This Week In Bitcoin - Feb 14 through Feb 20, 2011. Sunday, Feb 20th, 2011 Saturday, Feb 19th, 2011 Friday, Feb 18th, 2011 Thursday, Feb 17th, 2011 Wednesday, Feb 16th, 2011 Tuesday, Feb 15th, 2011 Monday, Feb 14th, 2011 - s3052’s Technical Analysis: http://mtgox.com/blog/?p=237
- Long Term:
- Next target is $1.50 then followed by $2, $5, $10.
- Price targets should not be confused with time targets.
- Short Term:
- Prices paint a texbook-type ascending triangle just under $1.10.
- Typically, this leads to a break out to the upside. - Bitcoin client v0.3.20 is at release candidate stage, though some modifications pending.
- jgarzik introduced his pushpool project which implements a binary RPC for miners.
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3493.0 - A vehicle was, for the first time, offered in exchange for a certain number of bitcoins:
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3485.0
Current week (updated throughout the day): http://bit.ly/thisweekinbitcoinPrevious Week in Bitcoin (Feb 7 to Feb 13, 2011) summary: http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/3282585386/twib-2011-02-13Each day I will post a reply with the previous day's summary, and will update this specific post to include each daily summary as well. |
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I am in the process of opening a Paxum account.
Get your utility bill and gov't issued ID / passport ready. |
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The increase in price is tied to increased cost to manufacture a bitcoin  If you recall, the next block that will be generated will take about ten minutes to create and will contain exactly 50 bitcoins -- regardless if difficulty is 25,998 or 2,000,000. The amount of currency issued occurs at the same rate regardless of the amount of mining activity. |
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I have read that Bitcoins produced will be 30% less in the next 3-5 days, as the difficulty level will rise again. True? The current difficulty is 25,998. http://blockexplorer.com/q/getdifficultyThe next difficulty estimate is here: http://blockexplorer.com/q/estimateIf that level persists, that will mean the difficulty will rise more than 30% at the next retarget block (in approx 3 days): http://blockexplorer.com/q/nextretargetThat's the fastest rate in quite a while: https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0AmcTCtjBoRWUdHVRMHpqWUJValI1RlZiaEtCT1RrQmcSee: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/DifficultyAll the people dumping money into 5870's and 5970's very recently are going to need that much more money per Bitcoin to recover their investment on hundreds of dollars (if not thousands in some cases).
If the BTC/USD exchange rate stays the same, then yes a higher difficulty than previously estimated will likely mean a longer length of time before the investment in hardware is returned by a producing rig. But adding the high equipment cost into the equation, along with increased difficulty in mining and HUGE recent entry into the market, I predict Bitcoins are stable at a US Dollar and will quickly go up in a very short time. Higher costs for mining really have little to do with BTC/USD exchange rate. There does appear to be a correlation where when the BTC/USD price goes up, that rise in price attracts more investment in mining. However, that is a relationship that lags by several weeks: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2399.msg42269#msg42269What do you think? If the miners are cashing in their bitcoins that their rigs (or contracts) are producing because of the high investments made, then there will be more daily selling volume than what we've seen previously. Prior to the runup to parity, there were many days that the per-day total number of bitcoins traded on Mt. Gox was well below the number of bitcoins minted for the day. We are likely to see miners accumulate fewer, on average, than what has previously been seen. Now will that increased selling activity cause the exchange rate to go down, I'm not even going to try to speculate. I might suggest that anyone contemplating selling first consider what this might mean: http://www.google.com/trends?q=bitcoin&ctab=0&geo=all&date=ytd |
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See the Ruthenium vs. Gold thread: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=494.msg4437#msg4437Also, consider this: Bitcoin may very well have been a one-shot deal ... i.e., it benefited from being able to grow through a vulnerable stage without getting thumped by an attacker due to some coincidental timing as well as from being the first to market. One of Bitcoin's weaknesses is that it was (and still possible could be) vulnerable if the attacker has a lot of computing power: http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses#Attacker_has_a_lot_of_computing_powerBut at this stage, it appears that Bitcoin has weathered through its most vulnerable stages. When Bitcoin was first "slashdotted" in June, 2010, mining was performed nearly entirely on CPUs using the classic Bitcoin client. Software for mining with GPUs had not yet been released and thus the network's hashing strength was relatively evenly distributed among nodes. Coincidentally, once versions of the GPU-based miners did come out, the best-performing GPUs were low in availability and, as a result, were