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I ordered one of these (5GH/s "Jalapeno") from BFL in March because it seemed like a really good idea at the time. Received it in October, putzed around with it
by iak8god 13y ago
I ordered one of these (5GH/s "Jalapeno") from BFL in March because it seemed like a really good idea at the time. Received it in October, putzed around with it for a couple of weeks, and sold it on eBay for a small profit last week once I realized that it was not even going to pay for itself.
Too bad, I'd like to participate.
The one time I bought a few bitcoins, I started by transferring money from a bank account to a site that takes a cut, and then from there to MtGox. The whole thing took way too long and tied my identity to the transactions. It occurs to me that some people might be willing to mine at a small loss in order to get BTC that's never been near their name.
- jerguismi 13y agoI don't understand why people seem to think that mining is a good way to "participate". Mining is pretty much self-correcting problem - people have incentives to mine, for profit. If you want bitcoin to be successful, there are much better ways to promote it than with mining - for example, software products, startups, implementing bitcoin for your business etc.
- iak8god 13y agoI think cryptocurrencies are neat and I'd like to be a part of the bitcoin economy if it's possible to do that without radically changing my life. One way to do that without taking on much risk would be to buy a noisy little machine that will produce about as much as it cost me and maybe a little extra. That's the kind of participation a lot of people are interested in. If other people want to radically change their lives to support bitcoin, then more power to them. If it's hard for a moderately interested casual user to get involved in the economy, then there's probably not much of a future for bitcoin. At the moment it is impossible to start mining for profit. No one is buying new ASICs because they won't pay for themselves. Almost everyone who's mining now is racing to earn back their initial investment.