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Bitcoin $500

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Re: Bitcoin $500

#51
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that many companies related to Bitcoin are extremely unprofessional and they still run their businesses like 3 years ago when Bitcoin was just an internet novelty and not a real currency the way it is today. Just look at the latest Blockchain fiasco where the guy who runs the company got butthurt over some Reddit comments and got involved in a flame war. MtGox's lack of professionalism is just the tip of the i…

Definitely, which is why I tried to just buy a few (fractions of) bitcoins just for the historical fun of it, but as intensely skeptical I am of all the bitcoin craze, I was still shocked at just how awful MtGox is. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if I could code something better. Just to tell people that as amateurish as they may think these exchanges are, it's actually much worse. Makes you wonder how a company lik…

Probably because CoinBase is bringing some professionalism to the game. I admit I had some bad experiences with CoinBase in the beginning, as they were getting scaled up, but they always handled it with professionalism.

Re: Bitcoin $500

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that many companies related to Bitcoin are extremely unprofessional and they still run their businesses like 3 years ago when Bitcoin was just an internet novelty and not a real currency the way it is today. Just look at the latest Blockchain fiasco where the guy who runs the company got butthurt over some Reddit comments and got involved in a flame war. MtGox's lack of professionalism is just the tip of the i…

This is part of the scary naivete of Bitcoin boosters. It's as if how to set up and run computers for serious financial systems was never worked out by anyone before. There has to be a Bitcoin exchange that isn't run by clowns ... hasn't there?

Read some of the CoinBase founders exchanges here and elsewhere, and you'll see that they bring some very good customer service to the Bitcoin world (although they really struggled with scaling up earlier this year).

Bitstamp also runs a highly-professional outfit, with customer service usually responding to my queries within a day, often sooner.

Re: Bitcoin $500

#53
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot make bitcoins with a shitty CPU, or a shitty GPU. You can try, but the difficulty is too high, and is always increasing. If this is a new concept to you, imagine: When I first received my BFL Jalapeno (ASIC 5G mining rig) and started mining, to the time I sold it, the difficulty had increased enough that I was seeing a .05 BTC gain in twice the time. So now you can imagine how eventually only people above…

> You cannot make bitcoins with a shitty CPU, or a shitty GPU. You can try, but the difficulty is too high, and is always increasing Yes you can. It's called pooled mining. http://mining.bitcoin.cz/

You really can't.

http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/

At the next difficulty estimate, an i7 with free electricity mining all the time at 8 MH/s would make about 9 US cents in a month. Since the difficulty will probably go up again in less than two weeks, make that less than 2 US cents per week. Since very few people actually have free electricity it's not worth it.

http://eviltechmonkey.com/btc.html

Re: Bitcoin $500

#54
post #47
post #13

What happens to the price when only people with 500Ghash/sec+ can make coins next month? Early adopters are rightfully getting a nice reward now, but how do you get "fresh blood" when the difficulty is off the chart unless you have several thousand dollars in hardware?

wat. The important figures for miners are the btc/usd conversion rate, the network difficulty, your hash rate itself, how much you initially paid for your rig ($/Gh) and how much power you're drawing ($/watt). All of these factors are important, but what will dominate over the coming months is power cost. Someone mining a 100 GH/s rig will make 5 times less BTC per day as someone mining a 500 GH/s rig, it's true, but…

That's the thing, the new 500Ghash machines can smoke your 500Mhash machines and they use only a little more power. They are using 28nm ASIC.

A farm from a year ago can be completely outpowered by a couple of these machines.

And they are coming online in force over the next 30 to 60 days.

Re: Bitcoin $500

#55
post #22
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shorting bitcoin sounds like very bad idea. If you're going to "invest" in Bitcoin, then going long term is definitely the way to go. Even if you invest say right now, but then Bitcoin drops to $300, it's best to keep it a year longer, and then watch it pass $1000 or whatever.

Or watch it fall below $10.

As Tycho said - Bitcoin can only ever fall 100% and your potential losses are unbounded. Not a good bet to take.

Re: Bitcoin $500

#56
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot make bitcoins with a shitty CPU, or a shitty GPU. You can try, but the difficulty is too high, and is always increasing. If this is a new concept to you, imagine: When I first received my BFL Jalapeno (ASIC 5G mining rig) and started mining, to the time I sold it, the difficulty had increased enough that I was seeing a .05 BTC gain in twice the time. So now you can imagine how eventually only people above…

> You cannot make bitcoins with a shitty CPU, or a shitty GPU. You can try, but the difficulty is too high, and is always increasing Yes you can. It's called pooled mining. http://mining.bitcoin.cz/

@Jach:

Seriously, you can. Just based on your comment alone:

> an i7 with free electricity mining all the time at 8 MH/s would make about 9 US cents in a month

This means at the current rate you will make

    0.09/470 = 0.000191489362 BTC = 19148.9362 satoshi
Oh, and the calculator you linked to is crap, it only gives 3 significant digits of BTC, which is quickly becoming relevant.

Re: Bitcoin $500

#57
post #54
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wat. The important figures for miners are the btc/usd conversion rate, the network difficulty, your hash rate itself, how much you initially paid for your rig ($/Gh) and how much power you're drawing ($/watt). All of these factors are important, but what will dominate over the coming months is power cost. Someone mining a 100 GH/s rig will make 5 times less BTC per day as someone mining a 500 GH/s rig, it's true, but…

That's the thing, the new 500Ghash machines can smoke your 500Mhash machines and they use only a little more power. They are using 28nm ASIC. A farm from a year ago can be completely outpowered by a couple of these machines. And they are coming online in force over the next 30 to 60 days.

Anyone with MH/s-level farms from GPUs have turned them off months ago (or moved to Litecoin). There's some new 28nm ASICs that use less power per hash than the larger nm ASICs, so eventually those will face the same fate as GPUs from power costs (not so much from hash rate -- there are only a few TH machines on the near horizon), but the next 30-60 days isn't enough time to make that happen.

Re: Bitcoin $500

#58
post #20

I remember trying to buy some BTC on MtGox for fun, the last time the price crashed. What an unspeakably horrible service. I thought I was in for hundreds of dollars over budget, but it turns out that not a single BTC was purchased at all. I only intended to buy ~$50 worth, so I would only have earnt something like $200, but for the love of everything, stay the hell away from MtGox. It's insane how unprofessional the…

MtGox was handling 90% of exchange last year, but now - only 25-30%. Bitstamp is huge now, and Bitcoin-Central.net is easy to use (although it hasn't regained it's past volume yet).

From my own experience, Bitstamp is ridiculously easy to use.

Re: Bitcoin $500

#59

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it impossible to withdraw USD from MtGox at this point? How can this be a viable source of BTC->USD comparison when the only thing you can do with a USD balance on MtG is buy?

I cashed out all my coins at $144 over a month ago now and I've still been waiting for money to show up. One the one hand I feel annoyed at losing out on the huge rise in value, on the other hand this huge delay makes me feel justified in escaping this terrible system.
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