very high in cost. Thus even though there may have been chances for profit by attacking bitcoin with brute computing force, Bitcoin's path allowed it to pass through that part of its lifecycle unscathed. With each day going forward, Bitcoin's network gets even stronger and becomes less and less vulnerable over time. A new competing currency following Bitcoin's model doesn't have the benefit of being protected by Bitcoin's current 245 Ghash/second hashing network. A new competing currency would likely not be able to follow Bitcoin's path through the early organic growth phase where it is especially vulnerable. Looking farther down the road, the most likely scenario for launching a competing currency would be after some technology developments occur and some big money funding -- either government or corporate, has been amassed. The funding might allow a network to be protected using the effort's direct investment in massive amounts of specialized hashing hardware using designs that have not yet left the drawing board but use components whose supply is not constrained. Such a competing currency would however be lacking the primary element that carried Bitcoin through its early days -- an enthusiastic community consisting of miners, developers, consumers and speculators. tl;dr / summary: Don't underestimate what has already happened that has allowed Bitcoin to become what it currently is. It will not likely be repeatable soon by a Bitcoin version 2. At a minimum, when there is a competing currency (such as version 2) that comes around, we will likely know well in advance. |
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Can anyone help me find a merchant who is well established with a decent website who accept bitcoins? If there are existing online merchants that you wish to see offer products or services in exchange for bitcoin, you might suggest to them that they add bitcoin as a payment method: http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Category:Shopping_Cart_Interfaces |
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Looks like a big week for Bitcoin  |
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Anyone thinking about doing business with this person should read this first, it's a bad idea until he has proven himself trustworthy. He's offering a service that is needed and valued by his customers. For your own self-interest, wouldn't it make more sense to ENCOURAGE him to be successful with it? |
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It's your reputation that is probably more important since you're paying with a payment system that allows chargebacks. Once the BTC provider sends the bitcoins they can't back out of the deal making their reputation less important (assuming they send first).
ClearCoin.com escrow for the win! http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2134.0 |
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Here's proper "marketing" for this: ANONYMOUS T-MOBILE PREPAID PHONE SERVICE T-Mobile offers the $30/month prepaid plan called 1500 Talk & Text http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/prepaid-plans.aspxIncludes: 1500 units (combination of your minutes and texts) plus 30 MB Data included You can purchase reloadable minutes in $10 increments. These can be purchased with bitcoins, dollar for dollar, using the exchange rate shown on BitcoinWatch.com. For example to buy 3 X $10 prepaid refills ($30 worth) and the exchange rate is at parity, you pay 30 BTCs. Introductory special: While supplies last, $10 prepaid refills are being sold for 8 BTC. Your 1.0 BTCs buys $1.25 worth of T-mobile prepaid dollars.
I have purchased my first month of refills (3 separate $10 transactions) with no problems, even after learning the seller's storied history. The seller provides the refill code before I make payment with bitcoins so I that can verify the refill was accepted by T-Mobile. |
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[...] you have a chance to work for your debts instead of paying them back in bitcoins.
I cannot imagine a worse situation than having a loan that requires repayment with bitcoins. If a month ago you borrowed for 30 days -- even at 0% interest, just to buy back those bitcoins using USD today it would cost at least 3X the amount of USD versus when the loan was made. Anyone care to opine as to why here in the U.S. we have chapter 7 (bankruptcy) and chapter 13 (reorganization) laws? That being said, he does offer a useful service: Anonmous Prepaid Phone Service $30/Month for 1500 minutes/texts http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3321.0 |
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Might the web of trust on Bitcoin-OTC might be used for ratings such as this? http://wiki.bitcoin-otc.com/wiki/OTC_Rating_SystemIn addition to rating people, you could rate services e.g., ;; rate bitcoingadgets.com 1 for example, if you were happy with your purchase from them. |
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Before you vote it may be helpful to look at the Bitcoin parity poll (when will 1BTC = 1 USD).
I'm not even going to try to guess this time. The last time I took a guess I figured we were "months and months away" from parity. I wrote that less than two weeks ago: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2399.msg42269#msg42269 |
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