Saw this on KnC's website:



https://www.kncminer.com/images/rnd/Slide8.png

WTH, the die is simulated to reach ~200C? And that despite a monster cooler and relatively cool 25C airflow?

Now you may say its only a simulation or they have tweaked the cooling/packaging since, but then why would you put that simulation on your website?
Besides, it would take more than tweaking to reduce the temp from 200C to something sane.

Has KNC said anything about this?

[calculate]

Forget all these history based linear/exponential extrapolations. Now you can actually calculate where bitcoin difficulty is headed.

To be able to calculate that, you need two simple assumptions:
- overall miners are rational and will only keep buying hardware until they reach the point of marginal profitability within a given period (investment horizon).
- Likewise, ASIC vendors will keep producing and selling chips as long as  its profitable, ie, as long as miners are wiling to pay a price above their marginal costs.

To be able to calculate the point where these two cross over, you need to have an idea what the chips cost to produce (and a minimum operational profit margin), and a clear view of costs of the miner.

Fill out your own assumptions by downloading this spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApaVTTCEb_oudGFsUnNuQUVNUGc2Z3VUVmF3ZVBuV2c&usp=sharing

Here are mine, using Hashfasts published numbers:



(updated)

Feel free to add the cost of casing/PSU/shipping/handling etc in the "per chip" field, Im assuming in the long run these things will be sold bare bones without fancy enclosures and the costs of PCB is negligible and miners already have PSUs or wont factor in that cost given they have decent resale value. Feel free to alter those assumptions.

Also note the investment horizon should NOT be compared to today, when difficulty is growing explosively. This spreadsheet calculates the "end game" where difficulty remains fiarly stable, or at least is only really influenced by BTC exchange rate and perhaps mining fees. In such environment, an investment horizon of a few years is entirely reasonable.

Finally, I did make a shortcut in the formula to calculate the cost of these chips. To accurately calculate that based on die size and wafer size, you need a special tool:
http://www.silicon-edge.co.uk/j/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=68

My formula uses the correct numbers for hashfasts chip size (177 candidates for a 18mmx18mm chip), but I simply extrapolate linearly for bigger or smaller chips. IN reality smaller chips will generally yield a number of chip candidates per wafers thats slightly more than proportionally to its size (up to a point), and larger chips will yield less than proportional. If you want more exact numbers, just use that calculator and redo the cost per die math yourself, but all the other assumptions are likely a much bigger variable.

In a chart:



edit: corrected yield calculations and per chip costs.

Hi all;

Turns out I still have a few original series 1 Casascius 1 BTC coins with spelling error.  Someone pointed out to me these are heavily searched after and on ebay sell for 5x the BTC value (http://www.ebay.com/itm/Version-1-Casascius-Bitcoin-Minted-in-Dec-2011-/190814922588) It pains to say I gave away about a dozen of those coins and most of them are lost .  but I still have 2 Im willing to trade.  If you are interested, make me an offer in BTC. I can ship worldwide and will do escrow. Coins are in mint condition and obviously unopened. Im also open to trading against series 2 coins or other denominations.

BTW, I also noticed my 5BTC coins have the same typo error. Im not sure if there has ever been made a series 2? Do these coins have any collector value?

Cheers.

Im working on a (fairly simple) bitcoin trading simulation, called GoxGame.

The idea is simple; every player gets a certain amount of virtual dollars and can use those to trade on a virtual exchange which follows MtGox prices more or less in real time.  After every 2 weeks or so, a winner is declared and the amounts reset.

In order to make sure people actually trade rather than buy and hold, players will receive a penalty if they do not meet a (to be determined) treshold in trading fees (set at 0.6%).

Players will only be allowed to register with their forum names, so 1 account per forum account.
Here is a screenie of the WIP:



About the chart:
The chart is updated in realtime.
You can click the legend to show/hide various elements.
Depth 2500 shows the price swing 2500BTC would cause in either way.
Also note you can download the chart as bitmap, vector, or PDF if you want

As for trading, history, ranking limit and stop loss orders are being worked on.
I will also make something to visualize how you are doing  compared to others

You can have a look here:
http://goxgame.sytes.net/demo/

Chrome recommended.

