Mine for Mobile Minutes

[moocow1452]

So, Ting has released plans for businesses, (https://ting.com/business) and I was wondering about the logistics of a Mining for Minutes sort of setup, where someone starts up an account, adds a bunch of phones through either BYOD or reselling the Ting Phones to miners, and you can point your machine to a pool to pay off the bill. This seem like an interesting idea, either Bitcoins as a cell phone service, or mining as a subscription alternative?  It would have to be US only, as Ting runs through the Sprint network, but it still seems like a decent plan, and they are the only place I know that offers Femtocells for sale.

[Stephen Gornick]

and you can point your machine to a pool to pay off the bill.

When business coaches and potential investors discuss the need for a business plan, one of the reasons for that is they are trying to get the entrepreneur to think through the long term.  Long term isn't six weeks, or six months.   They are trying to get a great answer to "what value does this business have in six years."

Now GPU miners may be doing just fine today, but in about 60 days the floor underneath them is going to collapse.  The block reward subsidy will go from 50 BTC to 25.

So that eliminates about half or more of the miners out there -- the hobbyist types who don't accumulate enough coins such that the cash-out fee is actually a big factor.    The rest are mining large enough amounts and aren't really looking for alternate methods to cash out.  [Update: And there already are mutliple merchants who sell mobile wireless vouchers / refills / bill payments for bitcoins.]

So, sorry to say ...  in my opinion, this idea's life span is measured in weeks, not months, and definitely not years.