I was using the Mining Calculator at http://www.coinish.com/calc/# to check for profitability of the newer ASIC devices. Under the Novice tab, all looks well since that only takes into account the current difficulty levels, but when you change it over to the Expert level, it factors increases in difficulty into the equation and things take on a decidedly different result.
My first check was using the BFL Jalepeno as sort of a baseline, since you can pick one up for $300ish, which I thought was a decent price considering the Hash Rate. Once I plugged it into the Calculator under Expert, it showed that it would never earn enough to pay for itself, because the difficulty would increase faster than it could keep up. Granted, if BC pricing increases with difficulty, that might be a moot point, but I am not willing to invest money on a "prices may increase".
The next miner I tried out was the new "Monarch" 300 GH/Sec card from Butterfly labs for $2800. The Monarch cards are pre-production now, so who knows what difficulty levels would be when they actually are shipped, but inputting the numbers from the Monarch card, it shows a profit of $2885 or roughly a doubling of my money after 12 months. If I change the utilization from 12 months to 24 months, the profit increases by $3 to $2888. Double the time using and only $3 increase in profit? Increasing the time to 36 months shows the same $2888 profit as 24 months.
Does this mean that in 12 months time the difficulty level will increase so much that even a 300GH/Sec miner is no longer profitable?? What am I not understanding here?? None of the of the other calculators seems to factor in the increased difficulty levels like the coinish one does.
So the FBI shut down Silk Road...and BTC is down pretty significantly from ~$140 to ~$114 right now.
how?
Very simple. Take the illegal/criminal usage of bitcoins out of the equation and their relative worth goes down. Everyone knows their main appeal is as an "under the table" currency.
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/04/world/americas/silk-road-ross-ulbricht/I know that, let me clarify my question
How did the FBI shut it down.
was actually a single grad student from san francisco. Who created it as a libertarian economics experiment, and the FBI was unable to catch him until, several years later, he had posted his gmail address online, thus revealing his identity?FBI said:"the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today"
so
was actually a single grad student from san francisco. Who created it as a libertarian economics experiment, and the FBI was unable to catch him until, several years later, he had posted his gmail address online, thus revealing his identity?
Wow, just wow.
That's not true at all.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/faqs
"The FBI has divided its investigations into a number of programs, such as domestic and international terrorism, foreign counterintelligence, cyber, public corruption, civil rights, organized crime/drugs, white-collar crime, violent crimes and major offenders, and applicant matters."
That's not true at all.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/faqs
"The FBI has divided its investigations into a number of programs, such as domestic and international terrorism, foreign counterintelligence, cyber, public corruption, civil rights, organized crime/drugs, white-collar crime, violent crimes and major offenders, and applicant matters."
FBI doesn't deal with drugs, they also don't deal with tax evasion.
That makes this purely done to try to stop bitcoin.
Since this activity took place across state lines it comes under federal jurisdiction. It wouldn't matter if it was an old granny illegally selling parakeets.
My BFL Jalapenos will be nice coasters by the time they arrive in a week or so. At best I'll break even in 4-5 months.
At least I made my profits in GPU mining to offset that loss...
might have to cancel my single order at this point and keep the jalapenos just for kicks