i find myself holding two copies of the valve strategy game DOTA 2. looks like current steam price is 30 USD, so how's .75 btc sound? (approximating $15 usd given current insane rising prices)

any takers?

hey guys. so i just finished the model for my new "wallet". it's basically a money clip with a credit card holder attached. the clip has the bitcoin logo on it.

i made this just for my own personal use as i usually only carry 3 or so cards at any time and no cash. my current leather wallet, i realized, is crazy thick.

thoughts? http://shpws.me/ndeK



note this is a 3d model only right now. i haven't any money to order a printed copy yet. also, feel free to look at my other models and such. and if anyone has anything they'd like modeled for printing (or otherwise) let me know.

So, as some of you may have seen in the Meta section, I posted there regarding a bitcoin software testing subforum. After several days and zero replies, I think I can safely assume that's an idea that's dead on arrival. however! the bitcoin software, specifically referring to the satoshi client here, needs a QA effort. Having spent the last decade in the video game industry doing QA, i felt this was my place to jump in and help.

Unfortunately what little discussion was occurring via the development mailing list last week has altogether ceased, with no progress made. So, I am posting here hoping to stir some interest from volunteers who would be willing to take on some bitcoin quality assurance testing. Initially, all Gavin wants (yes I've spoken with him about this) is a a few basic acceptance tests along the lines of "does this software build run and connect to the network on all our supported platforms?" and related basics.

There is a small stash of donated BTC from the last time Gavin tried to get some testing going that is meant to pay those doing the testing. How that will be distributed is another topic needing discussion - but first I need people to discuss it with who are involved in the testing.

So, is anyone interested in being a part of this effort to test the software of the reference client? I'm also completely open to discussing the testing of other bitcoin clients or software. I'm sure they're all in need. I personally haven't had any contact with their developers or in fact used an alt client at all, hence my focus on the satoshi client.

any feedback at all is welcome.

So, I'm trying to bootstrap a software testing and quality assurance effort for (at least) the Satoshi reference client. Not alone, of course. I've been talking with the devs on the sourceforge mailing lists about what's needed now and in the future.

To that end, any such effort needs a place for discussion. What the latest release added/changed, what needs to be tested, what has been tested, and so on and so forth. Also fundraising to pay the volunteer testers. From my perspective, the ideal place for this sort to thing is here, since we here are pretty much the most passionate bitcoiners out there.

Of course, I could post testing related threads in the current developer forum section here, but that area seems to not really be talking about the client and software development, but more general stuff, so it doesn't really fit, to me. Maybe I'm wrong.

Thoughts, suggestions, arguments, insults?

so i just re-installed windows fresh the other day and am getting everything reset up. guiminer, radeon 6870 dedicated miner (a secondary card) that's worked fine as long as i've had it. now, when i turn off the tv screen i use as a monitor (it's an hdmi connection) about ten minutes or so later it seemingly stops mining. fan speed drops, no more submitted shares, guiminer console only reporting new long polls, but still showing a nonchanging hash rate. once i click stop/start, it gets going again, no problems.

i have a screensaver that comes on after 5 minutes idle, but all sleep and hibernate settings are off. using latest drivers. been trying to fix this for a day and a half now, and i'm out of settings to check. does anyone have any ideas?

so, i have two video cards in my pc. and amd 6870 i run full time mining, and my nvidia 560 i use for everything else and mine on when i'm sleeping or otherwise not on the pc. no, i don't pay electricty and yes, i DO enjoy the extra heat.

this morning, while i was playing a game on xbox for no more then an hour, the PC was mining away. no errors, crashes, nothing like that. but when i came back from the xbox and went about my day (facebook, email, etc) i nitced text was different- pictures too. it's a bit hard to describe. everything looks flattened, and is heavily aliased. not just 3d stuff in games, i mean everything. text, icons, pictures on facebook or human faces. desktop backgrounds, everything. i think the anti-aliasing somehow got disabled system wide, but i've changed no settings that would cause that.

i've uninstalled and reinstalled both nvidia and amd drivers. i've run a system restore to before the issue. i've ran an update of direct x. i've triple checked every setting i can think of in windows and nvidia control panel. on perhaps 3 or 4 occasions over the last couple of weeks, i've had system hardlocks when stoping the ufaminer i'm using on the nvidia card. this was while using beta version of the latest driver and hasn't happened since i updated to the full driver release, but who knows it's relevance.

any ideas what the heck is going on, or how to fix it, short of replacing the card? could the mining have caused it somehow?

so we all, i think i can safely say, understand that eventually, when the block reward tapers off enough and transaction fees are the primary miner income, that the cost of transactions will, because of competition, be only a fraction above cost of operating the mining hardware. right? right.

so, when will we approach that point? we all know the block reward will be approach zero by roughly 2030, though not actually reach it for something like 100 years. so, will mining be a true "profitable" venture for the next twenty years? ten? or is the above premise wrong, and if so, what's your reasoning?

personally i believe with the block reward being 25 for the next 4 years, then 12.5 after that, etc, that we have roughly 10 to 12 years of actually making some solid income and paying off hardware and such. for bigger miners, even living off the income could/should be possible for a while. further out the variables are too many and too complex for me to figure. if the exchange rate (assuming relatively similar $ purchasing power and no collapse thereof) of BTC-$ goes to the oft rumored 100, then $650 a block isn't exactly anything to sneeze at, even divided between 1000 people. after all, with 144 blocks (roughly) found a day, that's about $93 a day for each of those people, assuming equal hash rates.

