The hash rate is still going up because some people are happy to earn $5 a day (after costs and tax) on $300 of equipment.  That works just fine as long as difficulty doesn't keep increasing at the pace it has so far.  The next increase is likely to be less, about 25%.  Still, that's 25% less money than they're making today.  Miners may also be betting on a higher exchange rate in the future, although prices have stagnated for weeks despite a more than 100% difficulty increase.  Some people get power at 10c/kWh, but many pay a lot more than that.

To all the people with the 'har har! Stop mining and just make it easier for me! Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out!' type attitude, be aware that GPU mining in general may be unprofitable regardless of power costs in a couple of months.  There are much more efficient ways of grinding bitcoins coming online.  The miners getting out now make it easier for you, but they're also going to get better prices for their hardware.  Selling up while a 6970 is still a good card and not superseded by 7xxx isn't a bad idea.

Absolutely nothing will change.  The debt limit is raised every few years with the party in power claiming cats and dogs and assorted ocelots will rain down if it's not lifted, while the party without power claims the other is totally reckless and irresponsible.  A few years later the two parties swap positions and go at it again.  No one is dumb enough on either side of the political divide to risk default over a few political sticking points.

If both political parties suffer from a bout of insanity and refuse to agree on the new debt limit, bitcoin's value will plummet.  It's a pure speculative commodity (not currency) that has no impact upon 99.999% of the world's population.  Ask a villager in India whether they would prefer a bitcoin or gram of gold.  Ask a Chinese businessman the same question.  I bet a Greek factory worker would give the very same answer.

It's half way to a Ponzi scheme.  A Ponzi scheme also requires something of little to no real value changing hands, and payouts to early participants being paid from later participants.  Hmmmm.

Some people argue the world's banking systems and stock markets are a giant Ponzi scheme, as they rely on young people buying up assets at rising prices to benefit older asset holders.  But at least a stock represents ownership in a company making a useful product or providing a service.

The inevitable and fully predictable difficulty rate that's putting a squeeze on Bitcoin mining profits is a short term danger to Bitcoin.  Many people first noticed Bitcoin because it was a way to make money by having a PC running software.  The lost interest of these people must be replaced with real world uses and practical applications for Bitcoin.

I switched a PC off a couple of weeks ago that was running a 5750, and am about to sell some 6950 hardware.  Both those PCs are still profitable at current power prices, but the return was very small and I just don't see the point in earning a few dollars per day per PC when they're probably depreciating in value almost as quickly.  The hash rate is still going up, meaning either people are paying a lot less for power than I am (0.25c/kwh) or they don't pay for power at all (fixed contracts or stealing power from work).

Even with the current difficulty squeeze on profits we'll see a difficulty increase of at least 20% next week (estimated at 8% right now).  If FPGA mining ever takes off then GPU mining will be killed off within weeks.

I think the OP hasn't thought this through.  He's selling his mining gear because it's not worth mining any more, on a Bitcoin mining forum 

Speaking of getting rid of hardware, I too am downsizing, although listing elsewhere to sell my graphics cards and other bits.  Employing $1000 of hardware to eek out maybe $5 a day after power and tax doesn't strike me as especially effective.

You've just answered your own question about why people use eBay.  Binding agreements and you almost always get paid.  Selling through forums or other means is like pulling teeth.  eBay's charges are terrible but there are few other viable alternatives.

Indeed.  Bitcoin's value requires a constant infusion of new market participants.  If people become disillusioned with mining and bitcoin fails to find a real use, the hoarders waiting for a better price will be waiting for Godot.  If enough people come to the conclusion that 'this is as good as it gets' in regards to BTC's price, it's a downward spiral from there.  Sellers attract more sellers as BTCs are dumped onto fewer and fewer buyers.  Speculators may cherish this buying opportunity but there comes a time when even the strongest believer in a commodity must wonder if they're going to be stuck holding the bag.

The correct way to do a pump and dump is to progressively buy small amounts of BTC at ever higher prices in a thin market.  That's one of the reasons MtGox often sees silly trades like 0.01BTC at $16.05, 0.01BTC at $16.07, 0.01BTC at $16.10, etc.  It's designed to run a thin market up.  As soon as you have enough followers and there's an increased amount of buy orders, dump a large amount of BTC in one hit.  The outstanding orders are filled before anyone has a chance to react.  MtGox users are relying on the bot programmers to be clever enough to program in all scenarios.  All it takes is one buggy bot with access to a lot of bitcoins to seriously affect the market.

