cpu generation is useless in terms of Mhash/s per Watt. You need to use GPUs. I suggest buying the cheapes pc possible that supports PCI Express 2 (the latest graphics card). That means the shit-est motherboard with PCIE2, 1GB ram and the, small cheap disk and the cheapest cpu that this MOBO supports. Don't get an i7, it's useless for generating; too inefficient.

So, you need to find out the cheapest deal you can get for this system, figure out how many Mhash/s the GPU will yield, how much power it will consume and how much your electricity costs. then do the math to figure out the cost effectiveness.

Try to get a motherboard which supports multiple graphics cards, for optimum cost effectiveness.


If you base cost-effectiveness on the projected value of bitcoins, you'd be better of just buying bitcoins and holding them (cheaper).

Also consider that building this system will contribute to the strength of the network.

Keep in mind that difficulty will rise as the value of bitcoins rises. So the increasing difficulty is not really a factor to consider. What you want to do is maximise your Mhash/s per Watt.

OMG! I developed a whole web site for exactly this puropse a month ago and nobody uses it. I didn't do a very good job of promoting it, I have to admit:
www.bitswap.cz.cc

I would be thrilled if you guys would use this site. If there is genuine interest, I'll be willing to invest more time into making improvements that anyone suggests.

It's currently free to register and use.

It was a fascinating debate, in any case. I really enjoyed the articulate posts detailing the role of speculators in the market. It was Educational for me. Hopefully Macho learned something too.

BTC/difficulty chart would be interesting.

You can receive transactions while your client is offline because they get stored in the block chain which you will download and check. All you need is your private key, which lies in your wallet.dat file.

However, if you lose the .dat file, you lose the private key and therefore, cannot claim your transaction. This is why people want to pre-generate a bunch of keys to put in their backed up wallet, so that even if you lose your wallet, you can still reclaim your lost coins because the private keys your receiving with are in the backup.

In short: you don't want to be sent transactions to keys that you haven't backed up. Anyway, I think that's how it works.

I think there is also an issue with sending transactions and backups.

biddingpond is an auction site. Bitswap is more like a job notice board.

I'm sorry about the login problem. What happens when you try to log in? Did you try to register again? What login did you use? I don't see any new account in the database that could be yours.


That's a great idea, but I have only 50 bitcoins and I can't really buy any with the problems at mtgox and bitcoinmarket. Pic will have to wait.

Agreed. The reason for your impoverishment is due to the quasi-socialist government parasite sucking the wealth out of the economy with burdensome regulation on business, redistribution of wealth and a bloated corrupt bureaucracy which wastes social resources and produces nothing. The best thing is a truly free market and a small, limited scope government.

I recommend the work of Milton Friedman. Check out his documentary series "Free To Choose", where he outlines the failings of socialism and government interference in the economy/markets.

You guys ever listen to peter schiff? He'll tell you all about the coming inflation in the USA.
www.youtube.com/user/schiffreport

He thinks the dollar is going to collapse and he makes a very good case for this.

He'd probably think Bitcoin is awesome too.

Cool!

There was a bug in the login script. sorry about that. It should be working now. Please try again.

I'll add a list of the 10 most recent offers on the home page. I'll also try my skill at designing a picture. Thanks for the feedback.

Thanks for the tips. I agree that it doesn't look very good, I'm not a web designer, just a coder. But I'll try to improve the appearance.

I don't think trust is a huge issue, because I'm not selling anything. It's a free service. You have nothing to lose by posting a notice. Though, I do intend to charge a small fee for posting if the site grows, but that's down the track.

The reason I don't have SSL and a proper domain is because I'm a cheap ass and I don't want to invest money into this thing if it's not gonna get used. Would you use it if I fixed the various issues you mention (get a proper DN/SSL and fix the style)?

It's hard to judge if there is a market for this thing and what features would be considered important or useful.

Thanks for the advice.
asdf

I've created this website
bitswap.cz.cc

It's supposed to be for bitcoin users as a meeting/market place where people can trade their goods and services for bitcoins. I'm hoping that it will aid the growth of a robust bitcoin economy where people can easily find and trade a wider range of goods and services, thus increasing the value/utility of bitcoin. So far, no takers. So I thought I'd "plug it" in this forum.

Perhaps it's not really what the community needs or wants right now, but if anyone wants to suggest any ideas or improvements/features that will make it more useful to them as a service, please let me know (contact@bitswap.cz.cc). Also, any ideas on promotion would be welcome. I've already added it to a few directories.

asdf

It's important to be clear whether we're talking about price deflation or monetary deflation. I think we can all agree that a stable supply (quantity) of money is economically ideal and under this environment, rising of falling prices are just a consequence of economic growth or contraction.

I think we also agree that manipulation of the supply of money, whether it be by governments or banks, creates a misallocation of resources which destabilizes the economy making us poorer.

hey guys! I just finished my bitcoin website:
http://bitswap.cz.cc/

It's sort of like a classifieds/craigslist thing. You post notices about things you want to buy or sell for bitcoins, indexed using tags (and perhaps later, by location). Please check it out.

At the moment it's free, but I intend to start changing a small rate (bitcoins, of course) for notices in the future, if it takes off.

I'm hoping this will help people trading bitcoins to get together and grow the economy.

Any feedback is welcome:
contact@bitswap.cz.cc

As bitcoin scales to millions of transactions, the bandwidth requirements of running a generator are going to get quite large. I believe that keeping the transaction size as small as possible is the highest priority.

The more competing generators of bitcoin, the better for it's stability, i guess. Bandwidth is going to be the greatest barrier to running a node.

just insert "virtual" in front of all those words.
/debate

It add nothing of substance to the topic...
add nothing of substance to the topic...
nothing of substance
nothing
.

I'm working on a website to do just this. Basically you post notices about what you want of have and any other information you feel like including; essentially a notice board for bitcoin traders.

It's encouraging to see interest in my project (albeit indirect). Hopefully I'll have it ready by next week.

Voluntary in what sense? I can enter a contract with another condo if I like... So I have choice. Essentially, I see this as competition in governments; voting with your feet. If I am free to change my local government, then this is a voluntary system. This is a vision of decentralised of government, which I like.

Really, we're just arguing about definitions. The condominium is not THE government, but it functions as a form of government: votes, taxes, laws, regulations, maintaining infrastructure, etc. So when I say that natural monopolies should be owned by the government, you actually agree with this, but have added decentralisation into the equation.

I think you have it backwards my friend. The value of bitcoins will be determined primarily by demand. As demand increases the value will rise and the profitability of generating will adjust accordingly. So, as the number of generators increases, so does the difficulty, thus the profitability levels off at about the cost of electricity/hardware to do the generation.

What you're forgetting is that the cost of generation (In electricity) changes. It depends on the difficulty. The profitability of generation will adjust according to demand/value.

Satoshi has really thought this one through.

How are these not natural monopolies? if you own the sewer system, then who's going to compete with you?

What is a "neighborhood institution"? sounds like a local government... ;-)