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As much as I love being resourceful, and I also love bitcoins, that's a pretty ridiculous use of tax money when the public education funding is already taking a serious hit. After doing the math, that's only 56mhash per computer. The only cards I know which produce that few hashes are not energy efficient. Good for him making 120BTC per month, but at the expense of tax payers and an already diminished educational fund doesn't fly with me.
 
I definitely agree. It's a bit funny, and really quite a good idea. If schools had power efficient mining cards (ATI cards), then it might not be a bad way to gain a little extra income for the school! LOL
 
anyone know how to post on bitcointalk.org? I have registered and logged in but I can't reply or create new threads
 
You have to post in the newbie area for a while before you can post anywhere else.
That's how it was last year at least.
 
That's it exactly. You have to have something like 5 posts, and 2 hours online (the timer stops counting, so you can't just have a page open; It needs to be browsing).

But I'm also a member at bitcointalk.org. :) I like the community and it provides a place for me to get the hardware and such that I need. It's also nice to know about the new shenanigans that are coming out and such (Read: BFL ASIC chips).
 
ChanceCoats123 said:
(Read: BFL ASIC chips).
Click to expand...

What's the general take among the miners around here on the BFL SC Jalapenos, and BFL in general? Anyone have one?

ROI seems tremendous, even after the increase in difficulty they'll inevitably create. Although BFL appears to have had some growing pains, they appear to have a good product from the people that have one.

I'm thinking of preordering a Jalapeno or two to get my feet wet in BTC. Any advice/opinions are welcome
 
The new SC products are only available for pre-order right now. According to BFL, they will be released in October, but the current range of BFL products were slotted for march and didn't start shipping until mid May...

As of right now, I'll be selling my gpu's and getting out of bitcoin mining when the difficulty gets too high to mine without an ASIC. The way I see it, the ROI will eventually become infinity. Since the ASIC chips are so cheap to manufacture (but very expensive to design and create), the difficulty will raise as soon as they are shipped, and more people will be able to afford large quantities of the mining hardware. As people purchase more hardware (to remain profitable), the difficulty will just continue to rise.

It's been well discussed on www.bitcointalk.org that ASIC mining will be great for Bitcoin as a currency (since it helps with security), but will not be good for miners.

ALL of that said, I sincerely doubt BFL's ASIC chips will come anywhere near the slotted specifications. If you've done any research on the company so far, their original product (the BFL single) was supposed to produce 1000+ mhash/sec at only 20 watts of power. Instead, they released a product that produced ~800 mhash/sec with 80 watts of power.
 
Yes I did see that with their current gen "Single" FPGAs. The performance they claim is definitely doable with a fully custom ASIC (with all the positives and negatives of that) - it's just whether they actually deliver the product in a remotely timely manner.

Due to their opacity in dealings with preorder customers I'm definitely not convinced enough to preorder more than a $150 Jalapeno, but hashing in full ASIC rings my geek bell. Nothing quite like being "all in".

That said, I'm not considering doing BTC for the money really. I've given away my kWH doing DC for over a decade and probably always will. It's more something new and interesting to do that happens to have the possibility of paying for itself. In that light I can consider my kWH costs nil, as I've already given about $400 to FAH, who knows how much to SETI from '99 to '05 (pre-BOINC), etc etc.

Which begs the question to FAH users... Could you imagine a full custom ASIC folder? Mind boggling. Probably never happen though, because things like that are driven by people trying to make big bucks at BTC. No big bucks in FAH.
 
soon as i mine up enough BTC i think im ordering a jalapeno myself. this is so confusing whats going to happen to the market in a few months. i really like using graphics cards instead since they play games too! i have 58xx coming out of my ears right now and my room is way to hot.
 
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I've got my 5 cards in one room and it is HOT in there. I like mining with Gpu's because they can be re-purposed once gpu mining is no longer cost effective. FPGA's can be resold for their components (X6500's are ~ $200 last I checked), but ASIC is extremely specific hardware that simply can NOT be re-purposed. It is created to complete one specific task, and is not capable of others.

I think I'll mine with my gpu's until the difficulty gets too high, and then I'll get a sale thread going. I'm definitely keeping my Matrix 5870 for my main rig though. ;)
 
I think much of the bitcoin interest stemmed from the association with computer hardware. I think that once asic and fpga take over popularity will go down a bit due to that loss of association. It was part of the hardware world but will be relegated to "that internet money that used to be kinda cool".
 
My interest in it will certainly disappear at that point, it was interesting to me only for the fact that I could make money for nothing.
When that ceases to be possible, I, and I suspect many others, will sit by the sidelines and contemplate when to case out.

As an actual currency it is only useful if the payer has absolute trust in the payee. I rarely have absolute trust in anybody, and almost certainly never will have absolute trust in someone I can't pay with paypal or a check.

Proponents say it's like cash, I say yes it is like cash, it's like cash mailed to a forwarding address.
Cash in person is very very different.
 
Well I sold one of my 5870's for BTC so i got a Jalapeno on preorder!

I still cant figure out what i want to keep and sell. I now have a 2gb 6950, 2x 5870, 5850, and gtx 460 runnin.

i have to sell my ud4 so i might get something to do trifire, who knows its just fun to swap hardware all the time
 
Since GPU folding is completely worthless now I switched to bitcoin mining, it is rather fun but its F@H all over again with ASICs being the new thing. ASICs don't tickle my fancy like multi-gpu crunching does :(

I also really like to heat the house with the computers instead of furnace, asics aren't going to do that :p
 
Are you getting the 7870 for a rig, or for mining? I feel pretty safe saying now is probably close to the cutoff for bitcoin gpu investments. And I even think BFL won't deliver on time, or anywhere near specification.
 
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