Dwolla was great, only $0.25 for a transfer and only took 3 or 4 business days.

What our other options and how much do they cost.
I know OKPay costs at least 1%. I think bank wires are about $50 or so and you can't do them online.

What do people in the US use. Post here what you use, how much it costs, how long it takes, and how easy it is (i.e. can you do it online).

Is there an Avalon ASIC group buy for the US?

If not, is there still demand for Avalon ASICs for a new group buy?

I see a couple of group buys based in Europes and Asia but none in the US.

I'm thinking of joining one of them but they seem to have a long way to go until they fill up (if they ever do).

Where can I find a group buy that is still open, or should I start one myself?

I've been trying to get historic price data from bitcoincharts.

I've been using http://api.bitcoincharts.com/v1/trades.csv?symbol=SYMBOL[&end=UNIXTIME]

but this only seems to go back a few days and then it just returns nothing. I was under the impression I could use it to return older data.

What other way can I get historic price data?

I've been viewing the transactions I've made on blockchain.info, and I'm a little confused on what I am looking at. I guess there are parts of the bitcoin protocol that I don't undersand completely.

For example, the transaction 49d43691e1c001dd627116fd8dd3854e9c4531c5f5be19628f0a0d39a4444882
which you can see at: https://blockchain.info/tx/49d43691e1c001dd627116fd8dd3854e9c4531c5f5be19628f0a0d39a4444882

Show one input, that is my wallet, and two outputs, one of 0.4 to the address I sent 0.4 to, but it also shows 0.0836985 going to 1LLzHZAjQLGrGR5PLfnTNGxfTrB7pxbU6Q.

What is that all about? For the "estimated BTC transacted" amount it shows 0.4 which is correct.

So my question is, what is that other address for? Who owns? Where did that amount come from? And why is the amount only "estimated" by blockchain, shouldn't it know the exact amount?

Looking at all my transactions, it seems there are other addresses involved that are not my addresses, nor are they the addresses I've sent to.

Can someone explain to me how bitcoin transactions are recorded? I must be confused. Thanks.

For those of you who have a batch #2 order is this similar to the page you see?

See this image:
http://imageshack.us/f/195/avalonu.jpg/

I am trying to buy this pre-order but I want to make sure it's not a scam.

The things that seem unusual to me:

1) Orders for batch #2 were opened on Feb 2nd. Were they still available and not sold out on Feb 18 when this order was place?
2) I thought batch two was priced at 75 bitcoins. Why does it say $1500. Were European sales priced in dollars instead (this was ordered in Croatia)?
3) Why does it say "Order status: shipped". I'm pretty sure that NO batch #2 orders have been shipped yet. Does anyone else have their order marked as "shipped"?

Does it look legit?

I just won an auction for a Avalon Batch #2 ASIC Miner on bitmit.net for roughly 150 bitcoins.

That's A LOT of money (over $17,000) and so I'm wary about sending that many coins off into the internet possible never to be seen again.

I know plenty of people have used bitmit before but the site seems so... overly simple, maybe? Like there is no way, as far as I can tell, to see what you currently have been bidding on when you use it. You have to search and hope you find the item again.

The auction I won said "escrow: yes" in the description so I am assuming it is using escrow. So, I went to the "My Orders" tab, clicked on the item I ordered and after filling in my address and contact info, I'm taken to the order page where there is a big yellow box with the address I'm supposed to send the coins too. It just seems a little sketchy, especially since this seller is not in the US (he is in Croatia). How do I know that it is actually a bitmit escrow address and not the sellers wallet? Bitmit doesn't seem to have any links for disputing the escrow if it doesn't work out. Their FAQ is very sparse too, there are no details how long I have to wait until I can dispute the escrow if Avalon never ships. Is it safe to trust bitmit escrow?

In the meantime I've asked the seller to provide proof that he actually has an Avalon Batch #2 ASIC Miner on pre-order.

Would you do it if you were me? Thanks.

It's only up from here.

You have a couple days at most left to buy cheap bitcoins.

Get in now before you are kicking yourself later.


There is a lot of pent up demand. A lot of good news. And a lot of new investors.

The sky is the limit.

Looks like a triangle/wedge thing with the price the past week, right?

Doesn't that mean the price is supposed to start soaring up soon?

I'm not going to waste my time editing a chart with MS Paint lines drawn over it. It's obvious to see.

Right now ASICMiner shares are at about 1.30 bitcoins per share on bitfunder.

Here are the pros and cons as I see it.

Pros:

Last week they returned a 0.0073 bitcoin per share dividend.

On an annual basis that is a 29.1% return.

This is 10 times better than most blue chip stocks that return dividends:

IBM returns ~2% per share, Costco returns about 3%. Pepsico pays 2.7%.

Assuming everything stays the same, you'll make back your investment in about 3 1/2 years from dividends alone.

ASICMiner claims to be adding (or adding up to?) 50 terahashes/sec in the coming month(s). They've already shown they have working ASIC miners as they are currently mining at about 8-10 thashes/sec (not sure of this number).

They've also been show to be trustworthy and claim to reinvest 50% of their profits in more mining hardware.

Given that Avalon and BFL have both been experiencing delays and neither has given any word as to when they'll actually ship (it could be weeks, months... who knows?) ASICMiner shares  seem to be a good hedge on these other companies falling through. Dividends should definitely be increasing in the coming weeks or even months.

Finally, for many of us who are invested in bitcoin to buy and hold, it is a good way to have your bitcoins make money for you without actually spending them.

Cons:

It can't last forever.

