I'm considering adding BTC as a payment method for a website.
Can anyone point me in the right direction as to a PHP library (preferably open source that does not rely on a outside service) that supports BTC transactions and monitor its confirmations.

To mods: I'm not sure if this would be better suited in the Technical Support category, Project Development category, or here. Please move this thread if you deem it better suited in another category.

[MINE]

I'd like to ask the users here about how you got started in bitcoins and how you acquire bitcoins.

So the two questions are:

1. When you started, did you MINE or did you BUY bitcons?

2. If you are a regular user of bitcoins currently, do you MINE or do you BUY bitcoins?


To start off the discussion, I can only answer question 1. I mined bitcoins when I started. Then I bought and sold bitcoins through an exchange.
I cannot answer question 2 because I'm no longer a regular user of bitcions.

EDIT: Let me clarify question #1. If you did some sort of service and got paid in bitcoin, you essentially bought it. Even if it was a faucet, you still needed to do something to get paid. That is, the bitcoins were not given to you without any conditions. Would you have done the service for free if they didn't pay you in bitcoins? For any service, doing tasks, or advertising for someone, you would normally get paid in fiat. If you wanted bitcoins instead, you would have to buy it through an exchange. So in essence, you skipped the exchange, and got bitcoins directly. In the end, you still bought it.

Today's news said that the NSA and British intelligence were able to successfully hack into a Dutch company that makes cell phone SIM cards.

I'm thinking, what if Bitcoin hashing was actually a front to do a brute force attack into systems like this? A hidden code breaking hack?

If your investment looked like this chart in the last 180 days, what would you do?

Are you still going to hold? If you do hold, why haven't you bought more? After all, if you are holding, that means you believe that BTC is going to the moon. And if you believe that, you should buy more, a lot more, while the price is low.

I find it completely ridiculous that people are still buying Antminer U1's and U2 for about $10 to $15 each on Ebay.  
$10 for a miner that does 2GH/s.  At today's difficulty (if it doesn't increase again), they can stand to make about 5 cents in a year! LOL

Here's a link that show the U1's and U2's that have been sold on ebay recently:
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=antminer+u1&LH_Complete=1&LH_Sold=1&rt=nc

Many of you have seen my web site for calculating Bitcoin ROI.  On the site, I also have a list of mining rigs and their specs.
I haven't updated this list in several months because I haven't been keeping up with new hardware.  
If you are willing, please take a look at the list and tell me if there are any new rigs that I've left out, and their specs (if you know it). I'll update the list shortly after I verify the info.  Just post the info in a reply to this message. Thanks.
The list is here: http://www.bitcoineval.com/hardware.php

Btw, I'm also thinking of taking out some of the older hardware such as the Antminer U1 & U2 since they are outdated and very unprofitable. What do you think? Take them out, or leave them on the list?

In 5 days, the estimated difficulty increase has already gone from ~29,829,000,000 to ~35,259,000,000. At the current increasing rate of network hash power, in 5 more days, it's likely to hit 40,000,000,000.
This is really pushing the little guys out of business. Even with the most powerful and efficient miners, there is virtually no way to make a profit unless electricity is free and mining hardware is free. You'd expect with such extreme network hash power that BTC value should have skyrocketed to $1000 USD or more. But instead, it's remained somewhat steady around $500. And now, it's dropping closer to $400. How can this be profitable for anyone, even the huge mega farms?

Has anyone considered what might happen if a government with money and technology were to build their own large scale mining farms?
They could secretly mine tons of bitcoins and sell them on the market and manipulate the value. Or they can render the entire bitcoin network inoperable due to various attacks or manipulations.

There are lots of government that can do this, and maybe some of them are already.

I compiled a list of mining rigs specifications so that people can determine what's the best rig for them in terms of electrical usage and hash rate.

The list is here: http://www.bitcoineval.com/hardware.php
 
If I missed something, please let me know and I will add it to the list.

Cheers.

Every picture of an Antminer S1 I've ever seen has the unit oriented horizontally, where the fan blows air from the front through the blades and out the back.

I'm thinking that if it was oriented vertically, the hot air off the blades would rise naturally. The fan blowing cool air from below would be even more effective as it pushes the hot air out the top.
I haven't done this yet myself because I don't have a wire/mesh platform to put the unit on so that the fan's intake wouldn't be blocked. I'm also thinking about building some kind of a mount rack (probably wood) so I can attach the Antminer vertically to the rack. I might take apart a small bookshelf to make a wooden rack.

Any thoughts or comments on this?

There's been numerous heated discussions comparing solar power and grid power.
One thing that I have never seen being discussed is using solar panels without batteries, and mining only during sunlight, and not grid tied. 

Ideally, everything would work great when there is full sunlight and the solar panels are producing electricity at full capacity.

The part that I don't know is what might happen in the morning or evening when the sun is low in the sky and the solar panels are only generating a fraction of its capacity. 

Just for argument's sake, let's say the mining rig is an Antminer S1 drawing 300-watts of power at 12VDC and two 12V 300-watt solar panels providing 600-watts of power during peak sunlight.

My question is, what will happen in the morning and evening when the solar panels are only producing, say, 100-watts of power? Will the Antminer S1 work at a much lower hash rate? Or could it be damaged due to insufficient power? What if during the day, dark clouds came rolling in and the power fluctuates between 50-watts and 400-watts?

Is there some kind of pre-built device or protection circuit that can regulate the power to at least 300-watts? I suppose a small battery can be added just to normalize fluctuations so that the regulator won't cycle the power too frequently.

I started mining bitcoins not too long ago and I realized that I should have done a little bit more research before I jumped in.
I was excited to get started so I bought a BFL 10GH/s unit off ebay for what seemed like a great price. But it wasn't till later that I figured out the this BFL miner consumed way too much electricity for the GH/s it produced. In effect, it cancelled out the profits.
I ended up writing a simple php script to evaluate how much profit I should expect given the hardware specs. Now I have a dozen AntMiner U2's and a new BFL 60GH/s miner.  Even though the U2s are more efficient, I am still making a decent profit with the BFL 60GH/s.
The php script was originally for my own use, but I figured a lot of newbies probably could benefit from it as well. I was a newbie and I still consider myself new as I'm learning new things everyday. I could have saved a couple of hundred dollars had I bought the right kind of miner hardware.
For those who are just getting started, I suggest getting a Kill-A-Watt meter to find out how much power your system is using. And also the specs on whatever miner hardware you plan on using. Then plug in the numbers into the php script that I made on my new site: www.bitcoineval.com

My next project is to put the entire mining system on solar power. To be continued...

Cheers!
JWC