Agreed.  mBTC is probably the only fractional denomination that will ever be needed in practical application, but mikes allow room for extra precision when necessary.  Both are easily expressed using existing character encodings (mBTC / uBTC) and prevent the absurdities of trying to verbally communicate small fractions in decimal format.  I think it would be wise to dispense with BTC "cents".  They aren't really any better than millies in my opinion, and not having them sets BTC apart from most other currencies.

Maybe I'm just unimaginative, but I think exchanges are inherently centralized to some degree.  This could be for no other reason than the regulatory burden of traditional currency transfers, or it could also be the only suitable way to accomplish exchange transactions efficiently.  I don't think you'll ever see a P2P exchange mechanism for traditional currencies.

Doh!  I should have thought of that.

Well.....that sucks.  How am I supposed to spend 4 hours reading forum material if the forum is configured to deny me access to the topics I wish to read about?

Maybe I'll just try to get myself into arguments with moderators in the newbie subforum to occupy my attention.  1 hour to go. 

As Keyur has already said, the FAQ states that transfers can take up to 6 hours.  I recently deposited $450 from Dwolla and the transfer cleared within the specified timeframe.

I just tried performing a couple of searches on the forums.  One reason for this is to find information (!!) and the other is to find interesting things to read to get my 4 hours.  However, the forum rejected my second search, stating that my IP has previously posted in fewer than 360 seconds.  Is this the intended behavior?  Am I really only allowed to search once every 6 minutes??

Do my research?  The avalon website doesn't specify any kind of timeline for future production.  I'm a bit confused as to what research I should have done other than ask in this forum.

I'm also another latecomer, but I find this all very interesting.  I did related research in graduate school and now as an engineer I'm looking for ways to get plugged in.  Just doing tons of reading right now :-)

I also have considered the Parallela design.  Assuming C1D guesstimates about the Epiphany's hashrate are close enough, you could achieve 1Gh/s by putting together a bunch of Parallela boards (it would take 122 boards to achieve 1Gh/s, by my calculations, and I didn't take into account any kind of overhead required for processing the Bitcoin/getblocktemplate protocols).  122 x $100 = $12,200.  Each of those boards would require at least 5W, but probably more than that given the expected heavy load.  We'll be kind and leave it at 5W.  Compare Avalon #3: 63 Gh/s @ 600W at a cost of $5000-$6000 (depending on exchange rate, but this is close enough for now).  If you scaled up the Parallela board to produce a comparable hash rate, you'd be paying $769,000 for the hardware, and you'd need 31.5kW to run them (not to mention a place to put them and additional equipment and electricity to cool them).  This is also all assuming you can purchase or manufacture this many boards at a cost of $100 each.

I heard that Avalon had another batch of their ASIC product, but when I checked the site it was sold out.  Does anyone know when there might be more available?