Another interesting note...

Assuming the difficulty is increased to 154068, as bitcoincharts.com is predicting, it would only take an average rise of 30% difficulty in the future to make buying bitcoins more profitable than mining.  So many of the naysayers are right, provided the difficulty levels continue to rise at 40% rate.

I need to make the difficulty calculations more concrete and accurate though.  Will work on that now...

So, we vote people in to power, who require money to run a government, yet you call it theft when they take said money from your paycheck to run the government you elected them to run?   

I'm not a fan of taxed either, but to have services like police and fire and courts/justice systems and public transport and roads etc etc, it requires some forced contribution.  These things just wouldn't happen otherwise.

The government is horribly bloated and inefficient, but I don't view taxes as theft.  JMO.

When the price tag says $50.00, how do they know how much that is in gold?  You just barter?  Seems like either you or them would be getting the raw end of the deal there, as it'd be quite difficulty to have the proper amount of gold on-hand to exactly match the fiat currency.

Really?  How do they figure out how much gold will pay for the goods?  Do they have a scale and access to live USD-->Gold exchange rates or something?

Total BTC generated (C9) includes difficulty increases.  By the end of 4 months, at 40% difficulty increase every 2 weeks, you aren't generating very much.

Total value generated is simply what you would have in USD at the end of 4 months if you kept all bitcoins generated.  This also takes in to account the rise (or fall) in value of BTC to make it worth whatever it is at the end of 4 months.  At 10% every week, one BTC would be worth $19.6 at the end of 4 months.

I have generated a spreadsheet that should allow user input of all potential variables to consider when deciding whether to invest in mining hardware or in BTC directly.

Play with it, and tell me what you think.  It seems that the wisest choice could be either, and it greatly depends on difficulty levels and expected increase (or decrease) in the price of BTC.

v1.1 - Difficulty should now accurately affect BTC production.
v1.2 - Added in calculations to show profits if production is traded daily.
v1.3 - Added invest/withdrawal/pool fees fields, added uptime percentage field.
v1.31 - Calculation/bug fixes
v1.32 - Calculation/bug fixes

Download the spreadsheet (v 1.32)
If you find any errors in the calculations, PLEASE let me know so I can fix it!

If you found this helpful, please consider donating BTC to 1CjoEtypZhqkBLSdfpnphNYjWyokourkxe

Wow, interesting... might have to give it another go then!

I'll do it.  

EDIT:  Scratch that, I only have 0.67 BTC in my wallet at the moment.

I think you have your lending logic backwards Tom.

Deflation encourages lending, but discourages borrowing.
Inflation encourages borrowing, but discourages lending.

This is why everyone always carries so much debt in inflation-based economies.  When I say that inflation discourages lending, I just mean that the interest rate has to raise to such a point as to make the risk/reward profitable to the lender.

Let's look at an example.  A lender gives a loan of $100 in an economy averaging 3% inflation/year.  Say the risk to the lender of default is 2%/year, and the lender wants a 1% above inflation ROI.  So 3% + 2% + 1% = 6% APR.

Now look at the same $100 loan in an economy averaging 3% deflation/year.  Say the risk to the lender of default is 2%/year, and the lender wants a 1% above inflation ROI.  So -3% + 2% + 1% = 0% APR.

It's a similar story on the borrower side.  They would require a lower interest rate on loans

Basically, no matter what the inflation/deflation rate is, APR rates on loans will auto-adjust to a supply/demand intersect.  You could potentially see negative APR rates in a deflationary economy.

Hmmm... I downloaded the latest Trixx, but the voltage slider is still disabled for me on my 5850... any ideas?

I will have you all note that the 26th, the day this thread was posted, was also the day of the start of the rally that brought us up above $3.00.  Publicity FTW?

Yeah, I just think web squatting in particular is kind of... lame.

Oh well, it's a free country. 

 

No wonder I couldn't find any nice domains to purchase... you're buying them up and pricejacking them.  Thanks a bunch.

Thanks sipa, good explanation.

Meh.  I overclocked a processor I had past 100%.  1.86ghz to 3.74ghz.  Nothing to be afraid of if you know what you're doing.

Even for mining, I still think going as far as you can is best.  Let's look at a worst-case scenario...

I don't believe I've seen a card go less than a 50mhz overclock without being stable.  So lets say, for the sake of argument, that 50mhz is the LEAST you could gain with an overclock.  Also, for the sake of argument, let's say the worst case stock top speed of a card is 900mhz (?).

So, you try overclocking to 975mhz, and it fails overnight.  No mining for 8 hrs.  Which means, 950mhz * 8 hrs = 7600 mhz-hrs of lost production.  You settle on 950mhz, and it is stable.  7600mhz-hrs / 50mhz = 152 hrs.  152 hrs = 6.3 days.

So worst case, if you're looking at overclocking vs not overclocking, you can make up for lost production within a week.

On the other hand, if you DON'T go for the best overclock you can get, and miss out on say, 25mhz, you could lose the equivalent of 8 hrs of production per week.  That'll add up quick, especially on some of the higher-end cards.

Hmmm... maybe I'd better change my sig...

No way!  I still don't have 10 myself... want a screenshot of my deepbit account?  Lol...

How true that is...

Interesting.  I did not know we could adjust the block size.  Is that something we should be looking in to now, since free transactions are often taking several hours to complete?  I've noticed the same thing as the OP in my recent transactions...

Also, since the entire block chain must be downloaded to a local machine before that machine can acquire a bitcoin address and utilize a wallet, it seems that some sort of "practical maximum" of the block chain should be defined, or at least thought about.

I mean, will new users of bitcoins really want to download a 20GB file just to start using bitcoins as a currency?

So say we pick an arbitrary number - 10GB - as a practical maximum for the block chain.  Currently, there are 290,000 blocks?  So 290MB?  Can we really expect this transaction model to last as long as is projected, for as many people as is projected, without some sort of problem?  If we've already "used up" 2.9% of the total available transaction history, what happens when the project is 10 times as popular as it is now?  How can it possibly support 10 times as many users for longer than a couple of years?

What am I missing here?

You could be right Abe.  I guess I just have more faith in common sense, that people wouldn't rate down a newbie just for asking a commonly asked question.

*shrug*

I dunno.