Hehe, so do I.  I thought the spam was advertising BITCHYPE first time I saw it

Received three spam emails from btchyip.com so far today.  The grammar used is a bit poor.  Nothing yells SCAM harder than a poorly written email promising you instant riches.  If the offer is so damn good, why doesn't the sender keep quiet and use it themselves? :-)

postmaster@lb2.btchyip.com
client-ip=184.22.178.46

Sender is claiming a 'from' address of MtGox@mtgox.com.  Yeah, sure :-)

Some people being taught a lesson in trading right now.  Quick run up to $19.20 and then a nice collapse to $15.50 and still going.  Don't let greed get in the way of good judgment.

Pulling buy orders en masse, pulling the price down further then buying on the up swing into another bubble would be kinda fun right now.  Whoever is doing is is making a nice profit.

It was about time too.  Rising more than 10% per day, every day was all the signs of a bubble waiting to pop.  Traders letting hubris get in the way of sound judgment.  Buying simply because other people are buying.  Exciting ride none the less.

Bull riding is fun, until you get thrown off.  The people who were left with a mouth full of dirt on the way from $32 to $2 know that feeling.  The current ride is fun and I'm loving it.  Seeing my bitcoin stash appreciate 10% day in, day out, without lifting a finger.  It's great.  But I have no idealism about it lasting into the great yonder.

Courage needs to be coupled with intelligence and humility lest it morph into hubris.

Not worth starting GPU mining now.  We're on the cusp of ASICs coming online.  It's like starting CPU mining when GPUs were taking off.  Difficulty should be at least 10 times higher than it is today in 6 months time.

Ignore the people who recommend not mining because they smuggly state it's just more profit for them.  It's cheap trolling.

Just thought I'd mention that doing any return on investment calculation using current difficulty as a reference is pretty pointless.  Difficulty will skyrocket as ASICs get shipped to end customers.  Any calculations made with today's difficulty would only be valid for a few days at best.

Would you invest 100% of your savings in one company on the share market?  Bitcoin is no different.  I know it's all smiles at the moment as we've seen a massive ramp up in price from $2 to $16, but consider being on the other end of it buying in at $32 and seeing it drop to $2.

Good to see news of progress from BFL and hopefully a deliverable product some time in February. 

I'm not quite sure how processing SHA256 hashes using ASICs is "impossible" or that 'they' would never allow it.  I suspect a basic lack of understanding of the underlying technologies by the OP.

Regarding building ASICs specifically for the purposes of decryption, its already been done a very long time ago.  Here is one example I can think of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFF_DES_cracker

The principal designer was Paul Kocher, president of Cryptography Research. Advanced Wireless Technologies built 1856 custom ASIC DES chips (called Deep Crack or AWT-4500), housed on 29 circuit boards of 64 chips each.

There were plenty of 'bitcoin millionaires' who watched their fortune dwindle when bitcoin plummeted from a peak of $32 to just over $2 within a few months.  Things are looking great now at $14+ but we must always remember there is no guarantee at all that the price will continue to rise, even in the long term.  There may be a point where it's tempting to cash out and buy something nice.

Bitcoin comes into its own when it's the superior way of transacting compared to other methods.  Merchants are few, customers are many, the better way to serve customers wins.  Right now Bitcoin is the clear winner when it comes to something like Silk Road or donating money to organisations that are less than government friendly (Wikileaks, etc).

BFL originally stated all preorders can be refunded if nothing ships before 1 January 2013.  A lack of any shipments is now guaranteed, and while I doubt many people are going to ask for their money back I still think BFL must be a bit nervous.  They no doubt don't have enough money to refund everyone as much of the money would have been spent on R&D and hardware.

I am not going to ask for my money back from BFL that I sent them in September.  I also don't expect to receive anything from them for months.  Makes me wonder what they had ready in October when shipping of finished products was apparently just a few weeks away...

Maybe bitcoin's value was becoming too high for someone's liking.  Maybe they had to dump quick and grab the cash rather than spending days selling it.

It does highlight the fragility of any rallies.  The frequent cries of 'rocket!' on this forum must be tempered with the fact that the possibility of price reversal of a dollar or more per bitcoin is always seconds away.

I look forward to the day the first criminal demands a large ransom paid in bitcoins.  Not because I support the criminal or the crime, but because I want to see what the reaction from various governments/Mastercard/Visa/banks will be.

We all know bitcoin is pseudo anonymous with every participant holding a copy of all transactions (bad for the criminal), and that eventually to cash out bitcoins the criminal must hit the established banking system (yikes), but it will be a good test to see just how Free bitcoins are.

BFL should update its FAQ page.  It still states preorders are due to begin shipping late November or early December.

"It's quiet, too quiet. Especially after everyone predicted a major rocket."

Everyone?  No.  I didn't, because I don't see any reason for the price to 'rocket' upwards right now.  If anything there may be pressure for the price to drop as people eventually receive ASIC orders and need to pay off their new hardware.

I stopped GPU mining a while ago.  The electricity generated from my solar PV panels is worth more when exported rather than used to generate bitcoins.

I have a bet that BFL won't ship ASICS to end users before 1 December.  Despite having a BFL order I hope they don't disappoint me and ship something in November.

The corollary is that after experimental rockets were designed and built they had a penchant for blowing up on the launch pad or soon afterwards.  It took many tries to get consistent successful results. 

"there's going to be panic buying monday"

The panic was palpable.  The price of bitcoin was seriously out of control as the hoards descended on the stricken sellers and demanded to buy all their bitcoins, whatever the price.

The price gained all of 1 to 2%.

It was madness, I tell you.  I'm glad the OP was here to warn us.