If you have some good ideas I may not have thought of, feel free to share.

[- Basic LCD]

Hey all,

I wonder if there is an interest in a dedicated raspberry pi based device that lets you follow gox (or other exchanges).
Im looking in to the possibilities of  the following options:

- Basic LCD
Something like this


But in a prettier case that will just scroll gox prices and volume.

- low power LED projection (night)
This would work like a projection clock:



Realistically this will only work in a relatively dark room and will be limited to 4 digits. But  it would be very neat to run in your bedroom, project the gox price on the ceiling at night, without being as bright as most displays that would keep you awake.

- Persistence of vision floating display

Since I cant find commercial providers for this, this will be by far the hardest to accomplish, but also the most eye catching. For those who missed the hype a few years ago, this is a POV clock:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYNgomrDePo

- LED sign
You all know what these look like:

Available in all sizes and for indoor and outdoor, but the programmable ones are surprisingly expensive.


Since Id be using a Pi, other than showing exchange rates,  the device could do double or triple duty for just about anything, from file server to alarm clock to internet radio (if you connect active speakers), to media center (XBMC), to display email or tweets or bitcointalk forum posts, or well, you name it.

Rough price targets;  
Pi with LCD and buttons in a  nice enclosure: ~120-150 euro
Pi with LED projector: ~150-200 euro
Pi with POV display:  unknown. components are cheap however.
Pi with LED sign: depending on size, ~250 - 500+ euro

I wanted to add a poll so you can vote which of these, if any, you might be interested in, but it seems like I cant, so I will just read your replies.

Selling:

- Sapphire 5850 (looks like this one: https://www1.sapphiretech.com/us/gallery/img/559/11162-00-20_HD5850_1GBGDDR5_PCIE_C01.JPG )
- MSI 5850 TwinFrozr II dual fan, super silent card.
- 5850 Reference card (I think by powercolor, not 100% sure)
- 5870 Reference (XFX, fan replacement underway, see below brand new fan installed)
PCI-E 16x cables can be thrown in as well.

MSI and Powercolor 5850s clock ~900 Mhz stock voltage, sapphire  does ~875 .
The 5870 does ~950 Mhz stock voltage

Never overvolted, never ran above 70C.

The 5870 is waiting for a replacement fan which is on its way from Hong Kong. I ordered it 2 weeks ago, it could get here any moment, or  it could be a few more weeks before it gets here. You can bid for it without fan, or with brand new fan if you are willing to wait.
New fan installed.

Shipping across EU at your expense. I will look up rates when I receive acceptable offers.
Accepting BTC only, willing to do escrow.

Lets hear your bids

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2243553/90-percent-of-inquirer-readers-don-t-trust-paypal

[Lets put a bitcoin satellite in to space!]

This started as a joke, but when researching it a bit further, it actually seems like it could be doable.

Lets put a bitcoin  satellite in to space!

Somewhere out of reach of governments, where solar energy is abundant and cooling may not be a problem (not actually sure about the latter lol).

Of course, the idea is not for this to be a profitable mining enterprise, it would be first and foremost a fantastic publicity stunt. Unaffordable? not so sure, have a look here:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/cheap-space-satellites/story?id=17165740

$8,000 and that includes putting it in orbit. I suspect we might get that sort of money on kickstarter, particularly with a few corporate sponsors, like say BFL. Wouldnt they love to have one of their asics orbiting earth? Imagine the press this could generate!

There are some caveats, but none too serious I think. current asics wouldnt be radiation hardened. They will get destroyed by cosmic radiation if not properly shielded (and possibly even if shielded). So it may not last 10 years, it might even break a lot faster than that, but thats ok I think. If it lasts only a few months, its mission accomplished as far as Im concerned. edit: apparently for the above price, you get so low orbit it will only last a few weeks anyway. Oh well..

It would have to connect to the internet. I have no idea how to do that in practice. We would need only a tiny bit of bandwidth, but you do need a permanent uplink. anyone have a clue how to do that and what it would cost?

Then there is the building of satellite itself. Probably not something we should do in our backyard shed, but the above price seems to include the cost of building one. A bitcoin mining satellite with a few low clocked asics is probably about as simple as it gets, assuming you dont want to generate 1000s of watts.

