seriously, wtf is going on?!?! 

It says on blockchain that the block was orphaned for possibly having double spend transactions.

yes.

1. People are trying to sell S2's on ebay for $700+, when you can get them for about $300 - $400. So there are a lot of units just sitting around because no one will buy them for that much money... A lot of them I'd say - All the major mining shops still have them listed for $800 or comparable. (http://www.amazon.com/Bitmain-AntMiner-1000-SHA-256-Miner/dp/B00KH9339O)

2. Some people went ahead and sold their old units and the new ones aren't in yet.. Totally feasible scenario.

3. I took my miners offline and they are just sitting at my office. I would run them but I don't want my landlord to start charging me for power so I try to fly under the radar (I'm really pushing it at 1050w though!! lol).

4. It's just a theory.. It's probably half true and there is another factor I've haven't thought of.

A note on the difficulty:

What it seems to me is that the S4's are on the market and people everywhere are dumping their old miners. I came across a post from 1l1l11ll1l last night (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=813649.msg9110299#msg9110299).. As people dump their old miners for the new ones, or just dump old ones for power issues - there is a significant amount of power leaving the pools.

Granted some of it is being replaced but I'd argue that a lot of it isn't.. Combine that with people who used to mine Bitcoin but have decided to switch to scrypt and I'd say that these two factors are what has been driving the difficulty down.. As more people pick up the old S2's and S1's the difficulty will increase again but it might take a couple of weeks.

I myself just picked up a S2 for $350 on ebay and in doing so I've taken about 243 gh/s offline. And the person that sold it to me took about 1000 gh/s offline.. It's the ripple effect of new miners taking over - it will go back up but right now all the miners are playing musical chairs with their hashing power.

I would believe that he was living in Japan at the time of Bitcoins creation and possibly is still, because at that point in the game why would you have to lie about what country you live in?  (Why not put your location as Berma?)

I am extremely skeptical that he is in fact Japanese. Japan is home to many contractors, especially in tech industry, who come from abroad. Japan is always looking for Americans who speak Japanese. (Still possible he could be ethnically Japanese but definitely raised in the west)

Combine that with the type of prerson who would create such a technology: Hacker, Anarchist, Free Thinker - and you have the profile of bright young man - possibly American, British, or Canadian (the English is too good) - who had the opportunity to Study abroad, possibly had family there.

So he was living in Japan, working at a tech firm or software developer and tinkering with this "Bitcoin" idea. You can't deny the connection between the August 15th patent filed by Neal Kin, Vladimir Oksman, and Charles Bry and then bitcoin.org registered three days later.

I feel pretty confident that they were part of a collective, working on Cryptographic transactions. This is not to imply that bitcoin was created by a group effort but rather developed independently by one of the members.

At some point the creator showed his collaborators his proposal. When they realized what they had - they stopped everything. They realized that if they continued that one change needed to happen:

It has to be created by a ghost: A pseudonym was created by the collective to mask the original creator. Satoshi as you think you know him doesn't exist. He was a guy, he made a code that the collective helped tweak, innovate, and implement. His involvement after that was just as much, maybe a little more than his collective - who were still free to work in the shadows as long as he assumed fully responsibility of the system.. This way instead of a hacker group getting busted you only have one guy who can easily erase his existence with the click of a button (should the option be needed). Everyone involved had to not be involved: A plan was set forth within the group to distance themselves from Satoshi and make it appear to be a mysterious hacker who acted alone. This would free up the members of the collective to work on Bitcoin while denying a link to Satoshi.

Where is he now? I don't know but if my theory is correct - you can find the collective by looking at people really early in the game that deny having a link to him AND can prove they don't have a link to him because that's how they set it up.

So basically everyone.

I've had lots of time to think about this, as have all of you and a couple of things stick out to me:

1. He wouldn't sell his coins - even if he has the private keys, he didn't create Bitcoin to become rich. Bitcoin is his baby and he knows what would happen if he ever put any of those coins on the market.

2. He obviously has a background in Hacking and Cryptography. He probably made a decent living before he created Bitcoin and probably continues to do the same.

3. I used to think maybe he ended up in jail but the day he came out of the shadows to renounce newsweeks claim proves that he either is not OR if he is, Satoshi Nakamoto is part of a team and therefor could act as satoshi even if the real one was in jail. I doubt jail is likely.

4. I would guess that he is living a normal life, he bought some asics when they came out and probably has a hefty sum of personal bitcoins that are not the ones everyone is watching..

5. Possible scenario: He was already working as a securities expert or systems administrator. Gavin tells him he is going to the C.I.A. and Satoshi has a realization; he has to disappear. He counts his Bitcoins to date as a necessary evil and locks them away, possibly throwing away the private keys.

(If he was in anyway doubtful about the C.I.A.'s involvement or intend -this is how I would've handled the situation)

He throws away anything linking him to Bitcoin, moves, starts a new job as a securities expert or consultant. And gets back into Bitcoin, this time appearing as a novice. He starts mining again breaking up his transactions and wallets to smaller numbers so he doesn't have all of his eggs in one basket. And he moved on.

Now he is one of us, or at least appears to be. He lives a different life now, knowing that he can never touch those coins but in the past years has built back a large amount from "hobby mining". He attends the conventions. I'd like to believe that whatever company he works for was probably one of the first security companies to enter the arena - that is where I would expect to find him.. The thing is now, even if he was to reveal his identity no one would believe him. He has shed A LOT of the evidence of his "Satoshi Nakamoto" pseudonym.

Hey, I just got a S2 yesterday, it had a lot of HW errors so I updated the firmware and cgminer to 4.6.1 it fixed the HW problem but now it only hashes at half capacity!!

Has anyone experienced this or know a solution.. I really need help - I have little experience with this.
Oh, and I work from a Mac or Raspberry Pi if that helps.

FIXED!!: Hey, so using the firmware, it's system>upgrade>perform reset and the whole thing started back good as new.. maybe make a backup before you do this if your nervous.



Alright, now I am getting a consistent 1015.7 gh/s.. I've included the system backup, I've made.. It should get you to antminer firmware dated October 28 2014 and cgminer 4.6.1 - the highest you can set the asic-freq is 200, but it works like a dream. To use it go to: system>upgrade>restore backup .. Thanks!!!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0tbtb7326astz24/antminer_backup_2014-12-08_032444.tar?dl=0

Hey I have a mac and a similar thing has happened to me and my wallet. stuck on block 6554.. upgraded, nothing seems to work.