Quote:
Originally Posted by maxtower
What can you tell me about the MPEX exchange?
Run by a female. her name is Moe or MOEP or something. The vocal members of the bitcoin community believe her to be in porn distribution. Possibly underage stuff, but I have no knowledge of any of that. I have poked around the site over the last few months. When SatoshiDice floated on there I investigated it. Seems like it's a similar bitcoin stock exchange like GLBSE. Wouldn't touch either with a 10 foot pole. The SEC is going to be all over it. Stay away like it's the plague IMO - not because they will steal, but because you don't want to be involved in unlicensed securities in any way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by unrealzeal
IMO mining will almost always be a breakeven proposition, but the miners will end up with the enterprise level machines, be able to charge transaction fees, and will end up being the bank. Mining is a long term investment. It may not pay off at all until more currency is traded than held. In fact I think there will be a long period of time where the value of a BTC will do a random walk around the cost to produce.
Also so far the scams have just been people scamming others. In the future these people will be easy to detect and will go to jail. The system itself is infallable as long as the network stays alive.
The scams are a social issue, not technical or bitcoin related. This is clear to most.
Mining is the engine that runs the system. The reward system will determine how much hardware is devoted to it. The current 50 coin reward will soon drop to 25, and eventually to zero once all coins are mined. The transaction fees will then reward the miners.
A hardware race has already begun. The face of mining will constantly change. I don't think anyone can accurately comment on how the mining landscape will look in 5 years.
At this point I feel bitcoin supporters should keep buy mining rigs and keep increasing the hashing power of the network to keep making it harder and harder for one entity to overpower it.
Calculations on hashing power you could buy vs. daily Network rewards can show you what to expect to make vs. what the hardware costs, and from my exploration into this it seems like you could grind out a profit doing it, but not enough to make it worth your while. Each hour roughly 300 new coins are generated or about $3,600 US. Daily that's about $86k. So lets run the numbers:
http://blockchain.info/stats
Difficulty 2,864,140.51
Hash Rate 20,217.56 GH/s
Electricity Consumption 315.39 megawatt hours
Electricity Cost $47,309.09
here's a complete ebay listing for 2.4 GH mining rig for $1700:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/FOUR-3xRadeo...item3a79f84929
do you could buy that and get 2.4/20217 of the $86k per day or about $4/day, and that's before your electricity cost.
If you can find free electricity and free hardware or have a giant botnet then mining may be for you. It's not for me.