So long and thanks for all the fish

[azw409]

I got into Bitcoin only in April around the time of the Cyprus debacle and the intense media coverage at the time. I'd heard about it before that but didn't know anything about it and had just assumed that it was another online payment mechanism.

When I understood it properly I was astounded by the genius of the design and the enormous possibilities that it offered for the future of commerce. I immediately started mining and realised that my existing CUDA card was no good, so I bought a cheap ATI card off ebay for $70 which increased my hashrate by a factor of 10. Just then the price spiked to $266 and I thought that this is going to be massive. I mined away for a few weeks and and then made my first purchase with some of my bitcoins - I renewed a domain name.

I was so impressed by how well the whole Bitcoin economy worked, that I used an exchange to purchase some more BTC for GBP. I also work at a bank and spent some time trying to persuade some of our senior execs that we should be doing something with bitcoin because it's going to be huge.

Several weeks of mining later, profits are slowing because of a difficulty increase but the still high exchange rate at around $120 makes it worthwhile. I spend a bit of time trying to optimise my mining setup and finally settle on CGMiner, P2Pool with bitcoind-0.8.2 as a very stable setup that I can leave running for days on end with any attention.

Then earlier this week difficulty makes a giant leap, and my client just doesn't find any more shares so despite 2 days of noisy room heating, no extra btc. It's the end of the line for btc mining for me unless I was to spend serious money on ASIC hardware that will never be delivered before I can break even. Luckily I made around 0.7 BTC mining on my $70 card so I've broken even on that and gained a useful GPU in the process. With exchanges closing down and few places to spend BTC, I'm afraid this is the end of the line for me with Bitcoin. I'll keep my 0.7 just in case the entire global economy switched to Bitcoin and it suddenly becomes valuable but otherwise this balance will be lost to the bitcoin economy for ever more.

I'd be tempted to try LTC but then that's even more useless than BTC for spending.

So regrettably, even though I've learnt a lot and had a brief glimpse of an alternative utopian future, this is the end of the line for me with bitcoin.

So long and thanks for all the fish - to quote Douglas Adams.

[pand70]

Your story is interesting and original.

You should write a book about your amazing adventure in the bitcoin world.
I bet someday a big studio will make a movie out of it. 

[tutkarz]

Your story is interesting and original.

You should write a book about your amazing adventure in the bitcoin world.
I bet someday a big studio will make a movie out of it. 

sure a history of a guy who know bitcoin for two months, has 0.7BTC and makes a goodbye thread this is going to be huge

[azw409]

Yes it's probably happened hundreds of times before and probably will thousands of times in the near future. Let's hope that one day we'll all be watching the movie paying for our popcorn with some futureCoin heavily influenced by Bitcoin.

[malevolent]

Don't give up so easily.

First, don't forget that mining was not introduced by Satoshi to make people magically rich but to process the transactions and secure the network.

2nd, this is still the beginning of bitcoin, winning the peoples' support and overthrowing the global banking and legal system will take time and effort but it will be worth it once bitcoin gains widespread adoption.



For now, don't treat bitcoin as an equal alternative to fiat, because unfortunately it isn't (especially with so many people even against civil disobedience...), but treat it as a small, nice 'thing' that can sometimes make your life easier (just consider the costs of sending an international wire overseas and sending the equivalent in BTC, time and cost are incomparable).

[User705]

Please blow up your .7 btc so ours are worth more.  Thanks.

[os2sam]

Please blow up your .7 btc so ours are worth more.  Thanks.

Nah, keep them until their worth a Gazillion Dollars and then give them to Obama or Hilary.

[The 4ner]

Seriously you've only been around bitcoin for about 2 1/2 months and you're already quitting? GTFO!

[btceic]

Jesus said to tell you to send me your BTC.

[os2sam]

Jesus said to tell you to send me your BTC.

What chapter and verse was that?  Or is your real name Caesar?

[spiral_mind]

There's no reason you should have stopped generating shares because of a difficulty increase. GPU mining is still plenty profitable.

