There are no guarantees that bitcoin will hold its present value or even increase over time.

What the op wrote makes a lot of sense.  I also think the coins given out for the early adopters were too much too fast, and now its very difficult with only 1/3 of the total coins mined.

There should have been a slower coin distribution and a larger supply of coins, then the growth and value would have been slow and steady, not this huge peaks and valley like we have been seeing.  This methodology still benefits early adopters since they will have more coins, but it also allows late miners into the game.  Considering the technology is P2P, more miners=more computation power, which is better for the community as a whole.

What do you mean check on the pool? I'm solo mining

I have 2 5830 GPUs, one using poclbm with switch -v -w128 getting around 280Mhash/s

2nd GPU using phoenix -k phatk VECTORS BFI_INT WORKSIZE=256 FASTLOOP=false AGGRESSION=12 getting 300Mhash/s

But if I go into summary screen of guiminer, poclbm shows the accepted column increasing, but the phoenix is at zero.

Is this the phoenix miner working or any I doing something wrong.  I am currently solo mining at the moment.

Thanks.

Makes sense, thanks for the answers.

So I got dual card setup, have everything configured and ready to start mining.

When selecting devices, I can either select device 0 or device 1, so my question is, if I set up job 1 and select device 0-0 and then set up another job and select device 0-1.  Are the gpus working independently? Or will they be hashing at the same block?

If they are independent, can I combine their processing power on the same block without xfire?

Have you tried the dummy plug as previously suggested?  Takes all of 2 minutes to rig one up, if you live in the US and have a radio shack nearby they sell the resistors for .99 for a pack of 5.

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=167450

mhash can come from CPU or GPU, but you will get more from the right GPU. Again see the link.

The motherboard you chose should be fine if you wanted to add a 3rd and 4th card later.  The PCIe 1x to 16x converter is just that, the cable plugs into your 1x slot, then on the other end, it has a slot for you to plug your 16x card into.

At your current rate: 1Mhash/s is a losing proposition you are going to pay a lot in electricity and not get anything out of it.

CPU doesn't matter with regards to mining, you need to have a good GPU.

See the hardware comparison site and see where you GPU fits in. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

I don't believe mining is too late yet.  Only 1/3 of the coins have been found so far, meaning the 2/3s are still up for grabs.  Although those that have been mining for the last few months and longer are way ahead of the game, but doesn't mean you won't get a piece of the pie, albeit a smaller one.

To everyone who thinks, they could turn around and resell their gpu and recoup some money back if bitcoin were to collapse...well you might want to think twice.

1. If bitcoin collapsed, everyone else will be selling their GPUs at the same time, especially the previous generation cards, and we all know when supply is greater than demand...

2. Computer hardware rarely ever keep their value since newer models come out all the time with the 7xxx series being just around the corner, so for a gamer's perspective you aren't going to get top dollar for the current 6xxx gen cards, esp if the market is flooded.

So if you're going to get in, now is always better than later.  I wouldn't be putting my life savings on either, just what you can afford and see if you get at least a return on initial investment before you dump serious cash into it.

Another thing to keep in mind is would you benefit more with just buying the coins outright vs spending the money on the hardware...

For me I have a system lying around all I needed was to get a couple of GPUs and a bigger PSU to accommodate, and at the current difficulty I should recover my investments in a few weeks.

See this page and it'll explain why nvidia cards are slower than AMD (ATI) GPUs.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Why_a_GPU_mines_faster_than_a_CPU

Was about to say the same thing...

If you put money into a video production company I would imagine you need better hardware than a 9600...there are probably $50 cards that would run circles around a 9600, although its mac, so I don't really know if you could even upgrade it.

Maybe start with a website detailing whatever it is that you do.  You can structure it by price per project or price per hour, show detail examples.

Then finally put yourself out there on various btc forums and market yourself.

Bitcoin is still in its infancy, and yes there are stuff that could be worked out to make it more mom/pop friendly, but if the pioneers keep using/mining/buying/selling I'm confident it'll evolve into something more.

All it takes is someone with a good idea on how to do something a little better and it'll be that much closer to being adopted...

No one entity is ever 100% secure.  But based on the OP's post, he mentioned that to use strong passwords and don't make his mistake, meaning its was probably not a strong password.  So a hacker could have easily brute force or dictionary attacked his password.

QFT, unless you are disabled, get up and find work.  No one will help you if aren't willing to help yourself...

While I whole heartedly agree that a strong password is a must, but don't stop there.  Ensure you take other security measurements on your system as well: Up to date antivirus, scan pcs for malware/spyware, patch your systems.  And if you have questionable browsing habbits, then make sure you use a different system (if available) for that.

I'm sorry for your loss, hopefully there are some recourse with the vendor.

I know how you must be feeling to have something taken from you.  I once had my poker account broken into and they used up all my funds, while not to your amount, but I still felt violated.

I can relate to it being confusing.  But take the time to read and try to understand the information that is available and its not that hard.

If you are still confused, ask specifically which parts you don't understand and there are plenty of knowledgeable people whom will be more than happy to answer your questions.

If you can't mine, and don't have a service to provide then obviously you aren't going to be very successful at acquiring bitcoins.

If it was easy we would all have bitcoins and chances are they would be worth next to nothing.

Its one thing to try and make a quick buck, its another to gouge.  Doubling the retail price on a 6990 is beyond ridiculous, considering there are other alternatives for a lot cheaper.

And with that attitude, little alone the price, I doubt you'll get anyone to jump on this.

Oh and just doing a quick search:

http://www.eworldsale.com/sapphire-radeon-hd6990-4gb-ddr5-dvi-4x-mini-displayport-pci-express-video-card_8819_60405.html

At the time of this post is in stock for $800

This was also my impression, although not 50/day but rather the higher your mhash/sec the higher your chances of landing those blocks.