Anything where you dont need to use the video card

web server, file server, tor node, torrent, bot trading

I'm willing to hold the bitcoins in escrow while the bounty is being established, and I will dispense the bounty when the target is captured.

If you need character references PM me.

what about "volts jolt, amps kill"?

Good question

I'd say somewhere around $45

Any kind of cartel action to raise mining prices will just encourage more mining.

Higher prices = more investment in mining. Artificially raising the price through collusion would just result in lost profits due to more competition.

What you really need to have a good cartel are barriers to entry.

bitsalame - I'm a psychology nerd too, and I've found that it's almost impossible to discuss even basic psychology with most people on the internet. Especially internet forums.

My hypothesis is that internet forums are a social ghetto for neurotic people, and almost any kind of psychology discussion that deals in facts is threatening to someone reading.

It hits home, it makes them think of possibilities they hadn't considered, and is generally just dangerous to their idealized self-images. Half the people in these internet forums think they are automatically informed on any topic because they know how to google, or because they read a crappy news article once.

Their self-esteem defence mechanism (among other things) is always a poorly cobbled together recitation of logical fallacies (which they mis-apply) and shallow wikipedia scans which they misinterpret.

Follow the adage: "Never argue with an idiot. They'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience."

I like how you think your opinion matters, like you get to vote on what happens to this money.

The courts are going to decide where the money goes.

Until then, all the 16 year olds and people who can't spell "Kevin" will keep spouting off like they matter.

I love it when 16 year olds tell people to sacrifice $5,000,000 "for the team"

You're comparing Amazon.com with Magic The Gathering Online eXchange.

One of them is the biggest success of the internet age that employs the most talented computer scientists in the world to tackle the most difficult business and technical challenges on the internet.

The other is a glorified calculator, providing a service that was already perfected long ago, in a very amateur and incompetent way. They've made errors that freshman computer science students know not to make. They've proven their deep incompetence.

AWS went down because AWS is like the space shuttle of internet technology. It is cutting edge: AWS EBS is trying to solve a problem that most other experts literally consider impossible. Despite their downtime, they haven't even violated their SLA.

Magic The Gather Online eXchange is too incompetent to use bcrypt and not expose their fucking accounts database to insecure parties. Magic The Gathering doesn't even have an SLA. Because they are fucking incompetent and untrustworthy.

When it comes abstract mathematical metrics derived from the interaction of complex human behaviour, past performance does not predict future performance. This is economics 101.

Difficulty is not a physical object. It does not obey Newton's first law. Abstract, arbitrary metrics generally don't. (And when they look like they do, it's usually just because they haven't changed yet. See: LTCM. See: Housing prices. See: Tulips. When stuff looks predictable, it's usually because you're suffering from selection bias.)

Mining is lower profit, but it's also lower risk. You can sell your rig, you can use it on other projects, or you could play games with it. Mining can also remain profitable even if the price goes down, especially if, as the price goes down, network growth rate decreases.

Your extrapolation of the difficulty growth is still just a guess. There is no reason why difficulty has to keep growing at that rate. It could easily fall to 2%.

In conclusion, mining makes as much sense now as it did on May 1st. Which is to say, it's anyone's guess what will happen.

I think it's cool that you're trying to learn how to be an amateur investment advisor.

So here's a lesson: risk is the single most important variable in an investment.

Buying bitcoins is, by a fundamental law of the universe, always going to be more potentially profitable than mining because it is higher risk.

Mining is lower risk, but also lower expected returns.

An investor's choice of where they should put their money and time depends on their risk profile.

Is the investor looking for a high risk, high yield investment, and is comfortable taking losses but still acting rationally? He should buy bitcoins.

Is the investor running tighter on money and can't afford to lose much, but also isn't aiming to make more? Is the investor willing to invest personal time and effort managing his investment? If yes he should consider mining.

