They would sell them because:

1) People are willing to pay a profitable premium for them

2) It's impossible to supply enough electricity to a centralized location to power a huge amount of them

...simple.

The first time I tried to run MultiBit after Mavericks upgrade I was prompted with a message that a Java 6 SE runtime was required, and the OS offered to install one for me. I said yes, it seamlessly installed one, and everything seems to be working fine now. Hope that's helpful.

NO. I am never, ever going to sell one of those little USB ASICs. I'd be selling them at like an 80% loss, so I have ZERO interest in doing so.

Like I said, I now see those little things as the gateway for others to become Bitcoin miners, and get into the cryptocurrency scene.

Newbies won't care that they're worth less than their weight in dimes, they'll just think it's cool that now they are getting a little bit of something for nothing just by running their comps! And if BTC price ever skyrockets, they'll have some real money as a result.

Half of you are missing the point. 

I bought a bunch of these while waiting for more mining power. Now that I have it, it's not economical for me to run a whole separate mining PC just to host these. 

I don't care to sell them off for a fraction of what I paid. It would be worth more to me, and the whole Bitcoin community, for people like me to give each of them to people we know WHO AREN'T ALREADY HERE. 

When we grow the community, we grow adoption. Then demand increases. I hope you know what comes next!   

For a non-miner who already leaves their PC on 24 hours a day, they can just plug it in and have some real BTC to play with, even if it's just pocket change, at no additional cost. 

So it's a win-win! They get a new small but meaningful income stream, and I get increased chances of a continued rise in market price (not to mention the social benefits of such awesome gifting). This holiday season everyone I know is going to become a new miner if they aren't already. 

Stuck with more than you can handle? 

Don't hold a fire sale, give them away to your friends and family for the holidays!

They're far more likely to have a spare USB port than you. 

and another one...got my Batch 3 tracking info this morning, for a 3-module unit, no PSU, order #69xx. Finally!

And to the person complaining about the whiners in this thread...whining about people whining is still whining! Welcome to the club! 

I think there's a lot of overreaction to this news.

First of all, learn how news works these days. Headlines look the same across so many outlets because they all get their news from the same meta-providers like AP and Reuters.

Also, if people that scan headlines and jump to conclusions are the people you want to join the Bitcoin community, I wonder why (unless you want to be the next Pirateat40).

Lastly, for people that do actually understand what this is all about, it INCREASES confidence in Bitcoin that there is some possibility of retribution for bad apples in the scene.

I read it as good news, even if the terms "Bitcoin" and "Ponzi Scheme" both appear in the headlines.

My 3 card unit with NO PSU order #69xx is still "processing."

I think this is what they call insult to injury. Back when Batch 3 orders were opened, we were told that we were given the option to specify "no PSU" in order to avoid international shipping problems and get our units faster.

Meanwhile competitor BFL seems to have shipping delays caused by a LACK of adequate power supply stock.

Yet here, I am being PENALIZED for requesting no PSU, AND I have to now pay hundreds of dollars extra for a power supply to go with my Avalon.

Yifu, PLEASE send us our "no power supply" Batch 3 units when you said you would, along with the others. You think any of us who said "no power supply" really give a shit about that? All we want is for our miners to arrive at our doors, that's why we made that choice in the first place.

I'm starting to feel like Batch 3 + No PSU is really Batch 3.5.

I'm working on this too. Just waiting on my molex connectors. I tried adding a 3rd 7970 to a mining rig with an unpowered riser and it didn't work. Yes, for most motherboards you'll need powered risers for anything more than two high-hashrate GPUs.

PCIe 16x GPUs can individually consume up to 75w directly through the motherboard. What's happening when these attempts fail is that the GPUs are trying to get more wattage from the motherboard than it can provide.

You can estimate the total PCIe wattage supported by your motherboard by adding together the spec'ed power for each actual PCIe slot you have (16x, 8x, etc.). The info for all widths is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#Power

@theymos thanks for adding that! works much better for me.

My only other suggestion would be that, if site-integrated Google Search is now the recommended way to search the forum, that it also be used as the backend for the sitewide search function.



Would that be possible? Either way, thanks again!

I'm not a CPA, but I do my best to understand the "shape" of unconventional assets and therefore how they fit in to the tax code. Talking US tax code here. I'm honestly trying to think this through, about halfway there I think.

I disagree, at least at this point in history, that bitcoin mining rewards should be taxed as ordinary income at the time they are generated. This is because they're as much commodity as currency right now. Consider this:

I have obtained BTC through exchanges. I have obtained BTC through mining as well. In both cases, I've been doing so to grow an investment position. I have decided that cryptocurrency is the most attractive high-risk investment for me at this time, so whatever liquid funds I don't need as "safety net" savings in USD, I want to put into this one way or another.

I decided to go with a substantial investment in mining hardware, because this not only allows me to profit off of increase in exchange rate, but also helps fortify the Bitcoin network itself, thereby reducing risk, however incrementally.

So, I tend to view the bitcoin rewards from my mining efforts as earnings for an age-unrestricted annuity.

This leads me to believe the best time to declare any holding at least for this use case (Bitcoin as an investment commodity) would be when exchanging it back to USD, valued at the current rate at time of exchange. This could be taxed partially as income, partially as capital gains, to reflect any increase in BTC/USD exchange rates since the inception of the mining 'annuity.'

The last italicized part would address the biggest challenge of all this in my view, which is determining average cost basis for the BTC holdings at USD conversion time.

CPA(s) in the room, any glaring problems with this?

I'm not into the idea of going back and forth between two sites for searching personally, but if that's how it has to be right now, so be it.

But there are users constantly asking about this, in the newbie forums especially...as such it might generate more spam than it prevents! Related post topics in newbie forums from the past week:


So, at the very least, if the error message that appears after repeated search attempts by throttled users could be more informative, perhaps that would stem the tide. Most people don't call a search query a "posting" so it's inherently confusing.

How about: "Sorry, but there is a limit on search frequency for new users. Please wait 6 minutes between searches. This is required to prevent certain kinds of hacking attacks."

Hello all...

I'm trying to learn as much as I can about Bitcoin from this forum. I want to search a lot. When I search for something and find nothing, I typically tweak my keywords and try again. But when I do that here, I get an error message:


It seems like some filter that's intended to prevent people from spam-posting into threads is also preventing people from doing rapid repeated searches, which I think need to be allowed for us to learn best. I see a lot of encouragement to "use the search function" on these boards. I want to be able to take that advice and run with it!

My guess is that the search term is being sent as an HTTP POST request and all POST requests are subject to the filter. The easiest hack fix would be to change the search term to be sent as an HTTP GET request instead, otherwise the filter would have to be taught to distinguish between new message / reply POSTs and search query POSTs.

Anyone in a position to comment on how to get this done?

lol just check the source code for '$2000' you'll find it there </sarcasm>

A lot of work went into this glossary and I appreciate it. We need to spread this info. I'm working on a personal website about cryptocoins; I'd like to put these terms in a database and provide an alphabetical glossary there. Would that be okay?

If there's one thing blocking widespread adoption, it's this.

I am happy with these restrictions; therefore leaving a post to get up to my minimum to be a non-newbie. Thx!

Hi. I'm splnkr, and I'm a cryptoholic.