First off, if it says 2/unconfirmed then you should be fine  Each confirmation comes from every block that is solved.  If miners' luck is low and blocks are being solved slowly, it takes more time for the transactions to be confirmed.

Second, in my opinion embrace your paranoia.  You may thank yourself for it later.  Bitcoin is new, growing, and carries higher risks.  I have done my research enough to know what most of those risks are.  It's better to be safe, ask questions and continually try to learn rather than to assume the safety of your assets.

Welcome aboard  Glad to hear new people are making Bitcoin transactions out there.

Most fair coin is debatable.

Millions of exchanges?  Regardless, the ONLY RealCoin exchange would be owned by the same person owning every RealCoin in existence.  Doing this would make Bitcoin more unfair because the exchange owner would gain additional Bitcoin leverage.  RealCoin would simply be an indirect means by which the RealCoin exchange owner gains Bitcoin leverage.

Let's say that happens.  Here are a couple possible scenarios:
1)  All pre-mined RealCoins sell on exchange for $.01 as a starting point.  If this $.01 price remains constant for the entire distribution of them, then you are essentially adding $10,000 worth of Bitcoin to the Bitcoin market and nothing more.

2)  All pre-mined RealCoins sell on an exchange for $.01 an prices increase.  The more prices increase, the more unfair the whole situation becomes as the RealCoin owner simply keeps a few million for himself.

No thanks.

Having all coins pre-mined is fair?  Are you kidding? 

Mining is not buying coins.  It is a bit like buying coins with a hardware hedge, but it is not buying them.  More miners also = increased network strength which is a benefit no matter how you look at it.

While it is true mining is impractical for many people, this is only true because of 1) aforementioned GPU arms race and 2) current price.  But if (when) a huge new influx of users arrives, demand and price will go up.  

I'm pulling figures out of nothing here, but lets say 1 BTC gets distributed to each of 2,000,000 new users/miners slowly.  It will be a lot better in terms of market stability if these 2,000,000 new users already had 1 BTC floating around in their account rather than if 2,000,000 new users scrambled to buy 1 BTC each all at once.  In the latter scenario there could be a supply problem with a greater incentive to hoard; in the former case there is none.

And yes, I realize this a vast oversimplification.  I'm isolating contexts hardcore.

It's not a matter of how many people use it, it's a matter of fair distribution with a deflationary currency.

Hoarding WILL be an issue if a huge influx of users ever arrives at some point, driving both demand and prices up.

The shifting of the decimal will be easier the more evenly distributed the currency becomes.  Many people are very weary of buying BTC in general.  A client/miner will allow the average Joe to download a simple program and start earning some BTC.  Obviously there are tons of scenarios that could potentially unfold, but a deflationary bubble is a very real possibility.  I think one of the best means of counteracting a deflationary bubble is to widely distribute the currency in it's early stages.

In my opinion, the problem has already been confounded by the premature implementation of GPU mining.

-_-

I'm not sure if people have realized this yet, but RealCoin is attempting to offer an idea so simple, so basic, and yet so NEEDED that can't be found anywhere in Bitcoin:

A client/miner rolled into one.

Now, assuming LTC already acts as a counterpart to Bitcoin (I'm not sure to what extent this is true, I've never dabbled in LTC) then Real Coin really doesn't serve much of a purpose in my opinion.

Why don't you get in touch with Gavin to implement an automatic miner in the Bitcoin client?

My conclusion:  Slightly misdirected focus on the needs of the growing digital currency market, but your ideas are DESPERATELY needed elsewhere.

Edit:  If you can work with Gavin to create a client/miner/AND exchange account rolled into one, that'd be even better   

714 schooled all you fools.

This is from the perspective of a guy whose buttcheeks actually see the light of day on a regular basis.

Bump.  Price lowered.

Glad I could help

Very possible.  $10 just doesn't seem realistic to me yet for a number of possible reasons.

I'm optimistic.  It would really suck for new users to get caught up in the crazy selling that would've occurred one week from now (right as their funds are arriving in exchanges) on the way down from $10-$11.

If we had shot past $7.25 last night, it likely would not have stopped at $8.

Edit:  On the flip side, going down to $5 now would be worse in my opinion.  But then again, I'm holding temporarily from $7 because I did not expect this dip.  On a large scale, $5 has its merits.

Also, with reference to one of your last questions, if you mine in a pool with more people, you will receive fewer Bitcoins per block solved.  But, your pool will also be solving blocks faster than other pools.  In other words, in large pool you earn smaller payments more quickly, but in a small pool you earn larger payments more slowly.

Here's a way to think about it.  Because solving blocks is a random but predictable process, the laws of probability win over time.  So, if on average it would take your hardware 1 year to solve a block at the current difficulty while mining solo, it will also take an average of 1 year to solve a block at the current difficulty level while mining in any pool.

Hello

To answer one of your questions, ATI brand graphics cards, particularly the 5xxx, 6xxx, and the new 7xxx series are generally considered the best for mining.  Many people also choose to make barebones "mining rigs."  Some of these mining rigs don't even have monitors!  This is because there is an electrical cost to run a Bitcoin miner for months on end and these people want to make their mining rigs as electrically efficient as possible.

But, to be quite honest, unless you're willing to spend literally thousands upon thousands of dollars on new computer hardware, it won't be worth it to try solo mining.

