Yeah, it's already pushing $14, so SOMETHING has happened -- a drop of about $1.50 in 3 or 4 hours.

Not earth-shattering, but we sure haven't seen much excitement on Tradehill in the past week -- the volume is so low.

CPU mining definitely is a losing proposition now. I did it as recently as 2 weeks ago, but when I put in a 3rd graphics card in my fastest rig, I needed the 60W for buffer room on my PSU. So I stopped CPU mining at that point (I was only making USD 0.20/day anyhow)

No doubt the latest difficulty push CPU mining into negative territory for *all* CPUs.

Matthew

I was thinking that, while I'd be "missing the opening", a lot of others would be too -- to the point that there wouldn't BE much of an opening...

Can't say I feel sorry for all the unchurched and those who skipped church today...

<Puts on flamesuit>

Matthew

Well, I should post a follow-up to this thread, since I started it --

Neither of my Tradehill orders filled.  It looks like by the time I got home, trading had only been going for maybe 50 minutes. And I didn't miss much!

Basically the price went down to Tradehill's, and that's about it.  No mega-crash, no mega-rally. A disappointment for anyone expecting something spectacular. 

I didn't know what to expect -- but it makes sense that not much would happen. People had access to MOST of the money they wanted access to as of 26 hours ago, and there are SEVERAL other exchanges to buy/sell on. Why wait for Mt. Gox to get around to opening?

So it worked out well after all.

Matthew

So is it official?  BitJam was a big scam?

We haven't heard from the lead developer since the 21st... even on the weekend...where did he go?

Mt. Gox -- you should delay a few hours until most people get back from church.

Come on, we're not a nation of atheists, even if some people here are! 

15:00 GMT is:

11:00 EDT
10:00 CDT
9:00 MDT
8:00 PDT

That is basically PRIME TIME for churches across America on Sunday morning.

Come on, Mt. Gox -- show a little respect for America's religious sensibilities!

Matthew

Mt. Gox -- you should delay a few hours until most people get back from church.

Come on, we're not a nation of atheists, even if some people here are! 

15:00 GMT is:

11:00 EDT
10:00 CDT
9:00 MDT
8:00 PDT

That is basically PRIME TIME for churches across America on Sunday morning.

Come on, Mt. Gox -- show a little respect for America's religious sensibilities!

Matthew

Another business accepts BTC for physical goods:

http://www.chantcd.com

There are samples for most of the CDs on the site, so you can try before you buy.

No.

I'm just saying it's yet another way I've been GOXED in the last week.
"GOX 10: The Final Goxing"

I was here for all the false openings, and now I'll miss the real one.

I just wanted to note it publicly -- no one else seems to have noticed yet.

Like I said, I have a solution that will cover things most of the way. I was just hoping to be part of the "excitement", that's all.

Eventually people react the opposite way (kind of like "full circle"), just like they do with the Stock Markets.

Stock market up? It means the economy is doing good.
Stock market down? It's because the dollar is stronger, which is good.
Stock market sideways? That's good, it means we're building support for the next run-up.

I did think of one solution -- post an open order (or 5) on Tradehill.

If BTC is up to $22 on the Mount, it will certainly be at least $20 on the Hill.
If it's down to $5 on the Mount, it will probably be pretty close by (maybe $8) on the old Hill.

The exchanges have to follow each other -- if they don't, you have arbitrage opportunities which will end up bringing them in line together.

Matthew

For some reason, I thought they were opening Sunday afternoon -- you know, when I get HOME from church.

No, it's actually 10:00 AM (CDT), right as Mass is beginning.

I know I'm not the only Bitcoin user who goes to church. I sincerely hope not!

Now trading is always going on while I'm gone to church, shopping, etc. and that's nothing new.
But a re-start of trading on Mt. Gox, which has been down for A WEEK, might provide unique opportunities that I might miss.

Why did they have to pick such a time? I still think they should have been ready by 12 hours after their original plan (namely, RIGHT NOW)

They aren't even going to be open a couple hours before 10:00, so I could get in a few orders before I leave. No, I have to just miss out.

Oh well. Maybe it will prevent me from selling at $18, and I'll get home and get to sell at $25 or something

Matthew

+1
Agreed.

They couldn't have hurt themselves more if they tried. 

The real icing on the cake was "Here's access to your money....but NO you can't trade. I refuse to let you trade!"

...as if there aren't other trading sites...

True, you could make more with proportional or proportional & 0% fee.
I doubt Deepbit achieved its current size -- 45% of the entire Bitcoin hashing network -- through sex appeal.
I think the PPS option had something to do with it -- so it's not too ridiculous to use that in calculations. (As an aside -- someone should do a poll: "Are you doing PPS mining?")

Anyhow, I'm trying to update my own thinking on "what's what" for 6/25/11.

