What a great bedtime story, thanks, T. I think I am going to have some sweet dreams.

(I really do sleep easier when my trading account is bitcoin-heavy rather than fiat-heavy... until my bitcoinium alarms start going off, lol)

thank you arepo.

your analysis is of great value to me, and I appreciate that you share your work freely.

Thank you. I remember that time, (my birthday is in May) very exciting.

I apologize for worshiping false idols.

Please Great Whale, don't forsake us!

I have some 7970's with the same problem I think, can't mine litecoins for shit, but they did just fine on bitcoin for almost 2 years. thanks for the heads up, I'm gonna try deepbit again, or maybe just sha-256 altcoins?

-also-

[conspiracy theory] Do you think that AMD tweaked the ram speed and timings on the new R9 series specifically to better mine scrypt? With the local availability at 0, mining seems to have become the main selling point of this series of graphics card in my area. Surely AMD has analyzed their sales data and realized that a significant portion of their high-end cards were going to mining farms, (many units sold to a single buyer)

they must be aware of the demand and market for mining.[/conspiracy theory]

not to mention that BFL is trying to piggyback off that reputation buy stealing the image of an AMD card and passing it off as an ASIC miner. (600 GH/s sometime "next year" - ok, fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice... *insert stupid president meme here*

*edited to put thoughts in proper sequence, it will take time to recover from new year's celebration it seems

Agreed.

Sorry, I haven't caught up yet, but this post in particular taught me much of what I needed to know in order to become a profitable miner.

OOC should be commended for his tireless work.

hrm. it appears the Great Whale answered at some point during last night's drunken stupor but it did not have the desired effect.

OH Please, Great Whale, bless us with a more substantial dump that we may rid ourselves of the non-believers.


(*seriously, I would much rather buy at 600, thank you. if you could crash bitcoin price into a cascading downslope similar to the period between September 2011 through July 2012 that would be great.*)

No kidding Doc, it says in the article "The mine is the size of a shipping container," With that kind of density, what's to stop them from building a mine like that inside a shipping container? You could just pick up shop and go wherever you want. I'm sure it would be much lighter once it's drained of fluid for shipping.

Hell, here's a way for the military to fund itself, just place hundreds of these on an aircraft carrier (nuclear powered of course, you gonna need some serious juice and just float around in international waters... surrounded by the usual fleet of support vessels of course.

Hmm, a setup like that, if government decides to forcibly shut down and attack other farms and pools, and the gov't keeps mining on the bitcoin boat, that would likely be enough to perform the 51% attack.

Still, a mine in a seacan is a freakin' awesome idea, where do I pre-order?

That bolded part is the top lulz of the thread   That was the barb that really set the hook  Kudos to the OP, made me smile.   

... I guess it can't hurt


Oh great and mighty Whale. We beg of you to bless us with waves of bitcoins to crush these stubborn walls. Lend us your strength that we may see brighter days, and cheaper bitcoins.






hehehe, man I hope this works!

After reading through that list earlier of all the shady moves that can be pulled by manipulators, isn't it precisely the regulations that make all that shit possible?

The regulating body makes a set of rules, then decides how and when to enforce those rules.  

Manipulation is a time-honoured tradition of the legacy financial system, and the regulators seem quite accustomed to looking the other way.

I say gloves off, anything goes, let bitcoin regulate itself.

I think the operators of these alt-coin exchanges have arb-bots that are keeping the prices in check (and skimming the profits) - not accusing anyone, just saying that's what I think.

This post you mention does seem interesting and I hope someone finds it. In the meantime, regarding the relationship between bitcoin and alt-coins...

I've been slowly developing the opinion that the alt-coins are simply going to provide extra liquidity. As bitcoin transactions become more expensive because of the bloating of the blockchain and the demands on the network to process an increasing number of transactions per second, alt-coins will fill the gap for smaller, cheaper, transactions.

I can envision a world where a bitcoin transaction might carry a mandatory fee of, say, .001 BTC (keep in mind, cavirtex already charges this amount for withdrawls) If bitcoin someday is worth $100,000 this would amount to a minimum fee of 100 dollars per transaction, meaning buying a coffee with bitcoin would be a very expensive proposition. I foresee the alt-coins as filling the gap and providing layers to facilitate all nature of transactions, but bitcoin will remain the gold standard.

 Please note: My "slowly developing opinion" is not fully formed and I would welcome any debate on this subject.

-Thank you.


(disclosure: As a miner, I would stand to benefit from high transaction costs, so I cannot be considered impartial.)

I would very much like to know what you consider real money. Not trolling, just curious.

