Tell me one point in time where it made more sense to buy a 2600USD mining rig (which has costs to operate too!) than to buy 2600 USD worth of bitcoins!

Would this actually a possibility?

For example make the "Hash" field of blocks 1024 bit long and include a SHA256, a 512 bit Grøstl hash, and 2 128bit whatever hashes.
To forge a block, you would then need to find something that has the same SHA256, Grøstl and 2 other hash values. This should be tough even with already "broken" hashes like a MD5 + CRC32 simultaneous collision.

Also it might make mining a bit more difficult, which is actually a good thing, as this makes it more accessible --> CPUs could for sure easily handle it and it makes mining less likely to be overrun by just a shipload of ASICs.

In which pool(s) does this miner mine?
How much of the generated BTC is being paid out?

As long as difficulty is above 1, this means a new block is being generated ~every 10 minutes (for this you need far less than a singe GPU miner worldwide).
If there are more miners, the coins will not be generated faster but only in a more secure way, that's all. I doubt that ensuring the supply of new coins should be a reason for anyone to mine.

No, but hopefully aware that mining will return most probably less money than buying BTC directly, should the BTC <--> USD ratio go up further.

BUT:

Should the BTC <--> USD rate go down, you still have some value in hardware, you can use your hardware for something else and also it might be a free investment if you have your GPU in your PC anyways already.
Buying new mining hardware just for mining is however a, let call it "very optimistic" investment if you want to invest in BTC and could buy plain BTC instead too.

I sometimes compare it to gold/diamonds:

* It is a rare, limited ressource
* It's value compared to EUR/USD... can rise and fall, based on demand (supply is more or less constant)
* BTC themselves are not very valuable/useful (like gold which has only limited chemical uses, diamonds can be used industrially as they are hard stones, but no need for "nice, shiny" ones...) the value they have is artificial
* Even though they are "computer stuff" and a lot of people believe "everything can be hacked" (and also "the police can hack everything" interestingly... hello Hollywood/CSI/24!), great care has been taken that they can NOT be cloned/copied/"hacked" - as long as the own "wallet" is kept safe, the coins in there are safe too
* They are a mixture between "cash money" (anonymous, no fees [well, not really true, there can be tiny fees] when paying in cash) and "online banking money" (transactions take a little bit of time, ~1 hour, you'll need to send transactions online)


Actually I don't really see the need to explain how a hashed blockchain works when explaining Bitcoins. Do you start to explain the SSL-protocol when telling someone how to do online banking?!
The currency is based on processing the current transactions. This requires enormous computing power and until the whole 21 million BTC are "mined" (like gold/diamonds are being mined) a few of these are being generated and given to the people that provide this computing power. This will however become less and less until the 21 million limit is reached and after that it is anticipated that people will include small "tips" to get their transactions done.

Das Problem dabei ist, dass BTC eben als Währung und nicht als Bezahlsystem konzipiert sind. Bei Bargeldhandel in Euro hast du ja auch keine Gebühren, Bitcoin hat nur den Vorteil, dass das "Bargeld" elektronisch ist und daher nicht in einer Bank oder über Paypal "digitalisiert" werden muss, um es über's Internet zu versenden.

Wer Lust auf Gebühren hat, kann's natürlich auch jetzt schon über MtGox so machen...

Das wirkliche Prblem ist ja meiner Meinung nach, dass quasi alles, was in BTC angeboten wird auch in EUR/USD... zu haben ist.

Verkaufe ich eine ältere Grafikkarte um 100 BTC, wird sich jeder aufregen, dass ich da ja eigentlich 600€ dafür verlange.

Momentan ist der Bitcoin einfach noch viel zu instabil als dass er sinnvoll für Warenhandel genutzt werden kann, viel mehr als Spielereien und eBay-mäßiges Getausche ist ja momentan nicht los, und genau das ist dann auch noch 1:1 (oder eben 8,9:1 oder mtGox:1) an EUR/USD gekoppelt.


Was man bräuchte wären etwas längere Preisgarantien z.B. für kleinere Dienstleistungen:
"Einmal Rasenmähen = 2 BTC, garantiert bis 31.8." und sich dann die dafür nötigen 6 BTC einfach auf die Seite legen.

Mich wundert ja z.B. wieso niemand (oder nur wenige) Mining-Kapatizät für BTC verkauft. Das wäre z.B. ein recht gutes Geschäft um Preise zu stabilisieren.

A problem with dropping difficulty at a certain time is that defining an exact nanosecond worldwide is a tough business...
and if you would drop difficulty at a certain block, you would still have to mine that block which in the worst case still takes too long to do.

Anyways, if you see a sudden drop of more than 99,999% in hashing rate this much more likely means your government has pulled the plug on the internet (--> like Iran plans to do currently) and you're in an isolated network off the global grid.

