficulty is to reduce bandwidth costs for all involved. Basically, by sending you more difficult work, they don't need to send you as much. A higher-powered mining thread should thus have more difficult shares so it isn't sending as much work. A more difficult share receives a higher reward than a less difficult share, so it's supposed to roughly balance out. (think of increasing difficulty as increasing voltage, decreasing current, and maintaining the same power)

Their SSL cert expired today after one year. The renewal email probably went to the original tosaki instead of the third or whichever we're on, heh. I didn't even know they had HTTPS

Probably safe.

Okay, but how will you be incorporating the rock idea?

I'd think Bitcoin's the perfect medium of exchange for VCs funneling money INTO "the black market eBay."

I'm assuming he meant a credit voucher for his own store, not someone else's.

Worried they're going to get addicted to crack??

SR is a huge consumer vendor, and there aren't very many large-scale BTC vendors. Bitcoin is also very well-suited to purchases of illegal goods, just like Tor - but I don't think you'd tell your friends not to use Tor because people use it for child porn, drugs, and assassins for hire. It can also be used to "hide" a community of upbeat, positive people looking to impact the lives of others in a good way, which obviously isn't allowed on public Internet.

Sounds more like a cash grab to me. New orders cost a lot more, they can ship to more people in line, and they may not have immediately sold the BTC they collected. Since the refunds are basically forced (48h ultimatum via email is absurd), I really doubt BFL didn't think this one through.

I have a hard time believing that's legal.

Miners do not determine price. The amount of BTC they generate is insignificant at this point. Price determines amount of hashpower, definitely not the other way around. (JIC you were going on that train of thought -- not sure if you were)

GPU miners are in the worst spot, because the FPGA and ASICs sure aren't shutting down when price decreases. GPU miners are soon to be phased out of the market -- we're just waiting for more ASICs to ship.

As for why it's declined... no clue. I don't think anyone really thinks SR's down for the count, or even for a long period of time, so I don't think it's a reaction to that news. Bitcoin's an extremely speculative currency, and I think it's a bad idea to consider it "a long-term investment." I just bought a bunch, and I generally dislike holding many coins anymore, so I figure that's a decent indication to buy. With margin trading back on the rise, movements are going to start becoming more dramatic. When there's a small move, positions will be forced closed, creating a domino effect until they run into a bid/ask wall the orders can't chew down. For months after Bitcoinica shut down, there weren't very large competitors to fill the void, but that's changing, for better or worse. Incidentally, when people are force-liquidated out of loans they have with me on BFX, I take that as a good indication to take their old position, just at the new price (and since the loan closed, that money's released back to me to do just that!).

That'd probably work in the majority of cases.

Act local!