i suspect that at least until the most recent split, a lot of the activity was from bots.

there was a healthy split between the buy/ask prices for a while a few weeks ago, and i managed to peel a few BTC off someone's poorly-programmed trading algo.

the pi, at least, can be used for many, many other things. everyone should have one

emphasis mine.

i think tx fees in excess of BTC12.5 per block will happen before the next reward halving.

for reference, visa does ~150m tx's per day

21 million transactions a day, with a BTC0.0001 fee, would give you around BTC15 in fees per block.

BTC0.0005 fee, you'd need 4.2 million tx's per day

etc

Instead of buying anything, ever, we could all just hoard our money until it's worth millions

$10 each if we can get 25 people

i've got a t-shirt press, we could do a run of cat silhouette + frying pan shirts for pretty cheap

you obviously didn't go to high school in the late 90s. cd-rw drives were $500, and selling pirated CDs for $5 is why half the kids in my school got them.


a cursory glance of the forums -- indeed, the same forums on which these group buys are being organized -- will give potential buyers all the warning they'll ever need. i dare you to find an erupter thread where nobody mentions ROI.


cd-rw only has one use, burning cds.  asic devices only have one use, calculating SHA-256. toothpicks only have one use, picking your teeth.

everybody understands that you don't want people to buy these things. POINT TAKEN. jeez...

in the early days of iphone apps, there was an app called "i'm rich" or something like that. it did nothing but display a picture of a gem, and it was something like $1000 to buy. the guy managed a few sales before apple yanked it.

what's being promoted is a piece of electronic equipment. whether the price is economic, or whether those who buy it "lose money" (or, more accurately, fail to make money) is irrelevant.

is the sale of a cd-rw drive irresponsible if the purchaser will never sell enough copied discs to get his money back? to double his money?

you're assuming that the end users are only in it for the money, and that the group buy organizers are preying on the gullible. the organizers assume nothing about the end users' intentions, and are simply helping people who want to buy these devices get their hands on them.

are some people buying these in the hopes of getting rich? perhaps, but isn't it their responsibility to check?

let's see...

0.15/kWh elec, 2.5W per unit, 333MH/s, one units earns BTC0.0138 per day

so 0.0138 x 14 days x 600 units = BTC115.92!!

that's over $14,000usd!

we'd have to divide the profit evenly, let's say by how many units each person had

profit per unit for two weeks: 115.92/600 = BTC0.1932

0.1932/14 = BTC0.0138 per unit per day

where do i sign up? 

some info here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=220905.msg2326740#msg2326740

Too true. It's not like "buck" is an official term for the dollar, either. 

As one of the metric system's "lost boys" (I'm canadian), I buy sugar by the pound.

If I had to use metric weights, I guess I'd say I bought "a kay" of sugar.

I likely wouldn't say I bought "eight ems worth" of candy

The other problem is that the average person will be very confused when you tell them that m = milli and u = micro.

1.234

1 coin
23 cents
4 bits

1 usb block erupter: 2 coins
1 dozen beer: 20 cents
1 bag of candy: 8 bits

Nobody's going to ever say the word "millibitcoin" in conversation. Even "millibits" is cumbersome: three full syllables.

There's a reason why people call dollars "bucks".

It gets that hot in Ottawa in the summer... but with humidity

This is precisely why I bought ten of these things. It's REALLY easy to make ROI if you end up with 4 units at zero cost

i'm actually kind of shocked at the continued demand for these things.