so, thoughts?

selling my cyborg R.A.T. 7 gaming mouse with all accessories including case for unused parts. i paid 100 USD for it, and it's served me incredibly well... until the left click died after far too much diablo 3. it still works, though sometimes double clicks or doesn't unclick. all other functionality besides left clicking is perfect.

given the broken nature of the mouse, i have no real idea of it's value, or indeed if there's any interest at all, but thought i'd toss up a post anyway. maybe a hardware savvy person can replace the sensor? i don't know. reply here or PM me and we'll discuss price and shipping. any reasonable offer will be considered.

i keep getting stuck when i try to think about where the "mining industry" as it were is all going to wind up after ASIC hardware actually arrives (bfl or otherwise). i just can't wrap my brain around it. so, here's a thread. 

even with the very low cost of running asic's, the number of people willing to do so at a loss is, i think we can safely agree, minimal compared to those interested in making money from mining. it seems to me the whole idea of block rewards and transactions fees going to miners is specifically geared toward a profitable venture to ensure people are there mining to provide network security and to actually, you know, confirm the transactions.

but if it's not profitable to mine, people will turn off their rigs- asic or not. in doing so, transaction confirm times will climb until the difficulty drops at the next retarget. at that time, the difficulty will drop making it profitable to mine again, and thus they'll switch them back on confirm times will decrease until the next retarget and so on, ad nauseam. how would this sort of cyclic variance effect network security and general faith in bitcoin? one week a transaction confirms in the expected ten minute, then next in five, the next in twenty or thirty minutes as the total network hashrate fluctuates wildly.

there's plenty more headache inducing confusion on my end from this ASIC stuff... but i can't seem to actually form coherent thoughts from it, so let's just go with this for now.

so, have i wildly misinterpreted things? will everyone just leave their asics on, regardless of profit or loss? was mining never meant to be profitable? will i survive the rest of the year without my brain exploding and leaking out my ears?

so, how high do we really think difficulty will go before reaching relative stability? for this discussion, lets assume the BFL products, prices and release time frame are accurate. do we see the price increasing quickly by a factor of ten as ASIC's come online? x100? more? you tell me.

personally i have no idea. too many variables for me to guess at. we don't know how many ASIC based units they can manfuacture and ship or in what time frame. we also don't have a reliable way t figure how many will actually sell, as far as i know.

So, I am fortunate enough to live in Kansas City, MO with an electric rate of about $.06 per kWh. As such I want to build out a mining operation. My current thinking is to get the best FPGA's I can (using the TML bit stream for best results, depending on what Lancelot's offer) though in the long term that may change with the ASIC's from BFL being announced.

Right now my meat space job barely covers my monthly expenses, and due to several years unemployment, my credit sucks so I can’t just throw the charges on a credit card.

So, my thinking is offer bonds and shares to raise the initial funds to buy enough FPGA's to add 5ghash.

The part I don't get about GLBSE - knowing Bitcoin is irreversible and the like, what makes anyone trust anyone? I mean, how can it function at all?

I personally have no intention of scamming or taking the BTC and running or such - I love Bitcoin and what it's about and want to be a bigger part of it then my money allows. But what makes you guys believe that? how do I generate any trust?

so, i have an nvida 560 in my gaming/3d modeling/work rig. when i'm not doing anything intensive i let it mine. might as well, since it doesn't interfere with whatever i'm doing.

but i'm wondering - i've got a second pci-eslot on my mobo. (asus p755d-e, fyi) and i've read that i could run BOTH the nvidia card AND an ATI at once, under windows 7. the ATI would of course do nothing but mining day in day out.

thoughts?

so here i am, using my lowly nvidia 560 vid card in my gaming rig (when i'm not gaming...) to mine for me. i've got a little handful of BTC. i am very much interested in boitcoin in the long term and it's potential, hence my current (nearly useless...) mining. so eventually, i want ot buy some fpga's and really run with this.

unfortunately, my real word USD job pretty much only pays enough for me to get from paycheck to paycheck. so i'm trying ot think of ways to use my meager BTC to raise the capital to buy at least one FPGA, to start off. to that end, i'm wondering what ideas the community has. my thought, initially, is forex trading, since i have btc, and could easily exchange them into usd, GBP, what have you, and right back to BTC ad neaseum, adding a few cents at a time here and there. obviously this would be a cautionary thing, since exchange rates fluctate and have various fees.

so, thoughts on this or other ideas, besides a bank heist, to get a few hundred bucks to buy some FPGAs?

so i've been reading the mining forum here for a good long while, and i just want to verify something: it seems to me with the right rig setup, namely a few fpgas, it would be quite possible to make enough to comfortably live off, meaning like 2000 USD a month.

yes, at $100 a month (as i saw mentioned for a BFL single are current prices, approximately anyway) that would be 20 fpgas... but buy one, wait 6 months until it earns enough to buy a second, wait 3 months, buy a third, etc... in theory within, say, 1.5 years or so you could be set, off of just the initial FPGA purchase.

am i right that this is possible, and people are making a living as a bit coin miner, or am i blind and stupid and missed something obvious?