Fascinating article, not for the content, (which is mostly incomprehensible by me) but for the illustration of the inherent problems of over-specialization.

While the author appears to be very knowledgeable in *some* field, (I assume some kind of monetary theory?) he is absolutely clueless when it comes to Bitcoin. He simply does not have the breadth of knowledge required to even imagine what Bitcoin is.

I don't pretend to completely understand every nuance or the mathematics or cryptography behind the Bitcoin protocol, but my varied level of understanding of various fields allows me to at least conceptualize what something like Bitcoin is.

In his article he seems to be basically trying to fit a square peg into a round hole because round holes are all he knows. Because of his narrow specialization in whatever field, he has never seen a square hole before, and when confronted with something outside his field of expertise (the square peg) he is unable to correctly process that information.

edit- this is not to say that specialization is not useful or necessary. Without people that were specialized in the fields of cryptography, mathematics, and internet protocols, Bitcoin would not exist. I'm just trying to say that someone who is specialized in plumbing and pipe-fitting should not try to perform cardiovascular surgery.

I think the chances of this professor being right are much higher than most others might think.

Please consider his conclusion in the final paragraph of his "essay", this part in particular.


Once you realize that by mid 2014 a "share" of bitcoin will be considered 0.001 BTC a.k.a. a millibit, then you will see that the professor's predictions have at least a 50-50 chance of being correct.

 

(*Also, considering that bitcoin crashes up, the comment that bitcoin could crash up to $10 per mBTC by the middle of next year might not be so preposterous.*)

Upward movements have always caused me "most pain" - It's kinda weird, but when the price drops just after I buy I feel like ("Whew, I still have time")

---

but when price spikes, I feel a series of feelings that range from ... (" WOOHOOO! to the moon baby -sell a bit- umm, wait a sec, shouldn't there be a correction or something? -sell a bit more- OMFG! WHAT IF IT DOESN'T STOP??")  <- usually in that order.

At least that's how I feel about the portion of BTC that I choose to risk.

"Never risk more than you can afford to lose" cuts both ways I think.

<snip>
So have you put your entire life savings into BTC?
</snip>

This comment gave me pause for a moment while I tried to determine what my "entire life savings" actually was.

 I did not intend to put my entire life savings into BTC, but once I started mining, and re-investing mining profits into more mining, BTC has now become an exceedingly large portion of my "entire life savings"

I did not intend for this to be the case, but it seems that BTC cares not for my intentions.

Kudos to BitChick btw. "Strength of your convictions" and all that.

*edit, forgot to respond to OP question: *

I expect the price to be over 10,000 at some point before the end of 2014, but I wouldn't even hazard a guess at where it will end up.

Thanks for the kind words, unfortunately it was complete failure. (well, not totally complete, 2 people, out of 20, took the bitcoin option - no one took the silver coin option (was offering their choice of any of the Canadian wildlife series *except the wolves* - quite glad actually that there were no takers.))

Things I learned:

When you give people a choice, they are almost paralyzed by the responsibility of making a decision.

There is a lot of negative sentiment regarding bitcoin among people who have no bitcoin. After a very short curiosity phase, there was much snide remarks and eye-rolling. Everyone seems to think it's a scam and it's too good to be true... and they might be right.

Long, painful story short, things started to get contentious and I ended up just handing out the 50's and when some refused saying "oh you don't have to do that" or "No, that's too much" I just said "Let's just say I had a very good year." and forced those dirty bills into their hands.


Conclusion: Moving forward, I will not be offering any bitcoin to anyone that does not specifically ask for bitcoin.

Still was an interesting experiment. Merry Christmas to all, and I hope Santa brought you everything you'd hoped for.

I very much hope you are right, but please don't discount the importance of these "short term shenanigans". If one is able to pay close attention to these short term fluctuations and act accordingly, there is a great opportunity to increase your holdings much better than just sitting on your coins and waiting. (also much risk of course, but I'm certain that most in this thread are intimately aware of risk assessment.)

*edit* 780 level has now been well and truly pierced, if price can hold for more than just a few hours, then yes, I think "somewhere above 900" is a feasible target. I'm not loading the boat just yet though...

*final edit* price now broke 800, luckily at virtex is still at 755. I'm now loading the boat, and the train is leaving the station, CHOO CHOO!!!

lol

I don't have such sophisticated methods, but previous 2 times we tested the 780 level *Gox* the price took swift downturn. What I see for short-term is that unless the price breaks and holds above 780  then this consolidation period will continue, with perhaps retracement as low as around 610-620? (more likely price will fluctuate above and below that 700 level for some time again.)