Thoughts?

Authorities in the US have refused to return 137,000 kroner that was confiscated from a Danish policeman who attempted to legally purchase Cuban cigars from Germany.

Torben Nødskouv intended to resell the cigars through his small business Cigarhuset and made the transaction in dollars with a Hamburg-based distributor. But the transaction, which was automatically routed through the US, was picked up by American authorities who froze the money, arguing that the transaction violated the American trade embargo with Cuba

http://cphpost.dk/news/international/us-snubs-out-legal-cigar-transaction

Maybe next time he will use bitcoin .

[PuppyBear will try to short assets]

Hi all,

Im gauging interest in a GLBSE bearish fund. This fund would be run on the assumption that nearly  everything currently on GLBSE will, in the long run, produce a negative ROI, as almost all the assets are overpriced, insolvent, a scam or (indirect) passthroughs to (other passthroughs to) overpriced assets, insolvent assets or scams.

The reason I believe this to be the case is that everyone is trying to “make his coins work for him” by investing and searching for the highest possible APR at a perceived risk level they deem acceptable, but the reality is that almost none of the companies listed on GLBSE create any added value that could sustain these returns.

Think about it, which company listed there offers products or services you are willing to pay for? Precious few. The vast majority (including mining bonds and companies)  only produce promises to generate you more coins than you put in. That obviously cant work, and therefore, a few small exceptions aside, the only ones that create "added value", create it for themselves, either as plain scams, or by issuing bonds/shares and taking their cut before their investors lose their principal due to their own or other assets crashing or defaulting.

Now, if you also believe thats true, you may wonder why do I start a fund and how on earth could it profit?  Bearmarkets are an opportunity too, especially if you are one of few to realize it and act on it. PuppyBear will try to short assets by borrowing them from other investors, provided there is enough liquidity to make it feasible and provided we can find willing investors to borrow them to us on acceptable terms. This would be our primary business.

PuppyBear will also try to identify small windows of opportunity to invest in, should they arise, even high risk ones, but we will generally hold most or even all of our assets in bitcoins, either as collateral for shorting or ready to be used  if/when an opportunity arises. Puppybear willl not try to invest in “the best of the worst” as all other investment funds seem to do. Puppybear realizes that its far better to have bitcoins and 0% APR  than a crappy investment that pays high dividends but ends up losing 10% per month. If there is nothing worth buying, we wont buy "nothing" (but we will try to sell short overpriced assets if we can).

Trying to preempt some questions.

Q What ROI  do you expect to achieve?
Let me put it this way: In the long run, I am convinced  we will provide a better ROI than ~98% of all other GLSBE assets. If you think thats a bold statement, its not and this fund is probably not for you, as  Im fairly sure that a cold wallet would have provided a better ROI than 98% of all investments on GLSBE over the past year. If we can beat a cold wallet, I will consider it a success. I am not going to guess by how much we can beat it, but I will take 1% APR over -10%.

Q will you run off with the coins?
Nope. I will get fully verified on GLBSE, and Ill be as transparent as I can be. If we short shares, the collateral will probably be put in a trusted escrow service. Im also thinking cold wallet bitcoin storage addresses will be provided to shareholders or made public.

Q What makes you think you are qualified?
It wont just be me, I assume anyone investing in this will  be “like minded”, so I will gladly listen to and consult with my shareholders to identify opportunities, whether it is for investing or shorting, or doing nothing. Unlike many other "CEO's", I realize the coins actually belong to you, the shareholder, so you will have your say. But never having been scammed once so far,  realizing whats going on GLBSE, and being able to perform first grade arithmetic with very few errors already gives me a clear leg up over 99% of the other “fund managers”. Iif you think Im not qualified, dont invest.

Q How would you structure the IPO, how would you structure dividends? What will the contract state?
I havent quite thought this through yet, and I wont until I see sufficient positive response. Im open to suggestions, though I certainly would avoid a never ending IPO like DMC. As for dividends, as I see it, dividends will only be paid if there are substantial and sustained profits, and after shareholders approval. Dividends will be the exception, like after we completed a very successful shorting, it wont be the rule, they wont happen daily or weekly.
Same goes for issuing new shares, only if shareholders approve it, and in a way that rewards early shareholders, rather than dilute them.

