This is actually pretty funny coming from a BA reseller in a BA thread. Any rate, ordering from China I can get one in 3 days to eastern US and for significantly cheaper, so I don't understand why people are trying to resell these.

On the page http://eligius.st/~wizkid057/newstats/ towards the bottom

Current network difficulty: 3815723798.8146
Current maximum PPS at this difficulty: 0.000000006552 BTC
Average time to find a block at 5,248.99 Th/s at this difficulty: 52 minutes
Average pool blocks per day at 5,248.99 Th/s at this difficulty: 27.675

Take the 24 hours first

I suspect this happens in a traditional pool or two from time to time, but that's all I'm going to say about that. It would be harder to have this happen at PBmining though because they are paying the theoretical rate of return rather than the varied rate of return that normal mining gear and erlang distributed block finds would provide. It's much easier to skim when users are accustomed to variance in a normal pool. In PBmining I can do a calculation and see my expected return. I would know something is wrong with my calculation or theirs if the numbers didn't agree.

If interested, please send me a PM for price on a full set (v2) of blades (10), backplane, and Power Supply. Couple bad chips - it mines about 98GHs. I'm considering eBay, but I really hate selling there.

Well the point is they are selling it at 5 years, and they are reducing the cost per GHs at every difficulty change, or at least so far as I have been paying attention. At some point my weekly returns will buy another 1GHs+ and I'd probably start taking half the profits and reinvesting the other half. Think of it as an investment and ignore the 1GHs quantity. I put in .008 and I get .009 over the course of 6 months (just say as an example, there's no math behind that). If 1GHs costs .0008 in six months, who cares if I can get .0009 over the course of the next 6 months because the return on investment is the same. Will I be investing .0008 or .008 (10GHs) at that time, or will a better investment come along? A year is too far out to predict what I'll be doing. I will be doing a profitability calculation every time before I buy. Anyone telling you what the difficulty will be at that point is either making some huge guesses or trying to sell you something. 5 years is certainly too far for anyone, even PBmining, to say what mining will be like.

This low budget investment strategy protects me from some of the risk both in PBmining and in the difficulty increases while still offering me increasing rewards over time should I decide at any point to invest more because there is less risk in PBmining than there was before, or their cost calculation has provided me with a larger return on my investment making it worth the risk.

Just my own thoughts on it though. I'm small-time but I'm widely diversified. It's a strategy that guarantees I'll be burned (which I have been), but not have all my eggs in one basket when I do get burned.

Agreed. However it's quite possible they had hardware on preorder and were planning this from half a year back or more. I wish they would be more forthcoming also, and until they do I will not invest significantly more. I was thinking of maybe buying an additional 1GHs on every diff change. I think what they are saying though is that there are a lot of "bitcoin millionaires" out there who have more bits than brains and are glad to throw their money at risky things. They don't need people like us in order to succeed.

Right now they can just dismiss it without providing evidence, but eventually the onus will come back to PBmining to prove they are not a Ponzi. If they have operations in the US this will certainly be the case. For now I can't imagine someone so wealthy that throwing thousands of dollars after something like this is within the realm of risk/reward.

If PBmining is legit, it will turn a profit for investors at the current rates and at most people's estimate of difficulty. That is unless PBmining knows something we don't about the difficulty (unlikely) or they are actually generating coin with hardware (more likely). However, the rate of reward is not going to be in the get-rich-quick range required of typical Ponzi investors. So what is the catch here? Perhaps just a bunch of unseasoned kids with a few bitcoin who never have seen something like this done with fiat currency and who think they are going to get rich. On the other hand, from their perspective, PBmining gets the return for their mining equipment investment up front rather than having to wait for the gear itself to generate a return and can then accelerate their subsequent re-investments. They cut margins thin and their investors benefit from volume discounts and efficiencies of scale they otherwise could not afford. It makes a lot of sense from a business model as well.

I'm more concerned about PBmining falling in on itself having failed to consider the ongoing profitability of mining/selling new contracts vs. their maintenance. 5 years is a long time to guarantee, and I do not believe for one second that my 1GHs will still be mining 4 years from now. It would be much cheaper for them to just pay my contract out than to run any equipment or maintain an otherwise idle account. That entire year's proceeds will cost more to manage and transmit to me than I will receive.

This is all speculation.

About payments - it is entirely likely they are mining on Eligius or something similar with their equipment and just don't want to be traced, watched and audited by customers. Proving some coins are generated would not disprove a Ponzi just like proving coins are shuffled would not prove a Ponzi. The question is more complex than that, unfortunately.

bobsag3 - I thought BA was going to refund you. Is this all coming out of your pocket?

and there was much rejoicing in the land.

Yes, that's all you have to do.

Is that break-even based on pure mining, or are you including referrals in that as well? I noticed you have a referral link.
Thanks.

Advertisers are not vetted, just highest bidder.

Yes, really is. I see it's received over 60BTC, so if this is a scam it is already a successful one. There's enough here to not immediately dismiss it as a scam which is why I bought 1GHs. I'll either be glad I only purchased 1 or I'll be kicking myself in a few months after it reaches 100% ROI and goes beyond that I didn't purchase more.

Wasn't an accusation, but take it the way it suits you. I'm glad it made you laugh - it made me laugh.

Yeah, apparently the same payout address for everyone, and the dust is changed to identify the purchaser. My guess is that there is some manual intervention in the process.

I bought 1GHs with them as well. It did pay on Sunday. I have serious doubts about that 1GHs hashing 5 years. Don't invest more than you can afford (or want) to lose. It's an easy ponzi scheme with a relatively easy exit if there is no hashing behind it.

The question about piggy bank mining coming from a Mr Piggles makes me wonder if this is a set up question.

You've got to be kidding me. There's way too much smoke in here for your health. Pressure is what makes the world go round. You want something done, you give the job to a busy person and he'll get it done. Give it to someone not busy and it will get put off. That's life. If you don't believe that, you're part of the recipient class who wants everything handed to them.

Received all equipment as described. Everything is up and hashing except the Jally. I need to make a converter cable for myself. I did test it with the power supply from an unmodified Jally and it works fine, but I'm certainly not going to leave it going that way.

Thanks miaviator!

This is where your argument turns in on itself. Even given all your other premises of belief, do you honestly believe that an RFID chip (or similar) under the skin connotates worship of the Antichrist? If someone can be "tricked" into getting this because they want to use the digital currency to buy food for their family, something that is good and proper to do, then the above sentence doesn't make sense at all. In order to have a choice between good and evil you need both a good choice and a bad choice. If your only choice is bad, then it isn't a choice and you will have been coerced into the decision. 1 Cor 10:13