What a lame post acting like it's the end of the world for Bitcoin. "The exchanges closing down" yeah right, which ones?

[btceic]

Jesus said to tell you to send me your BTC.

What chapter and verse was that?  Or is your real name Caesar?

chapter, verse? no my neighbors name is jesus, he is cuban

[os2sam]

Jesus said to tell you to send me your BTC.

What chapter and verse was that?  Or is your real name Caesar?

chapter, verse? no my neighbors name is jesus, he is cuban

Oh, that guy.
Later Caesar

[drwho88888]

You work in a bank did you say ?

That says it all

[yona]

nice title.
so what you are saying is that you don't want to be a member of the club if you can't be a millioner?

[Amph]

lol this is my story too(but i began in may), only with two differences
-i'm not quitting
-i have made only 0.6

[ryszardzonk]

wow you guys are rich I have only 0,03 BTC

Probably not gonna have much more any time soon unless someone donates as my plan is to mine

for the daily dose
- weedcoin, porncoin, sexcoin
to feel as the king
- rolaycoin
to feal as a hero
- flashcoin
for its anonimity
- anoncoin
to have some gold on the side
- gldcoin, goldcoin

and maybe stablecoin or realcoin to buy some necessities in the future like razors or toilet paper

EDIT: if no one believes this is actually what I have done for the past 4 days. Mining stablecoin now...

[azw409]

No I don't want to be a millionaire, I just want a return (or at least breakeven) on my investment in kit and electricity and that is now not going to happen now, ever, if I use GPU's or ASIC's since GPU's are now uneconomical and almost all the world's ASIC's are owned and operated by a bunch of sharks. When the sharks release ASIC's and sell them to the public, difficulty will have already made them worth less than their purchase price. That's not what I would have wanted for Bitcoin given the enormous potential promise and a few months of the glorious new economy that we've experienced.

Personally I think Bitcoin is doomed because of the ASIC situation and any alternative cryptocurrency (like LTC) is going to be a hard sell to the public because of the fragmentation of the digital economy that it involves, e.g. I own 100 BTC, how do I convert this to LTC - you can't your 100 BTC is now worthless, care to invest in LTC ?

The only hope is to expand BTC to allow scrypt, in addition to SHA256, as a proof of work algorithm. This would allow those with ASIC's to continue and benefit from low power devices but crucially removes the stranglehold that ASIC companies will soon have over Bitcoin since any miner can choose to use scrypt and that enables the current GPU's to continue and be competitive with ASIC's albeit with a higher power cost.





 

[malevolent]

Even without ASICs over time GPU mining becomes less and less profitable when only those with the lowest electricity costs can afford to mine and make profit because with price increases the difficulty will also increase.

[btceic]

No I don't want to be a millionaire, I just want a return (or at least breakeven) on my investment in kit and electricity and that is now not going to happen now, ever, if I use GPU's or ASIC's since GPU's are now uneconomical and almost all the world's ASIC's are owned and operated by a bunch of sharks. When the sharks release ASIC's and sell them to the public, difficulty will have already made them worth less than their purchase price. That's not what I would have wanted for Bitcoin given the enormous potential promise and a few months of the glorious new economy that we've experienced.

Personally I think Bitcoin is doomed because of the ASIC situation and any alternative cryptocurrency (like LTC) is going to be a hard sell to the public because of the fragmentation of the digital economy that it involves, e.g. I own 100 BTC, how do I convert this to LTC - you can't your 100 BTC is now worthless, care to invest in LTC ?

The only hope is to expand BTC to allow scrypt, in addition to SHA256, as a proof of work algorithm. This would allow those with ASIC's to continue and benefit from low power devices but crucially removes the stranglehold that ASIC companies will soon have over Bitcoin since any miner can choose to use scrypt and that enables the current GPU's to continue and be competitive with ASIC's albeit with a higher power cost.

@azw409,
For all the chiding that you are getting in this thread, we actually need people like you on board with us, even if you are not personally invested in it. We need folks in every industry to be on board with us even if it is only in a perfunctory way.

We wish you luck, but please consider keeping the door open.