Q what will your cut be?
Up for debate.  Whatever it is, it will be humble and most of it should be performance dependent.  I dont think I should get paid a fat fee for losing your coins, most of you are quite capable of doing that yourselves without my help .

[50% above average GLBSE 5day average prices]

The is a split from the thread where Usagi accuses EskimoBob and Usagi himself came under scrutiny by Maged. To avoid that thread from derailing even further, I will continue this here.

I already provided evidence that Usagi is deliberately and grossly misleading investors about the value of his assets here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=112443.msg1225358#msg1225358

Basically he told investors that BMF fund has a NAV of 0.50 (link) and that a price of 0.57 BTC per share would be completely reasonable (link),  and people should  not sell below those prices, while his own books at that time showed the NAV to be ~0.4  even after inflating almost everything he holds by 20% or more. He listed mining hardware up to almost 30% above list price, included shipping costs as assets, doubled some share prices, etc. Any factual calculation using list prices for the hardware and GLBSE prices for the other assets  put the NAV around 0.32-0.35 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=112734.msg1225573#msg1225573).

Its hard to argue against basic mathematics, so since I started calculating his actual NAV using GLBSE prices, Usagi has resorted to new tricks. He has updated his spreadsheet (http://tsukino.ca/bmf/holdings-nav/) to show a "real value" column instead of GLBSE averages,  with no explanation of how he achieves "real value".  The "real" numbers are on average almost 50% above average GLBSE 5day average prices. And even that isnt enough to warrant his 0.5 BTC claim, so on top of that he has resorted to attempting to manipulate GLSBE share prices of some of the ultra low volume assets he holds. Here is a good example:

A few days ago, Usagi's BMF fund held 200 shares in ABM and ABM traded for 0.125 5-day average. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=112734.msg1225573#msg1225573)
As of now,  Usagi holds 210 shares and ABM traded (briefly) for 0.45BTC. As a result, GLBSE 5 day avg shot up to 0.25 , though the shareprice is now again lower than it was before usagi bought in, trading at ~0.10 as of the time of writing (link).

Now putting the nav for ABM at 0.25BTC could be considered rather questionable already, but usagi actually put 0.35 BTC/share as "real value" in his books. So I decided to check out ABM to see if there was a rational explanation for that.

ABM has only one asset: 1 BFL single, thats mining with horrendous electricity costs and no ASIC upgrade path. 25% of the mining revenue is kept to cover costs. ABM has issued 1000 shares. These are facts, confirmed by ABM's CEO.

So, usagi thinks the "real value" of this one $599 single is 1000*73.5/210= 350 BTC and he almost certainly bought a few shares at a price that would only be warranted if this single was worth ~700 BTC!

For the record, list price for a BFL single is $599 or ~12 BTC (and that will give you 100% of the hashrate, not just 75%, plus it will let you upgrade to ASICs, whereas ABM does not offer an  ASIC upgrade path).

After exposing this, Usagi has "adjusted" his "real value" of ABM to 300 BTC, which still is roughly 10x more than the market value of 75% of a used BFL single, and since there is no upgrade to asics, arguably 50x above any reasonable estimate.

ABM is just an example, if you go over Usagi's spreadsheet, you will find almost nothing but numbers that are similarly detached from reality, although not all of them are quite this extreme.

Now why would Usagi do this? The answer is simple; Usagi needs to inflate his bubbles.  Nyan holds a truckload of BMF shares, especially his Nyan.A bond. At current prices, 60% of its value is in BMF shares. Why is that a problem? Because if BMF shares were to be valued around a reasonable NAV instead of some 50% higher, the NAV of those Nyan bonds would tank even further. Nyan.A by my estimate currently has an actual NAV of ~0.66 if you apply more sane numbers for BMF; but Nyan.A is insured by CPA to be worth 1 BTC. CPA is another Usagi company and this company already has liquidity problems

edit: I wasnt aware of this, but if you read further on in this thread, it turns out CPA also directly insured BMF against a NAV loss below 1 BTC per share (!). BMF shareholders have apparently paid over 500 BTC to CPA for this insurance, but they  are getting nothing in return for it. CPA (ran by usagi) has refused to pay out BMF (ran by usagi) for reasons he is not disclosing.

