There is no doubt in my mind that this is a scam.

However, BGA packages aren't just about I/O.  The chip actually dissapates a lot of heat through the pins -- there's a direct all-metal thermal path from the die surface to the PCB through those pins.  More pins means more heat dissapation.  More pins also means more power entry points on the die surface, so less current per pad, which improves reliability.

So, this is a scam, but even non-scam bitcoin chips would probably come in BGA packages -- but all those pins would be for bringing power in and heat out, not for I/O.

Yep, it's been 48 hours for me and my money is nowhere to be found.

Very shady.  I wonder if MtGox is having solvency issues?

NO, you definitely are not on top of this.  It has been over 48 hours and you're giving me absolutely no information about what is going on.  Not cool.

So, I'd like to report that this process is not working smoothly.

I made a deposit more than 36 hours ago, scanned and emailed my deposit reciept to MtGox, and the funds still haven't been credited.  Several emails to their support team keep getting the same response: "We will notify you when your cash deposit is credited to your account."

ExchB credited my deposits within an hour most of the time, and never even once took more than two hours.

*sigh*

No big deal if the price stays where it is, but it sure will stink if it suddenly goes up 25% (which is quite possible considering the gigantic plunge the price just took).

So, I'd like to report that this process is not working smoothly.

I made a deposit more than 36 hours ago, scanned and emailed my deposit reciept to MtGox, and the funds still haven't been credited.  Several emails to their support team keep getting the same response: "We will notify you when your cash deposit is credited to your account."

ExchB credited my deposits within an hour most of the time, and never even once took more than two hours.

*sigh*

No big deal if the price stays where it is, but it sure will stink if it suddenly goes up 25% (which is quite possible considering the gigantic plunge the price just took).

Well, keep it in mind.


I think you might be underestimating the number of people driven away by the web-only UI.  Or the number of users you would gain if following the site were as simple as adding it to the aggregator they already check every day/few hours.

Speaking of aggregators, I would like to say that the SMF support for RSS totally sucks.  Not only do you have to hand-craft URLs (the UI does not mention it ANYWHERE), but it is flaky as heck and seems to merge various sub-boards into a single feed in randomly-chosen ways.  Bleh.

NNTP Support.

NNTP Support.

NNTP Support.

PLEASE.  I read about five or six sites using forum software like this and it is a huge headache for me to have to keep switching UIs.  PLEASE give your users the option of "bring your own" UI.  This is exactly what the NNTP protocol does.


I hear there is a third-party NNTP plugin for SMF, but I'm not sure how good/maintained/reliable it is.  Hopefully you find some software that has NNTP "out of the box".

RSS/ATOM are nice, but they're only "one-way" (you can use them to read, but not to post) whereas NNTP is two-way.

Sorry, "productive" probably wasn't the best word; I didn't mean to imply that using bitcoins was in any way a hassle.  I was commenting on the lack of demand for services on bitcoin-oriented programming-for-hire sites compared to sites that reach a wider audience.  I found myself spending far more effort-per-contract-won.

Well, no, but I sort of don't think anybody else is either.   Or rather, they're moving a lot of volume compared to the rest of the bitcoin-for-actual-commerce world, but still very little.


Ah, very good point, I had missed that!


Hrm, really?  I mean, I know there are a lot of people offering to moonlight for BTC.  I actually tried doing that and found it far less productive than just going to Craigslist and mailing checks back and forth.  But I guess that's because I'm in the same country as my clients.


Holy cow, they probably are.  I hadn't thought of that.  They definitely started offering the service before Bitcoinica was up and running, so that's probably how they were doing it at least at first.

I know it's quasi-taboo to discuss SR here, so let me just summarize the relevant facts (none of which involve anything illegal) and try to focus on the economic question here:

* There is a website called "SR" which is currently the major (only?) "killer app" for bitcoin -- probably the one thing the average person might want to use bitcoins for, and for which there is no alternative to bitcoin.

* I believe "SR" to be the only major source of demand for bitcoins aside from speculation.

* In the last month or so "SR" implemented a "hedging" mechanism whereby transactions are now priced in USD and bitcoin are used only as a clearing mechanism.

Before the hedging mechanism was in place, sellers were exposed to fluctuations in the USD/BTC price from the moment the purchase was made until the time the buyer confirmed receipt of the goods -- rarely less than a week.  There was essentially no way for sellers to reduce this exposure.

With the new "hedging" mechanism the "SR" site absorbs the risk during this time period in exchange for a small fee.

I contend that sellers are now tempted to try to reduce their USD/BTC exposure to zero, because it is now possible (previously it was impossible).  This means they sell their BTC as quickly as possible after being paid.  This could make the difference between a few days of exposure or a few hours of exposure, whereas previously the seller was exposed for at least a week (or more) no matter what, so an extra day of exposure wouldn't make a huge difference.

Net result: people performing actual, real-world transactions in BTC are no longer holding it for very long.

Consequence: far fewer people are holding BTC for any appreciable amount of time, and the only ones who are doing so are the speculators (like 'em or hate 'em, it would be better to have more diversity here).

Thoughts?

What silly nonsense.  It is no harder to mine; it just requires a different kind of device.

Please explain why anybody should care about the fact that a cryptocurrency is "GPU-hostile" yet not custom-hardware-hostile.

Wow, that is an amazing clock rate.  I understand that your code is based on the ztex miner with some changes to go from 128Mhz to 156Mhz+... any chance you'll release your changes?  I know you aren't required to...

Congratulations and great job!

Just curious: are you actually mining on the chip, or is this just confirmation that the JTAG works and you're able to upload a bitstream?

I ask because designing a stable, properly-decoupled power supply for FPGAs isn't always easy... although for something as small as an LX25 you can get a way with a whole lot.  The Spartan6-150 with a full chip design (~50% LUT/FF usage) at a decent clock rate will be a good test.

  -ec

PS, speaking of clock rate, where's the clock signal coming from?

Um...

My (totally crude and uninformed) understanding of Islamic banking is basically that there is no uncollateralized credit, only equity.  Fully collateralized debt it still possible by treating it as equity in the collateral itself.

The "no uncollateralized credit" part is what's similar to bitcoin.  There are no instances of a court issuing a judgment in which bitcoins are considered to be a legitimate asset, and I doubt that is going to happen anytime soon.  So people structure their bitcoin transactions so that they don't have to rely on courts when things go wrong (often this structuring is expensive/difficult/risky, but that's the tradeoff).

Uh, yeah, that was my point.  If they sold parts to everybody at the price he claims to be getting, Xilinx would be losing enormous amounts of money.

So do I, and so do a lot of other people around here.

The only way your numbers add up is if (1) Xilinx is losing enormous amounts of money on you (if so, congratulations!) or (2) you have found some way around the laws of thermodynamics and the DC Switching Characteristics data sheet.

I call scam unless you match some Xilinx part numbers to those hashspeed claims.

  - e

FWIW I haven't been able to get a quote under $70,000 out of MOSIS, which handles the majority of academic chip fabbing.

Usually "the hookups" equals "fab has been hiring our lab's graduate students for a decade now and wants to keep the supply steady".  In which case there's actually more remuneration going on above and beyond dollars changing hands.

Entry-Level board achieves 750 MH/s @ 15W for $370

Sounds like your company's main asset is the ability to buy chips from Xilinx at an absurd discount.

You sure they'll let you "sell" that ability to somebody else?

If so, the buyer would make more money forgetting bitcoin and just make a killing reselling Xilinx parts via this deal.

  - e