I feel like "I have my doubts" isn't a great way of putting it---it makes it sound like I don't think Bitcoin is a a solid idea. I actually do think so, in that I think it has as much chance of succeeding as any particular solid idea, which is not that high.

It's rare that you come across free lunches: investments with a high chance of success usually don't have a very high payout for success, and vice versa. Bitcoin is no exception. If it becomes generally accepted, the payout is enormous: not only will we few have dramatically improved the world, but we will all be fabulously wealthy. It would be too much to ask that this was also likely to happen. A 1% chance or so is more than enough, as long as the downside isn't too far down.

I think of it as something like investing in a startup or a high-yield bond.

Okay, Portal 2 goes to rebuilder!

To anyone reading this who hasn't played Portal yet, I really can't recommend it enough. It's easily the best Steam purchase I've made yet. It's the reason Portal 2 will be the first game I've ever pre-purchased, in fact.

If he just got into it, my question would be whether he actually has 40 BTC to buy it with. But I guess you could always loan or sell them to him.

If you can get him to say "Yeah I'll do it," I'll consider him first-come at that point.

Buy Portal for only 10 BTC: a nearly 50% discount from the retail price! See rest of thread for details.

Currently one can pre-purchase two copies of Portal 2 for 79.99 USD, compared to 49.99 USD per copy on release day (April 19 in North America, your mileage may vary). Two copies of the original Portal are also included, normally priced at 14.99 USD apiece, making this about a 38.5% markdown overall.

I'm looking to buy Portal 2. Is anyone else interested in a copy of either game?

• Portal: 9.23 USD (currently about 11.71 BTC), 2 copies available
• Portal 2: 30.76 USD (currently about 39.03 BTC), 0 copies available

As long as I can sell off Portal 2, I'll buy the double pack. If you're only interested in Portal 1, that's fine, but you'll have to hope someone else comes along and picks up 2.

I'll determine the actual exchange rate by taking the readout from this converter at some agreed-upon time, unless something wacky happens with the markets just beforehand.

Post here to claim one of the available games. First-come, first-served!

This is the first time I've ever wished I wasn't a Dropbox user (so I could become one for the 5 BTC).

1 BTC sent. Thanks for your work.

I updated my copy of poclbm and haven't gotten any stales since, so I guess that was the problem. Thanks.

I'd be fine removing it from the GUI, and having a proper installer that offers to install separate mining software as well.

Either that, or renaming it something like "Help process transactions" and not even indicating that this might be profitable somehow. Folks who know about things like fold@home might be interested just out of charity.

Edited to add: The first option is probably better from a conservationist standpoint. When we already have plenty of nodes processing cheaply on GPUs, adding CPUs to the mix mostly serves to waste energy.

I'm not talking about now. Obviously most of the bitcoins are not yet spoken for.

In 2014, most of the bitcoins will be mined, but "mined" is not "spoken for." There will still be an easy way of getting them: perform a service and charge for it. I'm not talking about what is really going on, I'm talking about perceptions. Speaking for myself, I only started looking at Bitcoin because of the potential near-term gain from mining. This is far from the most useful thing about it, but a point that draws people in is not a point to ignore.

Being an early adopter is only a benefit if Bitcoin actually succeeds. What you're calling "guilt" is actually concern that Bitcoin won't actually succeed with the current model, if potential adopters are turned off by the fact that most of the wealth is already spoken for.

Anyway, as I said, the difference between 'linear vs. exponential' and 'asymptotically constant vs. exponential' is really not worth concerning myself with. In the long run, ordinary and "inflationary" bitcoin will be nearly equally deflationary. I think 50 BTC forever would be better in several ways (simplicity of calculation, simplicity of understanding for newcomers, increased incentive to contribute to the network) but I think the system in place now is good enough and forking the project at such an early stage would just cause problems.

I thought I was already using a miner with long polling support. I'll take another look.

Current Round Duration: 01d 01h 50m 39s

Look at the time of my first post in this thread (saying I was joining in). It was about 15 hours ago. I'm not sure what room there is for doubt.

(Another question: why, right after I say 8.0 Ghash/s is low-variance enough, do I get to watch my first round go on for over a day? Just weird luck, I guess...)

That explains why I'm getting some stale shares, but not why I'm getting more.

I seem to be getting stale/invalid shares at about twice the rate on Bitcoin Pool that I get with slush's pool (26/1900 versus 131/17300). This seems like a pretty big difference to be explained by normal variance, especially since BitcoinPool is advertising "no more stale shares". What other explanation is there?

Haven't heard back from Gusti in over 12 hours. The offer still stands, and is looking a bit better now with the Mt. Gox spot price of BTC having dropped.

I've started putting some of my own resources into this pool. 8.0 Ghash/s is good enough to keep my variance pretty low---I can comfortably expect a few payouts a day.

If the hashrate improves further and the fees stay as low as they are, I may drop out of slush's pool entirely. No hard feelings, slush---I don't agree at all that it's somehow "unfair" to take a 2% fee, but it's only reasonable for me to charge whatever the market will bear for my hashes.

As part of my effort to build trust with Gusti, I've given him my personal phone number. If he comes here claiming I ripped him off and posts this number, I give you all explicit permission to call and harass me at all hours. (I'm in the Eastern time zone, if you want to schedule your calls for maximum inconvenience.)

Direct deposits aren't always fast though, so you should wait until sometime at least mid-next-week before doing so. (Of course you won't have to do so at all since I am going to pay him.)

All right, I've sent you a PM. Everyone else, in case gusti isn't interested in selling me all 500 BTC, feel free to express interest as well.

The ticker still says 0.85 for me.

If you have a bank account in the United States, I can direct-credit your account in exchange for Bitcoin, or have a check mailed to you. I'm offering 0.85 USD per BTC (the current low price on Mt. Gox, rounded down). No additional fees.

I'm looking for 500 BTC total.

If you're interested, post here and I'll send you a message.