So usagi has been aggressively buying up BMF shares to push up the price far above any reasonable NAV estimate,  has been buying for just a few BTC incredibly overpriced low volume assets such as ABM to further boost his own funds apparent value,  and has been spreading what can only be described as factual lies to support this price lvel and avoid people selling in to his meager bidwall.

At this point, I fear this is more than just about lying and misleading, and Im beginning to fear this whole thing is a scam that goes a lot further than what I described here. I have many other red flags pointing in that direction, but I will give usagi a chance to explain first before I list them here. But IMO, the above alone would be enough to put him in jail in any regulated market.

Like many others, Im getting tired of all those ponzi's and I want to create a way to bet against them. Betsofbitcoin or even escrowed bets arent that useful, because believers (or gamblers) will think they make more by buying in to the ponzi than by betting against nay sayers. So I came up with this idea instead:

First, we set up an asset, lets call it ponzi plus,  where the naysayers can buy shares to gather working capital.  The funds raised will be used as collateral to issue bonds that will mimic other obvious ponzi's. For instance, lets say we detect a new blatantly obvious ponzi like "W Investment Technology Research Center" (link). A motion would be raised among Ponzi Plus shareholders to bet against it, and when it passes we create a new bond, "WITR+" which will pay out the same coupons as the original ponzi, plus a bonus for as long as the ponzi runs. I would even suggest we guarantee a minimum buy back price at 10% or so of face value. Then we promote this +bond among believers of the original ponzi as a lightly less disastrous alternative to the original ponzi. Once the original ponzi collapses, we stop coupon payments on our +bond too and pay out the rest as dividends to shareholders of ponzi plus.

Some pitfalls:

- One might argue we would be running a ponzi ourselves,  but I think not, since our dividends would be assured by our working capital, and not be dependent on  new investors. We would also have to provision a failsafe in case by some miracle the ponzi does not collapse or does not collapse fast enough, that we can issue a buy back before we run out of funds. This would cost the ponzi plus shareholders obviously as we would have lost the bet, but there would be nothing misleading about our offering.

- The ponzi operator could buy our bonds and use our coupon payments to pay his investors. To avoid this, we would have to make sure we issue significantly less bonds than the original ponzi operator, probably on the order of 10% or so.

Other thoughts or comments ?

[Skype:toteviper]

Exhibit A:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=37782.0;all

its in German, but note the skype name given near the bottom of that post:

If you have any questions on the service, don't hesitate to contact me.
You can also contact me via:
E-Mail (ziggi_star@yahoo.com)
ICQ (146513395)
Skype:toteviper
PN or reply on this thread.

toteviper is the same skypename that was used by Opschinken aka Slammer aka Crazy:

Exhibit B:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=37782.0

Note that "Slammer" already has received a scammer tag and this forum name was since abandoned.

In that same thread someone freshly registered under the name of "Deadly" pretending to be the wife of Opschinken,  posts to inform his creditors that Opschinken (ie, zigistar)... died. (And yet only 2 days after the alleged passing of her husband, (s)he  seems more concerned with trading bitcoins and buying/selling GPUs than her husbands death).

Zigistar ran an obvious ponzi "investment scheme" called mybitcointrade using mybitcointrade.com forum name:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=81357.0

The site recently disappeared from the web when investors starting calling in their "guaranteed" deposits and the site is now allegedly bought by someone with the skype handle "viktor.nachajew",  who will most likely be blamed for the collapse of the ponzi:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=81357.msg1199191#msg1199191

I allege Zigistar=viktor.nachajew =mybitcointrade.com=Opschinken=Slammer=Crazy=Deadly=Viper=...

If forum admins can check IP addresses for these users, it might help prove this, at least if he is dumb enough not to use tor or VPNs.

Inspired by Bitcoinbull's competition here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=103708.0

No prizes other than eternal fame.

Here are some to kickstart:

Hilarious thread is hilarious:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=97094.0;topicseen