Friday night...'bout that time again.

Anybody else in for a good night?

I'm not sure any of the options will lead to complete stabilization, though I'm not arguing that it won't help in the long run.

My thought is that Bitcoin will stabilize when there are more Bitcoins on the market. For example, the vast majority of people are holding onto their coins instead of trading. If you were to hypothetically sell off 500,000 Bitcoins all at once at the lowest price right now, you'd cover just about every major Bid (under Mt. Gox anyway)...yet that 500k is only, what, 4.5% of all Bitcoins that have ever been created so far?

The more coins on the market, the harder it becomes to create the wild swings we've been seeing.

Turns out it is part of the bet, which is why I ended up switching my opinion in the end.

It is.


Agreed

Last I checked, the bet was in reference to products made by ButteflyLabs, which is headquartered in Leawood, Kansas. Given that Kansas is in the United States (not sure if you knew that), the company is required to abide by all State and Federal laws..including anything regulated by the Department of Labor.

Bruno was correct. The biggest distinction between being an employee of a company and being paid by one (whatever the reason may be) is Taxes (though other aspects such as Benefits, Reimbursements, Workman's Compensation, etc can also come into play). By IRS definition alone, a subcontractor is not an employee of a company.

Simply giving another person compensation for their work does not instantly qualify them to be an employee. Don't you think using a dictionary definition in this case is a bit naïve? If you had a substantial amount of coins riding on this bet and it hinged on the word "employee", wouldn't you want to make sure it was correctly defined?

I wouldn't look to the dictionary to see what the word "employee" means.

I'll just leave this here... http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2002/01/art1full.pdf

Focus on the law [Federal] aspect..you'll be better off in the long run.

Alrighty..I've seen this posted a number of times now. You guys do realize there is a huge difference between being an employee of a company and being contracted by one..right? That just because they compensate you in some form for your work doesn't make you their employee.

Am I the only one employed who understands this?

Or really any game / application / operating system / other software ever...even hardware isn't totally perfected at times..hence later renditions of it.

Anyway..I like how this thread has grown by 100% since I was last here. Just to throw in my 2 Satoshis on the previous bet discussion, since the title does count towards the 'betting contract' as coinjedi admitted, then the bet is clearly true. At that point I don't see any way around it, and calling it a draw shouldn't have happened.

Back on topic: Luke, while you were there did you overhear / encounter any other issues besides those relating to power (if you can tell us)? Just wondering if there are other problems with the chips or boards that I get to wait another 6 months for them to resolve...

The purpose of mining is to secure the network and process transactions, and to generate a Bitcoin income for the miner..it just so happens that Bitcoins carry a value (substantially, lately) in fiat to turn that virtual income into "real world" income.

You touch on some points to a more complex situation. The vast majority of people purchase mining equipment (CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, and now ASICs) with the intent to generate an income for themselves. The crux is that a miner can't ever be truly certain that they will generate an income for themselves..given that there are a multitude of factors at play (future difficulty, number of total (and future) miners, individual hashrate, value per BTC, etc). It could very well be that every Average Joe and their friend will buy an ASIC if USD/BTC is $1000+ ..or it could just as well be a small dedicated group of geeks mining away if USD/BTC is $1.

That said, the manufacturer doesn't know where the future of Bitcoin will go. If they built their businesses around mining on the hardware instead of selling it, then I'd imagine the value of a coin wouldn't be nearly that much because it would mean competing to mine would require a substantial amount of capital for custom made chips. Centralizing the mining power (assuming BFL and Avalon solely built hardware to mine on) doesn't bode well for Bitcoin and defeats the purpose of its creation to begin with.

On the other hand, if they sold the equipment to the masses they may stand to make more money in the long term..assuming continued community support, a competitive product compared to others on the market, and a willingness to continually develop better products. There's a 100% chance for the manufacturer to make money if they sold the equipment to others..compared to an unknown percent if they mined on the hardware themselves.

It's essentially the same scenario as the 1849 Gold Rush...why dig for gold yourself when you can sell tons of shovels/equipment to the prospectors

Ignoring the title, let's work with the conditionals for a moment and break them down:


"at least one BFL customer" - Condition Met
"with a bitcointalk.org forum account established prior to the bet's opening date" - Condition Met
"shall post detailed and credible photos of the device on the forum" - Condition Not Met --- Did Luke take the pictures and post them or did Josh? To that end, which forum is this condition referring to? How much detail is "enough" detail? Does the "device" have to be of consumer quality [not a test board, but one that could be shipped to a customer]?
"including photos of it operating, and report its hashrate." - Condition Met
"This customer cannot be a BFL employee." - Condition Met



"device must achieve at least 75% of its advertised hashrate" - Condition Met


Too much ambiguity, information credibility, and a problem meeting part of the conditions leads me to believe the outcome of the bet is: True -- BFL has not shipped before April 1st, 2013

You are not wrong, and I understand what you're saying..but ..


No. In contracts or other formal agreements the content takes precedence over the intent. One example I usually think about when it comes to something like this is Taxes. The government's intent is for you to pay your share and they write this massive tax code to cover just about everything they can think of. But thanks to their wording, there are loopholes that allow for people to keep their money if they put it in the right places.

Something well written thoroughly transfers intent into technical wording, which the author of this bet clearly did not do properly. As a result, we have to debate about something that should be pretty straightforward


I would imagine so. But I also imagine there are people who looked through the details of the bet and agreed to it based on that instead. Anyway, it should all be taken into context..title and content.


EDIT: I never bet on this, so I have nothing to gain or lose here.

Ah, skimmed over the majority of pages since I hadn't read it in over 24 hours. Are you referring to Page 8?

Here we go: http://eligius.st/~wizkid057/newstats/userstats.php/1CdcYVP4T4hjHwt353pEnGHrigeDLvuvZL

Probably better to have it in more than one thread I suppose.

A title doesn't govern a contract, the content does. I could change my contract titles to "Two Monkeys Butt-fucking" and it wouldn't change the fact that I wrote a Notes contract binding me to my investors.

This is what I'm saying as well. I'm more than willing to negotiate for a settlement since I understand the position he's in. He should just come clean and let us know what's up.

Hell, if any one of us knew BTC would be over $100 in a couple months, would you have borrowed @ $30?

I, too, am in a similar position on some of my loans...but who would have ever known that BTC would be over $100 a few months later?

Ian, if you're reading this, I get the situation you're in and I'm totally willing to negotiate (publicly or privately).

I'd much prefer this:




Simply because it's $330 per 750ml

Oh? What kind? I'm no wine expert, but I do own a cheap bottle or two hahah



Cheers to that!

I as well. Helped my roommate move in with his GF..and now that all the heavy lifting is done, cases of beer have been popped open

At this point I don't even care. Just start getting them out the door to people who want them, and then make it up to them later by swapping to the fixed product. The difficulty is low enough where power consumption doesn't much matter (and will be for a while)..just look at Avalon