Eventually Avalon will ship and it is most likely BFL will ship too. When BFL ships their 60,00 plus orders and Avalon their 500,000 (?) chips, difficulty will go through the roof, into the hundreds of millions, likely approaching a billion. ASICMiner's percentage share will drop as likely will their dividend even as they continue to put more money into mining hardware. As this happens, the price of their shares will drop too, likely below what they are now, especially if more ASIC mining companies decide to get in on the game.

The big question is when will this happen, and can ASICMiner keep enough of a market share to justify their share price. If they can keep even a small fraction of the dividen they have going now, I would say yes. Even a 10% dividend return would be great. But if the market gets flooded with ASICs and miners are back to making just above their electricity costs, I'd say it's not a good risk.


What do other people out there think?

Why?

Just because I say so. There are enough doom and gloom speculation posts today without any basis in fact other than the authors noticed bitcoin had a bad day and want to be the first to predict "the sky is falling". Yes, people are frustrated. They wish they had sold at the peak of the bubble instead of bought. And they are selling now perhaps. Sell low and buy high, it never made sense to me, but at you if you followed the advice on this forum, that's exactly what you would end up doing.

Remember when bitcoin passed $200 and everyone was saying it's going to hit $300 so BUY BUY BUY. Yet less than 24 hours later it had crashed to half it's value.

And when it was crashing, people were predicting a $30 bottom or lower. We hit a low bottom but we bounced back up, no, it was not the end of bitcoin. And today is not the end of bitcoin either.

Wow, wasn't expecting to hear from them.

They said we had to confirm our orders or they would be canceled.

But now when I try to log into their website, it is down .

Everyone else get this e-mail?

Just kidding, don't sell please. There is a lot of lag and the price is beginning to drop. I wonder what is going on.

I can't wait until coinlab is up and running so that we will be able to short bitcoins.

It will do a lot for reducing volatility and provide a cushion for these insane crashes we've been seeing.

Up to a max of about $166 today a noon EDT and now down to $145 just 3 hours later.

Is it market manipulation?

Volatility cause by lack of liquidity? One big order drove the price way up and now it's dropping back to where it was yesterday?

Or did people just panic when they saw how fast it was rising and remember the bubble from 2 weeks ago?

What do you think is going on?

We are back!

See poll. How may are you holding on to now after the crash?

You need to get verified to withdraw more that $1,000 per day and $10,000 per month.

I noticed you need a copy of an id and utility bill with an "apostille". I'm wondering how hard this is to get in the United States. Do you actually have to go to your local state government secretary of state's office or can you get this done by a notary, say, at a bank?

I'm looking into using coinabul to purchase some gold with my bitcoins and I'm wondering what the typical turnaround time is from ordering to shipping from people who have used them before.

I am located in the US and I plan on buying 1 ounce credit suisse gold bars.

People talk about how bitcoin is deflationary and therefore will necessarily experience price increases, but this isn't quite true. Since miners are producing 3,600 bitcoins a day, bitcoin presently is inflationary.

What does this mean?

Well, it means that in order for the bitcoin price to stay stable, people have to continue buying it! If buying stagnates, the price will slowly drop as more bitcoins enter the market. This is a problem because once everyone who would be interested in buying bitcoins buys bitcoins, the price will drop. In order for the price to even stay steady, bitcoin has to continue to grow.

This is even more of a problem the higher the bitcoin prices goes. Say there are 1000 people who each want to invest $1000 dollars. If bitcoins are at $100, then can each buy 10 bitcoins, or 10,000 bitcoins total. Since there are only 3,600 new bitcoins a day, the other bitcoins have to come from others who want to sell and the price will tend to go up.

If bitcoins hit $1,000, though, those 1000 people can only buy 1 bitcoin a piece. There now will be a surplus of bitcoins mined and the price will drop.

Fortunately, as time goes on, the mining reward will drop and bitcoin will become more deflationary. But presently there is a danger that the price will rise too fast as too many people jump on the bandwagon too quickly. And then as the frenzy begins to slow, the continual influx or more bitcoins will cause the price to drop.

We need to be careful in this present bubble.

This is an idea for people who have made significant gains on the recent increase in the value of your bitcoins.

Here is an example.

Let say you bought 1000 bitcoins at $10 last October.

Presently they are worth $100,000 assuming you sell now for $100 per coin.

If you sold right now (in the US), and you considered your bitcoins to be property you'd owe short-term capital gains on $90,000.

That could be about $30,000 depending on your tax bracket and what state you live in.

You could hold the bitcoins at least a year and pay long-term capital gains of 15% (plus whatever state capital gains tax you have) assuming you are not in the highest tax bracket.

This will still cost you a lot of money, though.

If you considered bitcoins a foreign currency, though, and you spent them, you would not owe any capital gains as long as you spent the currency on goods and services and didn't exchange it back to dollars.

So why not just use the bitcoins to buy gold directly, and then later sell the gold for dollars when you need dollars.

This seems like it would be perfectly legal, at least until the IRS says something about how bitcoins should be treated.

The potential pitfalls are:
1) You might have trouble considering bitcoins to be a foreign currency. The recent FinCen guideline imply that bitcoins that address "virtual currencies" imply that bitcoin might fall under currency regulations. This is essential in that you owe no capital gains tax on appreciation of foreign currencies that you actually spend.
2) I'm not sure whether the purchase of gold bullion can be considered the purchase of a good or something that is an investment. I know that gold falls under the "collectables" laws for it's own appreciation. Certainly if you used the bitcoin to purchase a car or a boat it would be ok. But do you owe tax on it once you sell that car or boat? I don't believe so.

Any thoughs?