Well... on speculation on BTC I'm up about 10%.

On my investment mining, I'm at about 7% of my total investment.

My outlook is about 240 days to break even.  I purchased my hardware at extremely competitive prices, although a couple times I wish I'd taken advantage of a couple opportunities better (namely, the $179 shipped 5870, would have grabbed like 3 more).

This is a long term thing for me though.  I'm only speculating on BTC because I am still expecting prices to stabilize.  Somewhat ironically, if they do, I'll likely loose whatever gains I make speculating because I'll probably end up buying late since I hedge against all my speculation.  

In the long run that won't matter (dollar cost averaging) presuming the gains are consistent and reasonably good (10% per annum appreciation in commodity value).

I've just been thinking about things, since it seems like I've been pretty reliably able to predict price variation on the top and bottom price side (+/- 20% of net variance).

What I was thinking is that there would seem to be a limitation on the total volume in microtrading by way of % of profit per transaction.  Basically, the amount of profit it is possible to net per transaction by providing liquidity to the market is inversely proportional to the total volume of all microtrading taking place (because everyone is competing with one another).

IE: price variance is reduced to the level of those microtrading at the slimest margins whose margins are reduced when they are competing with other microtraders.

So... if this were true... what would anyone suppose the volume per unit of time's relationship to average % of profit per transaction to be?

OR, would variance continue to be the same or be exaggerated based upon bets being placed on bets and trends being exaggerated up and down?

Awesome.  Well then since slush is down, you'll be getting all 2.4gh

Thanks for the help!

Sooo... this could potentially be a bad flag or something weird with the gpu?  (driver/unstable OC etc...)

I mined with your pool for about 8 hours @ about 1.4 gh (about half my farm) and I don't see my address in the payout queue at all.

1DWKhM6ggVcv6Y6tpe9GABFQLWUjtPtcos

It's a little worrisome.

Can anyone explain this?

.worker3   xxxxxx   0   232   14562.1340   2011-11-02 14:34:19    on   Edit | 
.worker4   xxxxxx   0   53   10157.6513   2011-11-02 14:34:28    on   Edit | 
.worker5   xxxxxx   0   65   23615.0395   2011-11-02 14:34:28    on   Edit | 
.worker6   xxxxxx   0   88   30060.8852   2011-11-02 14:34:32    on   Edit | 

One of my workers has finished 3 times the work of another and yet has half the score.  It generally has lower latency (only a single gpu on a quad core processor vs. 4 gpus on a quad core hyperthreaded processor).  I do not understand why the score is so abysmal in comparison.

Has the nobel committee been notified?

Hmmm, a little annoyed, but glad it isn't just me.  I can't even login.  It asks me if I want to create an account, but I already have one with 150 nmc deposited.  Not enough to ruin my life, but certainly a pain and a disappointment.

Don't feed the troll.

So does lower difficulty likely mean lower price for BTC?  Do they correlate in both directions? 

I know price definitely effects difficulty in the long run... but visa versa?

Also... watching the delta of bid volume on mt. gox seems like a fantastically effective short term predictor of price volatility.  Seems like the bid volume could couple with trade data to provide far far better insight into market changes by offering a lead on buyer psychology instantaneously.

That's kind of what I've been using it for.  Right now I'm hedging about 50% on any bull or bear trends I see and I'm coming out ahead a few percent over a couple dozen trades.  

That could easily be dumb luck given that my perspective is only a couple weeks of trading on speculation.

I don't intend to speculate for the long term, if I feel that trend is stabilized I intend to stay in BTC as a hedge against inflation with USD.  In the short run, I'm just allowing this to instruct me in investment devices that up until recently, I was completely ignorant on.

Don't have to be no accredited investor to lose all your money in BTC!

[edit] misspelled lose.  like a rockstar.

Wow, this topic proved to be super interesting.

