Kate,

I have a semi-finished ASIC miner in VHDL source code which I abandoned last summer because I do not have the kind of money (quite possibly millions) to buy the expertise and services I would still need to turn the code into silicon, nor the contacts or confidence necessary to raise it.

I also have some expertise in FPGA and general programming, plenty enough to see the technical side of your mining operation through, be it GPU or FPGA based or even a long-haul ASIC project. I'm an out-of-work physics PhD just about to move out of Nottingham, currently planing to leave the UK  on the 31st, but willing to stay if your project would provide at least basic income very soon.

Das hört sich ja alles etwas bedenklich an! Vorallem, da ich dummerweise kurz entschlossen bitcoin-24.com eine für mich bedeutsamen Menge an Euros und auch einige Bitcoins anvertraut habe. Irgendwie muss ich wohl gedacht haben, dem zweitgrößten(?) Bitcoinhandelsplatz, einer deutschen(?) Seite, vertrauen zu könnnen. Ist das nun alles nur Panik-Mache, oder gibt es tatsächlich Grund zur Sorge?

Sounds pretty straight-forward to me: Like FinCEN in the US, HMRC in the UK seems to want to stick to "real" money and "real" goods. Hence they only care about the moment when bitcoins get exchanged for fiat currency. Or, in the case of HMRC, also when bitcoin take the place of fiat currency, i.e. when goods with a fiat price tag change hands for bitcoin, rather than for fiat.

This may be slightly unwelcome news for the person starting this thread. If I understand correctly, his business is selling something ordinarily considered to have a fiat price tag for bitcoin. There's a good chance that would be seen as using bitcoin in the way a voucher or bill of fiat money is used, and that seems to indicate that at the moment of sale VAT may be charged (but only, of course, if VAT would be charged had the payment been in sterling rather than bitcoin).

Disclaimer: I'm neither familiar with legal matters nor how these things are handled in the US or the UK. So there's a good chance I simply don't see the problem everyone else is instinctively aware of.

This could be useful for my smartphone.

Not so much because I get forced to pay for these "free" and seemingly open WiFi hotspots at eateries, but because I keep deciding not to use them after all once I get redirected to a website asking me for a phone number or email address to send an access code to, and linking to terms and conditions that make my head spin and wonder if there's some catch somewhere...

Is there an Android client?

Thanks!

Thanks for the pointer!

I just had a look at the blockchain.info page "Most recently mined blocks in the bitcoin block chain,"
and found that 5 out of the 7 most recently mined blocks were "relayed by" BTC Guild.

Am I right to assume that implies theses blocks were also mined by BTC Guild?

And, whilst I'm aware that this is a stochastic process and may not be all that representative of actual hash rate distribution:
Doesn't this look a bit like a possibly problematic overconcentration of hashing power?

I wouldn't mind being let out before the 4 hours are up... thanks :-)

Here's half an idea:

OUTLINE:
Insure bitcoin transactions.
That way online shops can much easier adopt them, because they don't have to either wait for block confirmations or trust their customer blindly.

TECHNICAL BITS:
Basically, contribute to all mining pools. When (presumably within at most a few seconds) most or all work on finding blocks incorporating the transaction, you are almost sure it will be incorporated, and it's an easy exercise to model and calculate the small probability that it might not be. So you know quite well how much you need to charge for the insurance, and it will probably come out rather affordable.

LEGAL ASPECT:
How do you convince shops (your customers) to trust you to pay up on the promised insurance? [they might fear this is just a scam operation]


If that last question can somehow be answered...well, I think I can easily contribute the rest (or, preferably, create it in a team)!

Hi!

I want to build an ASIC for bitcoin mining.
And I'd love to have at least the theoretical ability to post about it in the appropriate threads ASAP.
I understand I need to complete five posts and wait a few hours...so here is 5.

Hi!

I want to build an ASIC for bitcoin mining.
And I'd love to have at least the theoretical ability to post about it in the appropriate threads ASAP.
I understand I need to complete five posts and wait a few hours...so here is 4.

Hi BTC_Bear,

I come from a hobbyist FPGA background, but still, at first, didn't recognize 1149.1 as synonymous with JTAG. ;-)

But I really do mean ASIC, and since the hash algorithm is relatively simple, I don't see the benefit in implementing a JTAG interface for it.

Hi!

I want to build an ASIC for bitcoin mining.
And I'd love to have at least the theoretical ability to post about it in the appropriate threads ASAP.
I understand I need to complete five posts and wait a few hours...so here is 1.

How do mining contracts work?
I want to build an ASIC miner, but am more keen in the challenge and actually being able to finance it than operating the miner.
So either selling the result or renting it out sounds rather interesting.

Hi!

I want to build an ASIC for bitcoin mining.
And I'd love to have at least the theoretical ability to post about it in the appropriate threads ASAP.
I understand I need to complete five posts and wait a few hours...so here is 1.