Remember the dot com bubble? People bought internet stocks, not because the companies did anything, but because they thought that the prices would keep going up. Remember the housing bubble? Same story ...

If mass adoption of Bitcoin is primarily for investment, the results will be terrible. Don't be stupid. This is what causes bubbles. If everyone buys bitcoins only because they think the price will go up, then we will see yet another bubble. We've already seen two bitcoin bubbles, and the only thing that kept Bitcoin alive in the aftermath is its utility and its potential utility.

In order for Bitcoin to have a sustainable value, it has to have utility. Bitcoin is a payment system with its own currency. Never lose sight of that or you will lose everything.

There are many things wrong with what you wrote. Let's fix it.

First, the mining:

Currently, 1 GH/s mines about 0.000013 BTC per block, or about .0263 BTC per 2016 blocks. The difficulty changes every 2016 blocks and it takes about 11 days to mine those 2016 blocks. For many months now, the difficulty has risen about 30% each time. Lets assume that will continue for at least another month, and that 1 GH/s will mine 30% less every 11 days.

This table shows how much 1 GH/s will mine in about a month

Days	| Income	| Total Income
11	| 0.0263	| 0.0263
22	| 0.0202	| 0.0465
33	| 0.0156	| 0.0621

So after about a month, 1 GH/s will mine a total of about 0.0621 BTC (not 0.108).

Now, the price:

The current price is about 0.14 BTC.

After a month, 1 GH/s will mine only about 0.0000059 BTC per block. That's down about 55% from the beginning of the month. Since 1 GH/s mines 55% less than it used to, its price is going to be 55% lower, or about 0.076 BTC.

Finally, the total:

If you sell your 1 GH/s after 1 month, you will get 0.076 BTC for it (not .03-.04). Add the 0.0621 BTC you mined and you now have 0.1381 BTC.

You paid 0.14 BTC, so you lose 1.3%. Notice also that the price is dropping more than the amount of the income. Basically, the longer you hold it, the more you lose.

Now, let's assume you pay 0.10 BTC for 1 GH/s.

You still mine 0.0621 BTC, and you still sell the shares at 55% less, or 0.045 BTC, but your total is 0.1066. You paid 0.10, so you have made 6.6% in a month. Not bad.

I don't know why people pay 0.14 BTC for 1 GH/s.

Here is the answer you are looking for:

There is a limited amount of bitcoins. Generally, more people are buying bitcoins as it becomes more widely adopted,  and that is causing the price to rise steadily. However, when some people see events like the Baidu announcement, they believe that the price is going to rise even more in the future so they buy now before the price rises, and and that drives the price up quickly.

Well who did you send it to in 2011? It will be the same person. Just remember who you sent it to, and ask them to send it back. My guess is that it is an exchange, probably MtGox.

Touché!

cex.io trades at 0.14 per GH/s, which would be equivalent of a MINING price of 0.0007 BTC. That would make SELLING worth 0.00305680 BTC.

Personally, I think that a price of 0.14 BTC per GH/s is too high, especially after the latest 40% difficulty rise. My high end of the range is only 0.13.

It is interesting that the author disputes the assertion that Ulbricht is sitting on 600k bitcoins. All of the articles that claim that he is are based solely on a statement in her previous article!

Let's be clear.

Sure, you don't need to memorize or write down your private keys -- the wallet handles that.

But, if you don't control the private keys, you don't own the bitcoins.

The purpose of the the $ Value Next Year column is to show the fallacy of "if the value of BTC goes up enough, it doesn't matter what I paid for mining."

As far as I know, blockchain.info is the only online wallet in which you actually own the bitcoins.

You have to determine what you think is the value of 1 GH/s. That value depends on the difficulty and on how fast you believe it will rise over the next several months. Then, you have to decide how much of a discount you want. There is no sense in paying 0.13 BTC for 1 GH/s if you think you will get 0.13 BTC back over a year, but maybe you think paying 0.10 is a good deal. Finally, you must also consider risk. What if your prediction is wrong? What if the host shuts down?

Sure, he might end up with more dollars, but he can do better with less risk. Let me show you.

There are two ways you can obtain bitcoins. You can buy them or you can mine them. Let's compare the two, assuming that you mine for a year and the value of BTC goes up to $1000.

Method	| $ Value Now	| BTC Value Now	| BTC Value Next Year	| $ Value Next Year
Buy	| 1750	| 12.5	| 12.5	| 12500
Mine	| 1750	| nothing yet	| 6.5	| 6500

As you can see, if he mines he can make a big profit if BTC rises to $1000. But, if he spends the money on bitcoins instead of on mining bitcoins, he comes out way ahead. Also, there is no risk of Byteminr shutting down.

no mention of bitcoin

There is going to be a default. All they are doing today is ensuring the we have to suffer through another 3 more months of bad economy and bad politics first.

Most mining calculators do not account for future difficulty changes. The best one I have found is http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/

It isn't 30% a day.  The difficulty went up 41% today. It changes every 2016 blocks and the time between changes depends on what the total hash rate is over the 2016 blocks.

In a nutshell, 1 GH/s will mine about 0.13 BTC total, so 50 GH/s will mine about 6.5 BTC total. You paid about 12.5 BTC so unless there is a miracle and the difficulty stops rising, you have lost about 6 BTC in the deal.

In $ terms, you paid $1750 to mine $910 worth of bitcoins. It doesn't matter if BTC goes to $1000, because if you just bought the BTC instead of mining it, you still would have come out ahead.

Please note that my calculations assume that the difficulty will rise an average of 20% each period for several months. (it has been rising about 30% per period since February). They also assume that the operator does not charge any fees. For example,  Cloudhashing charges a 10% management fee.

6 GH/s will mine less than 1 BTC total (I estimate 0.78 BTC).

Paying extra for the kit can be justified if you are doing it for the fun and education, but not to make money.

On the other hand, I would definitely pay $2 for a block erupter right now.

When did you buy? If you bought 1 GH/s almost a month ago then you have mined less than 0.113, but it cost you 0.19 BTC (or more).

I'm not saying everyone is guaranteed to lose money. It depends on the price you pay and what happens to the difficulty. The current price is down to about 0.134 BTC and that is still too high.

Speaking of difficulty... The difficulty jumped by 40% today, and HashFast is shipping their terahash miners in a few weeks.

In theory, that is not necessarily true, and it is possible that he will not get his money back, even if he mines forever. It depends on how much he paid and how fast the difficulty rises and whether or not it stops rising.

In reality, he will break even, but it very unlikely that it will be in 3 months. 24 months is possible, but it could be 100 years, too. He could also get all his money back if bitcoins become worthless.

Do the math.

no mention of bitcoin