Variables that matter for deciding about an investment in bitcoins:
- Your risk profile
- Your beliefs about future price
- Your skills (Are you capable of trading wisely? Avoiding panic? Not getting scammed?)*
- Your interests (Does system administration turn you on?)**

Things that don't matter:
- Other people's calculations about difficulty increases
- Bogus ROI calculations based on unknowable assumptions
- Stuff your competition says to discourage you from competing with them


*Lots of people who attempt to become traders end up losing their shirts because they panic. The ideal trader is a person who is rational and level-headed even when others scream that the sky is falling. Not every personality type is a good trader: people with the letter "F" in their MBTI are often naturally bad traders for instance and tend to buy high and sell low despite their best intentions. If you have an "F" in your MBTI you should consider if you can handle the pressure of knowing you could lose all your money.

**Running a bitcoin machine is like buying a pet. It takes regular maintenance and a non-zero recurring time investment. It also requires a variety of computer skills that many miners take for granted, but which newbies may not have and may not have an interest in learning.

very nice!

Stating facts isn't the bullshit part.

The bullshit part is when you tell people "you won't ever break even" when YOU DON'T KNOW THAT.

Did you tell those people that by your same calculations, mining would be considered unproftaible in may? In april? In march?

Because all these calculations are the exact same calculations done for the last year, and these calculations say very little, because the people who do these calculations (you!) cannot predct the single important factor that actually matters: price.

All ROI calculations are bogus because all ROI calculations make assumptions about price. Any conclusion other than "I don't know what's going to happen, your guess is as good as mine. Just depends where you think the price will go." is bullshit.

The threshold I mentioned contains the difficulty information. But really the difficulty doesn't matter. All that matters is the price. If the difficulty mattered, then people would have stopped mining at 250k. Bitcoins were actually MORE profitable when the difficulty rose to 450k and then 550k, and LESS profitable at 250k. Why? Because all that matters is the price.

Your calculations are stupid for the same reason that the same calculations were stupid back in may, and in april before that, and in march before that. They're the same calculations.

Profitability depends on one thing: price of bitcoins. Since you can't predict this, you can't predict profitability.

Mining is betting that the bitcoin price will stay above a certain threshold. Buying coins is betting that the bitcoin price will go up.

Each bet has different risk profiles and can be approached differently, but both of them are just bets on the price of bitcoins, same as they were back in may.

There is nothing inherantly less profitable about the current moment than there was back in May - in fact it is easy to argue that bitcoins are a smarter and safer bet now than they were then.

Since I'm a miner, telling the truth goes against my self-interest. But the reason I don't mind telling the truth is because I do this primarily as a hobby, for fun, and because I think bitcoins are cool and have a future. I also think the long-term health of bitcoins will be bolstered by more people invested in them, by more miners, more decentralization, more activity, more interest.

So if a newbie reads my post and goes and buys mining hardware I will lose a bit of money in the short-term because of that, but in the long-term I don't mind.

Also, I just generally am pissed off by all you douche bags with your fear mongering and discouragement. I don't like you lying assholes on a personal level - the way you say one thing and do something else.

Right, miners have realized that since mining is competitive, by bragging about it they ruin their own golden goose.

That's why there is now a concerted effort to discourage newbies from starting up. Newbies are threats to profit.

A bunch of harpies who are angry at reduced profits due to difficulty increases have taken it upon themselves to whine loudly on the forum about how mining is a bad investment.

These people invariably have their own mining rigs: they don't follow their own advice. They're trying to avoid further difficulty increases, which may make them lose money.

Mining is still very profitable, and if it wasn't, these assholes wouldn't be spending their free time trying to convince you not to do it.

In conclusion, if you think it would be fun to participate, go for it. Hopefully you know something about hardware, software, and trading. You'll probably make your money back no problem. It may take a few months. Bitcoins probably aren't going anywhere though.

Just remember: all of these people trying to convince you not to do it, are themselves not following their own advice. If they did follow their own advice, they would sell their bitcoin machines RIGHT NOW to other miners via craigslist.

I'm not selling my mining rigs, and they aren't either, because we all know that mining is profitable and fun and will most likely remain profitable.

there are 210 trillion satoshis available. (American trillions. Note that euros have a different meaning for "trillion")

The currency should be changed so that:

1 bitcoin becomes 1 satoshi



Just change the meaning of what we currently call a bitcoin to what is currently called a satoshi.

Bitcoins and satoshis become the same thing and the problem will be solved. The public will understand, and will be excited to get their hands on 10, 100, 1k, 100k, 1mil, 100mil, 500mil bitcoins.

Fractions are poison for the currency.