Why oh why this spam every day?!

AND WHY THE HELL DO PEOPLE REALLY SEND HIM 0.1 BTC?!
http://blockexplorer.com/a/AD5rfAmeq3

Green part = fixed (from previous blocks), red part = what you will earn additionally in this round.

If you stop mining and others still mine, your reative contribution goes down, and so does your reward for this round.

Variance is also higher on small pools, so in this example you would either get 1 BTC/day +/- 0.1 BTC or 7 BTC/week +/- 2 BTC.

Yes, that means you can earn more, the smaller the pool gets (with the extreme of solo mining --> either zero or everything) BUT also you have the equal chance of bad luck.

The bigger the pool, the more steady and less fluctuating your income will be (this does NOT mean there will be no flutuations, even big pools have luck streaks or bad luck streaks since big pool still means only a relatively low 2-digit percentage of the network)

This would only pay off, if difficulty stabilizes "soon (tm)" or if you intend to run the same hardware for a few years.

Otherwise high initial bursts with GPUs would pay off far more BTC for your investment, have a much higher resale value (BTC ASICs are nearly worthless except for BTC mining) and can be sold + upgraded if a more efficient model comes out.

It might both have it's pros and cons, but ASIC/FPGA mining is not the solution to everything (much like quantum computing).

[Edit: The above is again only valid for MINING investments, not for BITCOIN investments! As Vladimir already said: Investing in mining is something different from investing in BTC itself, as for example you have some "fiat value" through hardware components in there, some additional benefit for the network itself though hashing power and more flexibility what you use the computing power for. This comes (probably, as Bitsinmyhead calculated) at a price against buying BTC directly but is a different investment model!]

As far as I understood, difficulty 1 blocks would yield the most money and the higher difficulty gets, the lower the payout?

This means the more secure the network gets, the fewer money is produced (if I understand you correctly).

Also on-off attacks are possible (mining a lot for ~10 days weeks, waiting 3-4 weeks (as the next round will take MUCH longer) and mining a lot again) as well as supply shortening attacks (drive up difficulty so nearly no new money is produced after you've mined a lot of money via on-off attacks).

This would again make towncoins quite unstable and trust can be lost very easily.

Not a 100% mining related accident, but I found out the hard way that my whole flat has a 16A fuse (which is BEFORE my circuit breaker... and of course irreplaceable without redoing the whole wiring in the flat and probably house).

At least now I know about it and will be more careful when planning to boil water for tea while having the washing machine switched on.

If he can convince 5 people to buy a single share by communicating more openly, he would more than double the income from mining so far.

Until all shares are sold I think he should also set aside this one hour/day on giving updates etc.

Seriously, a miner is set up (once you plugged the hardware together) as fast as it takes to clone the linux distribution on a USB stick...

http://bitcoin.atspace.com/income.html

Imagine a horizontal line at your daily costs per 100 MH/s (Example: your rig does 300MH/s and costs 3 USD/day --> 1 USD).

If you would cash yout every BTC you mine at the same day, and this graph is above this line, mining is still worth it.

BUT:

If you want to buy hardware for mining, keep in mind that you will have to earn for it as well! A 180 USD GPU with 300MH/s to be paid off in 60 days would need to have this graph (at 0 electricity costs) on average above 1 USD (please note the logarithmic scale!) for the following 2 months.

The by far biggest (and most needed) value currently comes from selling shares, so to create more value he would need to sell more shares.
He has NOT been selling shares for some time now, but every time he gave good news or some updates some shares were sold.
The more he communicates, the more money the company gets, the more rigs he can buy, the more value is created for shareholders etc.

I hope you get the point.

I wonder how he should be at the moment "creating value" other than doing fundraising.

I think on buying vs. mining, Bitsinmyhead made enough points already [pun intended! ].

I did a few calculations on your 2 products and it seem like that after quite exactly 180 days the "Hashes solved per unit of money invested" ratio of investing into this business model starts to beat the 400 GBP/month mining contract (meaning the lower costs per day start to pay off compared to the high initial price)

HOWEVER:

What any investor needs to keep in mind is that the total hashing output is 35% lower, so unless the whole BTC system stays more or less stable on a certain difficulty level (doesn't really matter which) it might still be wiser to consider a high initial burst.
In which (mining) product to invest depends on if you believe that the difficulty will rise (Yes: Get as much capacity as possible NOW!, No: Get as much efficient capacity as possible, maybe even look into the OpenFPGA project [though that only pays off in a few years at it's current hashrate + initial price...] or similar stuff) and also how long you want to invest in it (everything below 180 days makes only sense to be invested in a mining contract).

I also did a more thorough spreadsheet on this, but I guess that's not in the general interest and can be calculated by anyone else.