I've been trying to advocate for a separate "Currency Exchange" subforum and it's frustrating to see responses that it's not necessary because the words Buying and Selling are already perfectly clear, when it's obvious from a casual look at the front page here just how clear they really are. I can't reason the admins into it, so I'll embarrass them into it instead.

I just responded to thirteen threads on the front page of Buying in which the OP wanted to sell dollars, asking that they be moved. I also responded to one thread in Selling in which the OP wanted to buy dollars. In the process I saw exactly zero threads of this sort that were actually in the right subforum.

No, you are interested in selling something for a large quantity of bitcoins (most likely dollars). This thread should be in "Selling".

Even assuming that miners behave in a purely rational profit-seeking way, this statement is only true in a weak sense. What you should write is, "Mining will always be profitable, given that you possess hardware near the current top of the line in terms of mining efficiency." It's certainly not obvious that mining with a GPU will always be profitable, and even less obvious that buying a GPU to mine will always be profitable.

If you're trying to imply that current hobbyist miners have nothing to worry about, you're off the mark.

Re. the original question: 0.3 BTC/day is about 2.50 USD/day. Given that your electricity costs from mining are probably less than that, I'd say it's "worth it" in the sense of being profitable on the margin. Whether it's worth the trouble is something only you can answer.

The difficulty has risen, but the exchange rate has risen as well. The current magic number threshold is about 1023 shares/USD, compared to 735 shares/USD on May 20. So yes, mining is less profitable now than it was earlier. But it's not that much less profitable.

All right, forget sendmany, I just sent out a bunch of separate transactions.

It's a boy!

Winnings will be distributed as soon as I can figure out how sendmany works.

D'oh. Is there a "don't send from this address" option somewhere in the client?

Counting up just the "received" totals since this thread started, it's now 1.29:1.25. So nearly even.

Books are currently at 0.4 to 1.25...

And we're finding out around 18:30 (UTC)! I'll wait until midnight to post the answer, though.

Have you created a miner in your mining.bitcoin.cz account? Your login for your miner is not the same as your login for the website.

I assume you're looking at the guiminer interface?

1. CUDA is the correct choice. Mining with your CPU isn't even theoretically profitable unless you get free electricity.

2. All of the servers are Bitcoin pooled mining servers. The best thing would be to pick one and create an account there, but you can also go solo---it just takes a bit more work (you basically have to run your own server). I recommend BTCmine.

1. Use plain text mode. This is good practice anyway since some people read all email as plain text as a matter of safety. It should be an option in Account Settings, if I remember correctly.

2. Get the Enigmail extension. It's by far the easiest way to encrypt or sign mail in Thunderbird.

The best reason to get into mining, IMO, is because you want a new GPU anyway. Look for a used HD 5970 on Craigslist or something. I got mine for $400. At that price, and at current difficulty and exchange rate, you can expect it to pay for itself within the first month. Of course, difficulty won't stay constant, but even at double the current difficulty it'll only take two months. And of course the exchange rate won't stay constant either.

I'd say go for it. Whether to buy one or two cards is really up to you---I stuck with one, but only because it was all I could fit in my existing PC and I didn't want to go all-out dedicated rig building.

1. You aren't buying bitcoins, you're selling Paypal/MtGox dollars. This is the Bitcoin forum, the local currency is bitcoins, and if you're trying to trade something for bitcoins you are selling.

2. Why on earth would anyone accept this deal when they could sell their bitcoins faster, more conveniently, and for more money on Mt. Gox?

Wow, theymos, you really don't want a currency exchange subforum, do you?

I don't think the problem is with the content of the forum descriptions, but with the fact that almost no one will read them before posting if the name seems self evident. I didn't read them myself---I'm just the sort of person who would assume that "buying" means "trading bitcoins for" in the context of this group. You could launch an international education campaign on why it's important to read that sort of thing before you post, or you could just create a new subforum.

(For what it's worth, I'd actually prefer the original descriptions---the new ones are a bit stilted and overwrought. The old ones were perfectly clear if you actually read them.)

Sigh. This is why that checkbox needs to be removed (and will be in the next client version). If we have a big button that says "Generate coins" can we really blame people for thinking it will generate coins?

knigt12374: Don't try to mine by using the "Generate coins" option built into the client---it's little more than a historical relic at this point. You will probably never generate a single block using a typical CPU (there's a 50% chance you'll do so within 65 years). To have any hope you need specialized hardware (most commonly a high-end video card) and software (for example Kiv's GUI miner, and even then you should probably join a pool (for example BTCMine to even out the variance.

Try reading the FAQ, which includes an entire section on mining, before asking more questions.

Most likely you are looking at the block count in the lower right-hand corner of the client. That's the number of valid blocks ever generated by anyone, not the number that you've generated.

You should read the FAQ, but the short take-home is that if you're looking for a low-effort way to get bitcoins, mining is probably not it. Try selling something.

Careful with the units.

(1) 1.44 Gh/s is 0.00144 Th/s, not 1440. So divide by 1,000,000.

(2) Your hashrate is a rate per second, but your power usage is a rate per hour. So multiply by 3600.

(3) I'm assuming by "KW/hr" you mean "dollars/kWh" (or whatever currency you prefer).

This gives you an actual magic number of 16,043.4286 shares/dollar.


You're good until the difficulty divided by (50x the exchange rate) reaches 16,043.4286. But this number is falsely precise and you'd be better off looking out for the number 16,000.

I've tried again and verified (and signed) your key! One of my extensions had stuck an image in the middle of your message, and I forgot to "show original" before checking it.

Mine should be fixed as well now.