There is an easy way to effectively shut down bitcoin: go after the exchanges.  Shut down MtGox and a few other popular ones, or bury them in red tape and lawyers.  Imagine if the US government required MtGox to get photo ID from all users, or they pressured other banks and organisations to not accept MtGox withdrawls.  The Euro zone would follow soon afterwards.  Just closing a few exchanges would collapse the value of bitcoins as people see the dollars they pumped into the system may not necessarily be pumped out.  

Various volatile thinners and cleaners are used during the manufacture of computer components.  As your computer gear gets warmer it tends to outgas these chemicals and hence may be polluting the air.  I don't know if ozone production is a problem with power supplies, like it is with photocopiers and laser printers.  Ozone is a known irritant.

Senators Charles Schumer and Joe Manchin are trying the drug trade angle to get bitcoin banned or the major exchanges closed down.  I hate to give them any ideas, but if they really wanted to smear bitcoin and give it a bad reputation they would use the magic keywords that make most sane adults instantly lose rational thought and grab the pitch forks and torches: child exploitation material (putting it nicely).  The day the popular media reports that these low lifes are using bitcoin to trade/pay while hiding their identities, is the day bitcoin suffers a major blow.  I fear it is going to happen.  

It's obviously not the currency's fault, but that won't really matter to the general public.

I first noticed bitcoin due to wondering why Distributed.Net's RC5-72 encryption cracking challenge had rapidly dropped off in keyrate around mid March.  GPUs give a tremendous boost to processing power (40Mkeys/s for an i7, 1500Mkeys/s for a 6870).  My search led me to bitcoin, where the natural assumption was people gave up cracking keys for hashing BTCs and making loads of money.

If I wasn't creating bitcoins I would aim my GPUs back at D.Net.  I now have 3 extra 6950s, solely due to the BTC effort.

You will burn a lot more electricity when CPU mining than you can get back through using or selling bitcoins.  Overclocking a high end graphics card by another 5 or 10Mhz gets a greater hash rate than the latest i7 CPU.

I started mining three weeks ago and sold my first BTC at $7 each.  Now they're pushing $30.  Do I feel a bit foolish?  A little.  But I decided it was worth getting some money back for all the money I invested in new hardware just in case bitcoin's value collapsed or the US government shut down the major exchanges.  Never underestimate the sudden intervention of governments (online poker players know something about that from a few months ago).  Even if only a few exchanges were shut down, most investors and speculators would flee, collapsing BTC's value.

Maybe bitcoins will be $100 within a few weeks, maybe back to $10.  Who knows?  We all wish we had stuck $10k into BTCs when they were less than a dollar each, but how many people had the foresight and the tolerance for a very high risk investment to do that?

PSUs take a lot of time and skill to design correctly, and to use quality parts.

I was at a local PC parts retailer recently and saw someone walk in and ask for a SHAW brand 680 watt power supply for $17, while I was buying a Cooler Master GX 750 watt for $115 for my bitcoin set up.  Over six times the price for just a little more power?  You'd think I'm crazy to pay that, right?  Well, the Cooler Master will actually deliver its rated power, with high efficiency, stable voltage and current, into multiple voltage rails and do that for years to come.  The SHAW will do none of that, and likely blow up (not joking) and take the customer's other PC parts with it.

The moral of the story is high quality, high current power supplies cost more because they are so much better than the cheap brands and certainly anything you can build yourself (unless you're en electrical engineer).  

Follow the advice of other forum members and please don't attempt to dismantle or build your own PSU.

ABC Radio National had a story about Bitcoins on tonight's PM program.

New online currency offers a 'better way'
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2011/s3240179.htm

A whole lot more Australians may soon be interested in trading BTC.

BitPiggy is once again out of funds this morning.  Is there another way to get BTC to AUD$?

MtGox allows easy transferring of Australian dollars to the exchange, but how do you withdraw them back to an Australian bank account?  As far as I can see only US/Euro accounts are supported.

It would be nice to have an alternative to BitPiggy.  While that site has been reliable and honest, it's just one place to trade bitcoins/cash.  More options are needed should BitPiggy experience problems.

bitcoinmonitor.com is showing a flurry of trading activity but no real transactions.  I assume that's an error rather than the market getting into a speculative frenzy with nothing backing it up.

I tried power control at 20 and changing to 875Mhz, but the ATI's software began throwing up errors that the card had stopped responding to commands.  I'll just have to leave it at 850.

Thanks for clearing up the 1Gb/2Gb 6950 card issue.  I was wondering why reflashing wasn't working even though I was following the instructions.  330Mhash/s isn't too bad for a budget card anyway.  I'll get something better next time.

How do people get their 6950s to go so fast?  I've got a PowerColor 1Gb 6950, 800Mhz stock running at 850, 1250Mhz RAM and 0% power control setting.  If I push it to 875 the PC locks up and reboots.

Temp is 65C and fan speed 56%.  Is it safe to push the power control setting up to 20?

I tried to unlock the shaders by ripping the BIOS, changing the 6950->6970 setting and uploading back again.  No dice.  Card requires the BIOS switch to be flicked before the PC will boot.

How much difference to power consumption does reducing the memory speed through reflashing the BIOS make?

You'll have to pay tax on your bitcoin income, one way or another. 

Created some bitcoins and converted them to cash?  That counts as income.

Traded some bitcoins for profit on mtGox?  That counts as capital gain.  It's very much like trading shares.

The money has to hit a real bank account sooner or later, and not declaring the income/gain runs the risk of the tax office noticing.   Maybe if casinos would take bitcoins there would be an easy way of hiding the income... :-)

I've been following the price and think that the recent rapid rise was due to several articles about bitcoin hitting financial news web sites.  The speculators may have piled in for a quick profit, and may exit just as quickly.  I wouldn't be surprised to see bitcoins back at $10 with difficulty higher than it is today.

Mining can bring in money.  I have gathered $110 so far in a couple of weeks on modest hardware.

The only thing I do wonder however, is how many miners sell bitcoins as soon as they get them?  I do, so as to not be stuck with worthless bitcoins if suddenly everyone else loses interest.  That does however put me at the risk of selling far too soon.  Indeed that's already happened, with the first few going at $7 instead of $18.  The web site buying them off me seems to be constantly out of stock (to sell) and always wants to buy.

I'm looking at adding another 6950 in a few days time, and the 1.5kw solar panel system coming in a few weeks should do a lot of good for the running costs :-)

Plenty of 6990s available here in Australia at MSY.  Not quite sold out everywhere (or bitcoin hasn't caught on here).

Before the last reset we saw rapid growth in hashing rate, and then a significant drop off after the reset.  Once again the hashing rate grew significantly before today's reset to a higher level.  Is this the effect of casual miners losing interest when the difficulty resets?  

Time to throw another 6950 into the mix.  It's a decent room heater as a bonus (winter here).

Good to see Australians can now deposit money at MtGox, but how do we withdraw the funds back to an Australian bank account?

Long time miner, new forum member.

The recent significant increase in a Bitcoin's value versus the US dollar may be related to online press coverage.  Daily Reckoning has finally noticed Bitcoin and run a lengthy article on 3 June:  http://dailyreckoning.com/an-emerging-free-market-currency/

Daily Reckoning's general world view is pro-gold, pro-silver, anti inflation and anti government intervention.  It has a reasonably wide readership.