I'm pretty sure CBP is not hanging out on bitcointalk looking to nab people not paying import duty.

Having worked with large corporations that deal with China commonly, "engineering sample" and other such tricks are pretty much par for the course.  It's exceptional when something is shipped with the price the actual ordering party paid for it - it's usually many fractions less.

This usually is fine as long as you don't need to put in any insurance claims, or do stupid shit with it like ship 10 pallets of cisco gear with a declared value of $100

these are not made for mining farms

I agree the wholesale cost is way too high, but I'm sure the initial batch will have no problems selling out.  I'm more interested to see what happens with follow-on sales.

Well, scroll all the way out.

Then select "H4" instead of "M3" (which I believe is the default - at least it came up that way for me)

That will show you 4 hour candles vs. 3 minute, and goes back to April 10th.  In that context, the recent candles look fairly small.

Also keep in mind volume (the vertical bars on the bottom) is equally as important to consider.  A day that has a 10% swing that trades at very small volume is less significant than the large volume movements (at least to me).

it's been especially volatile in the past couple days, even by bitcoin standards.

The other factor is the scrolled-in graph is showing a very small ($15) spread, vs. some of the spreads when you zoom out.  So the $1.50 price movements may seem more extreme than they are if you just look at the size of the candle and not the scale.

Remember this is their first run of these.  Hopefully they get considerably cheaper.

I was interested in becoming a US wholesaler, but at 2btc wholesale pricing I just can't see people paying the margin you'd need to make on a risky venture.  Any wholesaler in it for the long game will be adding at least 50% margin to that in order to make sure they can make a profit and get more when they run out.

Is there really a market for $250-300 300mhash miners?  I think some, but I'm not betting 600btc on there being a market for even 300 of the devices.  You can whine about pricing things in btc all day if you want to, but the main market for these will be the hobbyist who wants to get into bitcoin and will have to fund that via USD.  So the US dollar cost of these is going to be very relevant.

That makes sense, and it's generally what I practice when possible in the bitcoin world.  I've paid for everything I can in btc, and accepted btc as payment for everything I've done.

However, I'm simply a very small scale exchange for a small set of people.  This means for every bitcoin I sell to someone, I need to replace it or end up cash heavy and bitcoin poor.

In this sense, for my limited market, physical bitcoins are competing against digital bitcoins for US dollars.  One of many products I may offer.  Someone very well may choose to pay a $20 above-spot fee for the security and novelty of the physical coin itself.  The same market dwindles quickly (remember, these are not hardcore believers - simply users of the bitcoin economy) when those per-coin fees get higher.  Use your own values for higher.

This is nothing new to anyone, just pointing out the model as it makes sense from my usage perspective.

It does make most sense to price these as bitcoins though, especially on the wholesale market.  So I see where this makes sense a lot more as an investment tool than a means of quick commerce.

Sounds like the mass produced coins coupled with some stickers and my laserjet is what I'll be looking for, to serve the needs of my customers

Wuji, I think the problem you (and I fwiw) have is that *everything* seems overbought when looked in historical contexts.  Bitcoin is it's own animal of course, but I largely agree with you - even $30 seems a tad on the high side, when just 3 months ago I was dumping coins at $33 due to the ridiculous ramp in price for no discernible reason.  Yes, looks stupid now - but fundamentally I still feel I was correct.

When you look at gold, real estate, stocks, etc. the same thing applies though.  Every one of those if you go back 30 years or more, is so insanely priced I don't understand it.  Look at real estate - supposedly "oversold" at the moment, but the average monthly mortgage cost is still as a percentage of total income, much more than it was even our parents lifetimes.

If you're cash heavy right now, where the hell do you run to?  Bitcoin is a small piece of that, still mostly a toy, but watching (in periods of years) it seems like a microcosm of the every other speculative asset right now.

A large part of the answer is "we're printing money like madmen" - but I don't feel that explains it all.  Real prices for assets as in % of incomes have gone up, imo, unsustainably so.  Bitcoin just seems to be following the larger trend, albeit very much exaggerated.

Fun thread

Kudos to Mike for tying to capture as much value as possible from his product for himself.  This is great, and he's the person (not resellers) everyone here should be wanting the most success for.

That said, the current website pricing is out of my market range.  I felt the previous auctions of 55-57 btc per 1btc roll were priced about right (that's around $15 per coin above spot price atm) but others are going to put their value where they feel it should be.  Right now that is higher than I think it is, thus I'll wait for the price to drop or do without.  Certainly with website pricing I couldn't get my money back reselling them in-person to friends/co-workers as I would like to do.

Pretty simple stuff here.

Mike - great job on these!  You are an extremely valuable part of the Bitcoin "movement" and when I had multiple random family members who've just heard of bitcoin ask me about the physical pieces, I realized just how important this service actually is and decided I need to help support this when possible.

What area of CA?

I'll take these for 2.5btc if still available

As a bidder, I thought this was fine.  Better than just sitting on ebay with 0 bids until 5 minutes before the end watching everyone's snipe-bots go to work.

Granted, my last bid was a bit short due to the speed at which things were moving - but I also knew that possibility while placing it.  Had I actually wanted to spend more, I would have

Congrats to the winners!  Based on my model these guys will all make money, but probably won't get rich any time soon.  Looking at 90-120 day payback based on what I think difficulty is going to do in that time period.  Very tempting to have tossed in that last few coins per unit, but you make models and rules for a reason

The *only* way this logic makes sense is if you did not specifically buy equipment to do mining with.  If you did, and were betting on the price of bitcoin to rise, you would have been better off simply using the money spent on hardware to buy bitcoins directly.

Again.  If you're buying mining equipment hoping the price will rise to make you profitable, you're doing it wrong.  Buy actual bitcoins instead, and you will make a larger profit in almost all scenarios.

replacing all other bids - 10 @ 48

10 @ 46.5

10 @ 45.5

rNY4kr9kGa88NJ5BvCqAt6nefYyhbxvqb2

Hey guys,

Just an update.  I received a response to my ticket at Bitstamp earlier this week stating the wire would arrive within 3-5 business days.  They were correct, and I received the funds in full on Friday.

So, this does look simply like growing pains.  Other than the delay in responses, they were absolutely professional about the situation - at the end offering me personal contact details in case their final resolution did not resolve the situation.

made me laugh

KISS if you want this stuff to ever ship.

I can't imagine day trading with the relatively quiet market the last week or two.  I certainly don't have the skills, or balls of steel, to do it.

During the crash I tried my hand at it (largely because even if I bet wrong, I was still picking up relatively cheap coins so I justified it in my mind).  I traded over the friday/saturday after the crash, and had a really fun time doing it.

But, that was with regular (every 2-4 hours) $20-30 price movements.  You almost had to be an idiot to lose money doing so, if you followed any sort of non-emotional trading strategy.

I made a decent amount, but it really is nothing more than gambling.  Very fun, addictive, gambling - but pretty much on par with poker as far as I can tell.  Sure, you can increase your odds considerably by knowing the game, but you're in the end at the mercy of factors outside of your control.

So - my very naive advice is treat it like a trip to Vegas.  Set your loss limits, and make sure you get out if you ever reach those.  That way you can think of it as cheap entertainment vs. losing money with a financial instrument.  Makes a lot more sense to me that way, and it's a whole lot less stressful

I kind of hope to see volatility again (not really - I think it's bad for Bitcoin as a whole) during a weekend so I can sit down with a glass of whiskey, do some trading, and talk shit in chat with the other day traders  Fun times!