It helps when there's a temporary sense of euphoria in the market too, as seen in the run up to $30/BTC. 

Great news.  Good to see it (and Mt Gox, on which Piggy is reliant for pricing) back again.  Mt Gox still doesn't offer withdrawing into Australian bank accounts, so Bit Piggy is the easiest way to sell BTC.

BTC's price is not increasing as speculators have absolutely no care about how much it costs to buy hardware or pay for electricity and cooling.  The market is already very well supplied with over 6.6 million BTCs.  More than enough to speculate.  It could cost $0.95 to mine $1.00 BTC and the speculators couldn't care less.

Above all else, BTC supporters need to remember the above.  The game of pumping and dumping thin markets is as old as the stock market itself.  The same tricks have been employed countless times to lure the suckers in and then dump stock before anyone else can.  The run up to $30 was a classic example.  No logical market behaves that way regardless of wishful thinking about difficulty driving BTC's price to the moon.

Nice joke, well played.  A little too obvious however.

Under $100 won't be possible without using 100% second hand or spare parts.  The cheapest possible new CPU/motherboard/RAM combo will cost $100 by itself, without a power supply, case, and graphics card to go with it.  You absolutely need a graphics card to mine (ATI strongly recommended) otherwise you'll pay $2 for power to earn $1 in bitcoins.

GPU mining is coming to an end soon as well.  Difficulty is about to increase 60% and the hash rate is accelerating.  Everyone should assume they'll be making 25% of their current bitcoin income in a month's time, without the price of bitcoins going up.  Is it still worth it?

There are only two commodities that can help the average Greek preserve their purchasing power right now: gold and silver.  I would wager Bitcoin is unknown by 99% of the population.

The irony of the Greek people's reactions over their nation's dire financial state is that they themselves and their democratically elected government caused the problem.  They cheated their way into the Euro by hiding their debts (courtesy of Goldman Sachs) and continue to look upon Europe to save them while tax evasion remains a virtual national sport.  The whole 'Greece is the cradle of Democracy, Plato, Socrates, etc' angle won't save them either.  The rest of Europe only cares about Greece as their banks are emroiled in the whole mess.

Factor in difficulty increasing 50% every 10 to 14 days with no increase in BTC's value.  The last two 50% increases the average BTC/USD$ exchange rate has actually gone down, not up.  Yet the hash rate has doubled with more capacity being added daily.  People are adding capacity regardless of pay off.  I wager we're starting to see a major uptake of FPGAs.  Some on this forum will deny it, others have thrown about dates of September before FPGAs are likely to make a big impact.  I say it's happening now, and those mining professionally with FPGAs are not going to share their designs (why should they) and won't tell the world about what they're doing (don't want to spoil the party).

Hi,

I'm selling a PCIe 1x to 16x adapter with 19cm flexible cable with molex connector.  Unwanted purchase from the USA.  Would suit an Australian buyer who wants the item in a couple of days rather than a week or two.  Cable is new and has not been used.

Price: 1.4 BTC inc postage in Australia. 

Please private message me if interested.

LulzSec has become the new electronic boogeyman, akin to Al Qaeda.  Over the past few years whenever an attack occurred the media would label it as 'bearing all the hallmarks of Al Qaeda' within hours of the attack, regardless of any investigation or conclusive evidence.  Now we'll have LulzSec being blamed for every electronic intrusion and DDoS.  They must be loving the attention.

So MtGox's fee will be 0.6%.  In all my trades (BTC->USD or back again) they've taken 0.65% from both the BTC and dollar sides, effectively making the fee 1.3%.  Still any discount is a good discount.

I have purchased USD$ with bitcoin.  I cannot find anything else worthwhile to spend bitcoins on.

Well there you go.  Bitcoin is a "money making racket".  Over the past two weeks popular media has labeled bitcoin as the currency of choice for drug dealers, money launderers and now it's a racket (hence implying the whole thing is illegal).  Fantastic.  I'm sure merchants are lining up to support bitcoins with this kind of publicity.