I'm a little curious given the conversations about market makers and speculators whether an increase in options trading could stabilize daily price fluctuations by providing market driven datapoints in advance and expectations for trade price.  Options and/or futures trading has frequently done just that for other commodities. 

Although in the rare case that goldman sachs decides to manipulate the market, they can do so in any regard. 

There also aren't consumptive reasons for futures trading... except it could actually be used to insulate exchange factors for BTC based commerce.  If you had a very fluid futures market, there might be a mechanism for a measure of price stability and as such, less risk for selling services in BTC.  Obviously futures do not guarantee stability and without consumption based demand targets might be an incredibly risky investment for individual capitalists... just kind of thinking out loud.

I suppose it would be beneficial for the health of the BTC market that they are used actively in commerce.  It would be incredibly costly for any company that sells physical goods to not peg on the dollar given market instability.

Seems a bit of a catch 22... prices won't stabilize much without trade occurring within BTC and doing so is incredibly risky for any businesses making purchases with fiat.

Does anyone here do their own elliott wave analysis?

I've been tinkering with it and finding that after a pretty short while, it's reasonably accurate IF you're correctly identifying trends.  For instance, when and which waves to identify and whether to consider them bull or bear (which again has to do with identifying the trend).

Seems to make sense as a method for quantifying the movement of waves as a factor of market psychology.  I'm sure you could lose your shirt acting on it as if it is the holy grail though.

This thread is freakin hilarious.

So, I've been thinking about this a lot.  It seems like if bitcoins were a more widely utilized medium, the price would stabilize because people would be interested in exchanging from within the currency rather than just using it as a transactional medium.

Just as a thought... if the bitcoin community at large spent a great amount of time on PR and either started offering valuable services at a discounted rate if BTC is used or convinced businesses to offer certain services for BTC, you might see prices regulate and become more stable.

I honestly expect to see BTC price reflect a combination of mining cost and economy size.  IE, if the average person began to transact 1% of their total expenditures in BTC and BTC held a fixed value more widely (as opposed to currently being only as valuable as it's equivalent trade value in USD), you would see the trade value stabilize because price wouldn't strictly be the result of speculation.

Basically if their were a demand for the currency because it had implicit trade value, the value and liquidity would improve.

What this would take:

Many service providers to begin to offer services at a slight discount in BTC OR offer services or web products for a fixed BTC price regardless of trading value.

For so long as the currency serves little purpose besides speculative and transactional ease, it will lack the necessary market depth to regulate price.

Any thoughts? 

Is there a list anywhere of service providers that will trade in BTC?  Something we as a community can help to promote in order to increase the adoption of the currency?

If 50 bucks is a major investment for you, do not try to make a buck speculating on currencies.

Since hashing efficiency per KW should be much less in the beginning...

I think it's a little unlikely it's only a single attacker.

My theory... if anyone cares to hear... is that botnet owners have determined that they can increase their income by decreasing difficulty.

IE: take down pools, botminer income increases.

So... the asshole douchebag hackers of the world have turned to attacking the pools as the largest sources of hashing to increase their profitability.

Just a theory of mine.

Maybe I'm wrong.

Slush... I have an idea...

Soooo...

Basically, you have a problem with public addresses for your pool.

If only you could ensure that no one knew how to find your pool unless they had trust... you could just use a static IP and have people mine there.

Here is one REALLY good litmus to determine whether or not a user should have trust... hashing.

If you pull from your DB of users, those who have hashed over a certain amount in the last couple weeks for instance... you could tell with a degree of certainty that these are all trusted people.

So... then you email all those users (I would be one of these people)...

Just email a private ip for the server to those users... or perhaps a domain name whatever... just something you don't post on here.

Sure, you'll lose a lot of hashing power, but it would let you continue to operate.  I liked mining with your pool, I was doing quite well.

That way maybe you can operate in the short term as a private pool using trusted participants.

The reason I do not suggest that you allow ALL miners that have been working to get the address is that quite likely, your attackers have been mining the pools somewhat to ensure they were functionally down.