Consider this:  I have been Bitcoin mining with a $400 graphics card, an ATI Radeon 6970.  Now, while it is not the most efficient Bitcoin mining hardware, it still has pretty good Bitcoin mining power.  I have been using this card for almost 6 months non-stop every day for Bitcoin mining, and I have never solved a block once.  In other words, it could be months to years before you ever solve a block mining solo.

The best thing to do if you have a decent graphics card (or a few of them) is to join a 'mining pool.'  The largest one is at www.deepbit.com  but there are some other very good ones.   All of the miners in the pool essentially combine their processing power to solve a block.  If they succeed in solving a block, each miner will receive a payout of the 50 BTC prize that is proportional to their share of the work (i.e. more powerful machines do more work and thus get more reward than weaker machines).

Mining in general works like this (others on this forum have a better understanding than I do):

When any Bitcoin transaction is made anywhere, it is broadcast to every "node" or computer in the network and is encoded in a 'block' to be solved by the network.  In other words, blocks contain records of the Bitcoin's transaction history.  Solving blocks is an important step in verifying transactions in the network to eliminate things like fraud.  

So, in extremely general terms, the nodes basically say, "Ok! I need to solve this block/problem so I can help verify the transactions inside it!"  As soon as any node solves the block, it says, "Hey other nodes, I got the answer!"  And so it sends the answer off to all the other nodes.  The other nodes look at the answer and say, "That's correct!  All of the transactions in this block look good to me!" This is how transactions are confirmed by the network.

This is also why you may hear the term "blockchain."  The blockchain is a history of all transactions in the network. Solving blocks adds a new block to the end of the blockchain.

The difficulty adjusts to the amount of processing power in the network every 2 weeks.  So, the difficulty will only get harder when there is consistently more processing power in the network, and will get easier when there is less processing power.  If there is no change in processing power, there will be no change in difficulty.  This is to help make the rate of Bitcoin generation predictable over time.  Every 2 weeks, the difficulty will adjust such that blocks will be solved on average every 10 minutes.

In Mexico, one 5850 will get you an open bar, a donkey show, and all the women you could ask for.

Bitcoin Magic cards?

1/500...Interrupt.   Trample, Flying.

Edit:  Tapping Bitcoin causes Bitcoin to deflate.

Duly noted.  Unfortunately HDDs are outrageously expensive these days.  I plan on using the 1 TB HDD in my spare desktop as additional data storage if space starts getting tight.  I have a SATA-USB data transfer cable to do the job.

The reason I chose 3 crossfired 6970's was because I already owned one 6970  and it happens to be a triple slot ASUS.  It doesn't fit in my midtower-case and I can't fit both it and a wireless card on my spare motherboard.  This allowed me to transfer my 6970 into the 3X crossfire setup and still be able to use my existing shitty MSI motherboard to run my spare 5870.  

Trust me, I considered the 7970s.  But 2 6970's at $700 total beats the $1100 minimum I would've paid for the 7970's.  I chose the option that I felt best utilized all my parts and would allow me to retain the highest hashing power.  3X 6970 plus 1X 5870 to me was preferrable than 2X7970 and 1X 5870 with a spare 6970.  Even if I sold the 6970, I'd still be $200-$300 short of where I'm at now cause the 7970's are so damn expensive.

Edit:  I also plan on keeping the side of the case off and blowing a fan directly on it at all times.  I'm in the basement of a house in the Midwest and it's a nice and cool 60 degrees down here.

I'm surprised more people haven't made a big deal about Jim Kramer being on the show.

If any investors watched that show, you can bet they're curious, especially if they've heard of Bitcoin at least once prior to watching.

Hola.

So, I finally decided to make the leap to improve my hardware.  I wanted to get some general opinions from the community regarding my new computer purchase because, in all truthfulness, I spent quite a bit of money (used a combination of new and old parts) and I could use a little reassurance that I made a decent decision.

Keep in mind that I realize this is by no means an efficient mining rig for the cost.  In this sense it's downright inefficient.  I wanted a full-blown kick-ass computer that will serve my gaming and music production needs as well as mining needs.  My main idea was to essentially slowly buy Bitcoins (by mining them) using my hardware as a hedge.  I wanted a computer that would maintain good resale value for a few years.  In other words, if the value of Bitcoins dropped to zero tomorrow, I want to know that my hardware is still a valuable asset.  I have a 4-year in-store warranty on all parts.

The specs:
Intel I7-2600k  3.4 GHz Socket H2
Corsair 16GB (4X4GB) DDR3-1866 MHZ  Ram
3 X Radeon HD 6970  Crossfired
Samsung SH-222AB-RSBS 22X Internal DVD SATA Drive
1 TB HDD
Windows 7 64-bit
Cooler Master RC-942-KKN1 Full Tower Case
Thermaltake TRX-1200M PSU
ASUS Maxiumus IV Extreme B3 RoG Edition Motherboard

Building this computer allowed me to utilize some spare parts I had to build another desktop with a single 5870 which will also be used for mining and Bitcoin storage with minimal Internet usage outside of having to connect to the Bitcoin client and to mine.

Electricity is included in my rent. 

Thoughts?  Be honest if it sucks, but be nice if you say it sucks   Adrenaline gets pumping when I drop a load of cash that I can't afford without a good chance of recouping my immediate losses.