I found an old wallet file, but I'm not sure which wallet / vault software it was from, it has two files (.vault and .vault-journal)

Is there any way I can open it again?

14th / 15th May: HKCEx was announced on this forum.
16th / 17th May: People realize that they can't withdraw any funds from HKCEx.

Has anyone managed to withdraw their funds since?  The web site is down right now.

Just a warning to anyone using cryptoculture.net.  I was mining AUR with them and they decided to close the AUR pool.  There was no email sent out, just a message posted on the web site for a few days.  By the time I found out they were closing it was too late and the pool admin wouldn't help.

Bye bye AUR.

OK, I've been in the bitcoin game for a year now.  Mining and trading.  But I've only made one commercial transaction - to pay for a VPN.  It seems to me that the vast majority of BTC are just being bought and held for speculation.

So, apart from speculation, what are people using BTC for now and what sort of transactions will it be used for in the future?

I have a hypothesis that bitcoin is inflationary for the world economy.  Here's why...

Take a simplified market in which there are 10 chickens and 10 dollars.  It stands to reason that each chicken is worth one dollar.

     (10 dollars / 10 chickens = 1 dollar per chicken)

Now add bitcoin to the system as an accepted form of currency.  Now there are 10 dollars and 10 bitcoins.  It stands to reason that a bitcoin would be worth one dollar.

So now there are twenty currency units (10 dollars and 10 BTC) chasing after 10 chickens.  How much is a chicken worth?  I suggest that it is worth 2 currency units since:

     20 currency units / 10 chickens = 2

So a chicken costs:
2 dollars
2 bitcoins
1 dollar and 1 bitcoin

Please discuss and feel free to tear my theory to shreds!

Er, that's it.  According to bitcoinwisdom.com someone just bought on bitfinex for $400.  BOOM!

When I look at my hash rate graph on Eligius, it occasionally drops to zero.  It did this most recently on 24th Nov from 22:07 to 23:15.  I was not using the internet at the time so I don't know if it was my ISP.  Does anyone else have this problem?

I'm using a KnC Jupiter, although this question should apply to any machine which is only used for mining.

Chip clock speeds are constant.  If there is unlimited access to work (I believe this is the case with most pools), why does the miner's hash rate vary with time?

April:
7th - BTC rose $20
8th - BTC rose $24
9th - BTC rose $44
10th - CRASH!

October:
17th - BTC rose $6
18th - BTC rose $20
19th - Trading hasn't finished, but it's looking like another $20 day.

This rapid rise is accelerating at an unsustainable rate.  When will this bubble burst?

What is behind the current price trend for BTC?

I'm starting this thread just after the USA just avoided hitting the debt ceiling, which I guess was the reason for the rapid BTC price rise.  However now that they've dodged the bullet (at least for a couple of months), why is the price still rising?

Hopefully this thread will continue to run during further economic changes and people will be able to speculate on current trends.

I'm having trouble understanding the benefits to the network of having so much computing power.  It seems to be doing a lot of clever maths, most of which is wasted.

Below I have calculated the computing power required to process one transaction.  Most of this is done on whizz bang ASIC machines, but how long would a single transaction take on one PC?

Current network computing power: 22,974.66 Petaflops.
Petaflop per day: (22974.66*60*60*24) = 1,985,010,624

Transactions in last 24 hours: 57,084
Petaflop per transaction: (1,985,010,624 / 57,084) = 34,773.5

An 8 core 2.5GHz computer can operate at around 80 Gigaflops.
(Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS
Single core is 10 Gigaflops, so 8 cores is 80 Gigaflops)

Processing time required to complete a single transaction on a single 8 core machine:
34,773.5 Petaflop / 80 Gigaflops = 434,668,750 seconds.

That's 13.78 YEARS!

Is there any benefit in using so much computing power?
Does it make the network more secure?
Couldn't we use this power to reduce the confirmation time?  Maybe by producing a block every minute (and adjusting the BTC reward to miners accordingly).  This would make BTC a much more viable every day currency.