I bought a used gamer tower off Craigslist for $350. It had a 5850 in it. It had a $290 CPU in it, 4 GB RAM, as well as a 500 GB hard drive, DVD drive, and a Corsair 650W power supply. They threw in 4 GB of DDR2 DIMMS, which I used in some other machines.
Overall, an awesome deal -- but then I paid $180 for a barebones tower (mobo, Opteron, 2 GB RAM, no PSU, nothing else!) with 2 PCI-E slots that don't like 58XX series Radeons. So I got a horrible deal there. I guess they balance out.

Anyhow, for my purposes (a miner), your deal isn't THAT different from what I got (above). It doesn't have an HD, DVD drive, case, etc. but of course that isn't necessary for mining. Your system wouldn't be a good deal at all for a non-miner.

BUT -- I did that aforementioned deal (the $350 gamer rig) a few weeks ago (at least 2 "difficulty levels" ago). So I've already made back some of the $350. If I bought the same system today, it would take twice as long to pay off.

Now the gamer rig would sell to a gamer easily for $600 if I was patient. BUT the system you offer is clearly just good for miners. You didn't even bump up $5 to a 3.0 GHz Athlon II like I did ($36). Your system is going to have 0 resale value after mining is gone (assuming it will ever be gone) -- except the video cards of course.

It got me thinking -- is it still economically feasible to buy new rigs -- even low-end, barebones, "just what I need for mining" ones? I spent some time yesterday researching video cards online; looking at prices and figuring out ROI. The best cards now (with rebates, free games, etc.) are coming out to 55 days to payoff. And that's with proportional pools

So if it's difficult to buy any new cards at brand new/retail price, how much harder would it be to break even
A) if you had to buy a whole SYSTEM
B) If you're paying eBay "Bitcoin mania" prices for your card

Hopefully the mining situation will look up soon -- I'd like to see that famous chart that shows the Profitability of Mining -- I bet it shows we're at quite a dip right now, especially with the BTC at $15.

Matthew

55+60+20+38+220+8
=$401

How nice of you to give us a $21 discount off what you paid retail, considering you've been mining with it for who knows how many weeks now 

And you never said you *paid* $401 for these parts; just that it's their retail value.

Seriously, it seems like you're getting the good end of the deal here.

Most of the "bargain" you offer ("Would cost you $520 online") consists of the Sapphire 5830's, which you paid $220 but are being scalped to gullible idiots on eBay for $160 apiece now.

If you subtract the video cards, you're offering us EXACTLY what we could get from NewEgg today (actually, NewEgg gives me free 2-day shipping via ShopRunner). And no offense, but please don't think you're offering us a service in setting it all up -- most of us are pretty handy with PCs, or we wouldn't be mining.

Basically, your deal is "I'll give you 2 5830's for what I paid, if you also give me what I paid for the other hardware." I guess that's fair in a way, but it's no "steal".

Some of us don't consider the 5830 worth more than $120 or so. So your $110 price on the 5830 is not "$50 off" the ridiculous price of $160, because $160 for such a card is just that -- ridiculous.

Your rig gets 560 MH/s? That's .37 BTC a day, according to Deepbit's estimator. According to my calculations, it would take 80 days to pay off that rig. That's going by the current price of BTC. Of course, some might say "BTC will go up", but someone else could say "they could go down". It's safest to go with the present price. But 80 days is a *long* way out. It's hard to know where Bitcoin will be in 3 months.

Just wanted to point these things out to prospective buyers, so no one is taken advantage of.

It's not a horrible deal, but it's also no "bargain". I'm sure someone will buy it; you're basically paying for the Sapphire's.

Sincerely,

Matthew

Well, after holding around $16 most of the day, the market BTC price at Tradehill has taken a turn downward.

Currently at 14.4 and falling.

I guess we have to get this out of the system before we can move forward...

Wait a minute -- it was unfair for their timezone, so they postponed the launch for 24 hours!?

That's like saying, "The sun is in my eyes -- I need to rotate 360 degrees so it won't be in my eyes anymore".

Asking $20 or best offer, or equivalent in bitcoins.

It's a Steam game; you can download/play it on any number of PCs you have.

I have an unused access code, so a copy of the game will be all yours.

Thanks,

Matthew

Think of all the people who can now get their money out of Mt. Gox!

They're being frustrated with "But you can't trade here!"

To which they respond,

"Two words. TRADE HILL" (or, BITCOIN 7)

so I think the market will let off some steam today -- it won't be the explosion it would have been, had Mt. Gox opened 1 hour later like they said.

Mt. Gox must have a deathwish. Allow people to take out cash/BTC, then let everyone go to other exchanges to do business?

They better have a SERIOUS PROBLEM that caused them to delay trading for a WHOLE BLASTED DAY.

Because they're going to go out of business because of it.

I think the market at Tradehill is going to get a lot heavier, now that people can get their money/BTC out of Mt. Gox.

Instead of an explosion (of built-up selling pressure), it looks like the market is going to "let off some steam" less dramatically, via other exchanges such as Bitcoin7 and Tradehill.

By the time Mt. Gox opens Sunday at 3:00 CDT, anyone who was dying to sell will have already done so.

As someone pointed out, the other exchanges are keeping quite a decent price on BTC -- it's not like they're going to zero or something.