The 2048 blocks still have to be solved at high difficulty before a readjustment, regardless of how many miners turn off their rigs. If enough miners shut down due to lack of fiat income, the readjustment could go from weeks to months to years as the block times get longer and longer (and confirmation times also get VERY long, essentially killing the coin).

You don't actually know that much about the US, do you?

First, FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) is primary tasked with natural disaster relief (hurricane cleanup, flood evacuation, etc.). When it comes to throwing people in "concentration camps", they are at the bottom of the list next to the US Postal Service.

Second, public knowledge of those types of actions by the Federal government result in a enormous PR backlash on the administration, see Waco and Ruby Ridge as prime examples.

Third, there are more armed citizens in the US than there are military and paramilitary soldiers in the entire world (over 120 MILLION). Owning and using firearms is a cultural phenomenon in the US, has been for over 200 years, and this is very unlikely to change in our lifetimes. Forcible disarmament is even less likely than anyone successfully occupying Afghanistan.

YOU BOLDED THE WRONG WORDS. If the 200k coins are Gox assets, then Gox is not insolvent but actually +$40mil over liabilities. If the 200k coins are actually CUSTOMER assets, then they cannot be liquidated to pay Goxs debts, because they still belong to the customers. Gox is holding them for their customers, but does not OWN the coins.

I think it has something to do with a koala in a sauna.

A pair of 7970's would have mined about 150 BTC from Jan. 2012 to Jan. 2013, worth about $2000 USD then but almost $75000 USD now.

More spellcheck, most likely.

Yes, it depends on how you define "better". I'd consider the first prediction more useful and therefore better, even though the actual falls outside the range. That's what range is not a good method.

A more precise method would be to assume a normal distribution on a log scale and have the prediction include both mean and standard deviation so one could compute the probability associated with a given price. The prediction with the high probability  at the final actual value wins.

Most people expecting refunds already have them. Yesterday was for the people paying net taxes.

Last summer's $50 -$100 prices were low relative to adoption. I don't think that's the case now. $500 is more likely ahead of adoption due to speculation.

I still think there will be a speculative bubble mid to late summer (July-Sept timeframe), but only to the $2k to $2.5k range.

Predicting a range is clearly useful, but having the value fall into that range or hit the mean value of the range does not always mean the prediction is better.

Example:
Prediction 1: 90-100; Prediction 2: 50-150. Actual: 101
The first is clearly the better prediction, although the actual is outside the range and further from the mean than the second.

What you really want to do is 1) reward a predicted mean value (i.e. max+min/2) that is close to the actual; 2) reward a smaller range preferentially to a larger range.

If you are going to speculate on crypto I suggest you study some elementary algebra. A straight line with slope m on a base-N log plot is a exponential curve defined by N^m on a linear plot.

Bitcoin adoption (and price) history fits an exponential curve much better than a linear one, so it makes sense to plot it that way.

If you undervolt and downclock the cards to their most efficient (in terms of MH/s per watt) point, then you can easily run them all on a good 1000W PSU. The better question then is whether you will get enough of a hashrate bump to justify it... I can't answer that.

I would not personally do this because 280x's and 7950's like very different scrypt settings, and you are hobbling your rig if you ever want to go full blast.

Volatility is bad for bitcoin (the protocol) adoption, even though it doesn't seriously affect it's function as a transfer protocol since there are plenty of ways to convert to other currencies instantly.

Any investment in actual Bitcoins (the coins) is purely speculative, since there is no return unless the price goes up. Speculative investment is still investment, but it not the only way to invest in bitcoin (the protocol), one could put money in a bitcoin startup or service company.

Pizza?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137.0

It would be funny because any suit labeling Bitcoin (or Doge) a ponzi scheme would have no legal basis. All intrinsic value ever promised or implied by Bitcoin (or Doge) as a protocol is delivered to the buyer at the time of receipt. Any value increase expected thereafter is purely speculative.

Call it what it is, a bubble. Not a ponzi, not a pyramid, not a matrix or other scheme. Just a bubble.

Nobody has a corner on multipools anymore, it highly competitive. But, I'm sure H2O is still making plenty of money. The 7GH on middlecoin is coming from somewhere, and I'm sure he's still making trades.

Wrong day... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929

For those having miner issues, you might be able to use cgminer versions earlier than 3.7.2. I am using cgminer 3.1.1 (Scrypt on GPUs) and its working fine.

I connected two instances of cgminer to nicehash and middlecoin. Both were switching to the same coins at the same time, convincing me that the hash buyer was mining at middlecoin. Middlecoin always has a 1024 difficulty and fast switching, causing high rejects and low hash rates.

Changing the effective difficulty at the proxy will not be trivial, but it would make mining pools like middlecoin much more productive.  I would like to see that implemented.

Why anyone would pay 5.5 btc/ghs/day to earn half that at middlecoin is beyond my comprehension though, unless its h2o himself.

The problem is probably your OS. I have never been able to effectively use a card when I have less usable system memory than the amount of video memory on the card (per GPU). For example, to use a 280X with 3GB of VRAM, I need 4GB of system RAM and a 64-bit OS. The problem does not scale with more cards, so I can run 3x 2GB cards on a 32-bit OS, but have never been able to run even a single 3GB card. I have not been able to figure out why (the miner only actually uses about 50MB of system RAM), but that's just the way it works.

The "thread-concurrency" setting is limited by video and system memory, among other things. A 2GB card likes a TC of 8000 to 16000, a 3GB card 21000 to 24000, and a 4gb card 30000 or higher, but with a 32 bit OS you probably won't be able to run a TC over 16000.