I have two and it's about 1.35GH/s, which is really only worth it because I have three roommates to split the power bill with. I think you may be correct about buying rather than mining, but at $200, I don't know that I'd see a return on that investment. It's hard to say in the exciting world of bitcoin. :biggrin:
You could also buy 'shares' in mining operations, like ASICMINER, or invest directly in companies or exchanges. I have invested in Cryptsy (bitcoin/altcoin exchange) at a site called Cryptostocks, but as with any investment it's always risky. You might be best off just mining scrypt coins with your GPU.... Do you hold on to LTC or trade them for BTC or $ or anything else?
I like the idea of buying shares in a mining operation. I'm going to look heavily into that. With the unreasonable difficulty and cost of buying the ASIC's, buying into a mining operation is a definite nice middleground between shelling out the money for the big ASIC's and just buying coins. Course as you mentioned, there are always risks, but investing in someone else operation seems pretty risky. I think I may just invest a bit into one and see how it works out. My plan was originally to trade them for BTC which have more options, but so far I've just been hoarding them. I thought they would grow in value to the bitcoin (nowhere near equal value of course) but the drastic increase in mining difficulty has turned that to be false.
At this rate we will see a mining difficulty of 1 billion before the end of the year. Perhaps even 2 billion. Even investing in another operation is risky with those increases. ASICMINE shares have been dropping quite fast, but if the difficulty happens to stabilize a little it might be worth it. Otherwise the dividends you get paid are just to small and you will never get ROI. Investing in a company is a bit different, I invested in Cryptsy because I believe it will continue to grow (based on the fact that they will soon accept fiat) and thus my weekly dividend will grow too. Again this is a long term investment, I don't expect to make my initial investment back within a year or two. Also doing some daytrading, but that is insane with the volatility. Lost a bit of money and waiting for BTC to drop below 140 euro to buy back in.
What is divine Law? It's not the ten commandments you know. But there was a law of Nature which allowed the world to have money exchanged for the ethical attitude like Sharia Law which felt it was only natural to have free love relationships concluding in laws of pro-creation counteracting laws of people fitted into status as family members. No longer we have ten commandments, but only Islam could know that; we still have the soul true by the government to instead cheat on our wives. But the real part of the human Law which has nothing to the cheating, lying game is that the government has the added cheat ideal of ignoring the virtues of foreign countries one another's governance. So the power of whistle blowing.
Honestly; I don't know what I wrote above for the determination of life progressive realities (we're supposed to have money saved in the consequence of in time less and less work), which according to the communist Hegel was an absolute Law. REASON exists in the world of security and risk: actuarial science. Some Russian walks around and says from out of the slime and evolving financial Being REASON exists!!:biggrin: Another Russian walks around and says money is only supposed to be an idealistic tool.
Yeah, crazy times for bitcoin. My miner is paid off and I am freerolling now, hashing at an average of 550 GH/s.. So anyone wanna predict what the ceiling will be this time and when/if the bubble bursts?
i got that 0.6 BTC from "cointripler" that i thought was a scam. so i'm up to over 1 whole bitcoin now!
So essentially they are creating money out of thin air...and you guys think this is good and will last??? I have serious doubts about it and also would like to know, Who is making the real money off this?
What do you think dollars are made out of? Right, thin air. And why should the government have a monopoly on money? Money should be by and for the people. Bitcoin is good and it will last for a while, possibly replacing centralised fiat money. Which is way overdue to get replaced by new technology anyway, the inflationary monetary system as we know it is fucked. I have a bitcoin miner and I am generating bitcoins with it. If I choose so I could change them for Euros or dollars or whatever currency I prefer. Or I can use them directly to buy stuff from an ever increasing range of shops that accept them. Or hold on to them and speculate their value will rise even more. Remember when the internet came around? It will never connect the whole world with the push of a button. Or how about mobile phones? No chance in hell that everybody would ever walk around with those. Automobiles? What's wrong with horses? The world is ever changing and we are witnessing something potentially really huge and revolutionary. Every generation has something big and out of control that changes the world we learned about. This is ours. Might as well embrace the change that is inevitable.
yup, ever since the world stopped using REAL things such as gold and silver to back up the paper promissory note, which is what currency is, the world economy has been going downhill ever since with insane inflation, governments just printing money whenever with nothing whatsoever of REAL value to support it. I see Bitcoin as the same smoke and mirrors type of "money" that will lead to more devaluation of everything in general, higher inflation, etc.,etc., especially if it actually becomes a true form of currency. Since the beginning of time, currency has been used as a proxy for something that has real intrinsic value, such as precious metals, gems, sugar, salt, oil, etc., where is the "thing" that has real intrinsic value at the end of the rainbow with Bitcoin? To say it's the utility, freedom and ease which gives it it's monetary value is suspect and I'm not buying it and if that is what Bitcoins value is based upon, then for certain this bubble will burst. IMHO
it still is sort of like a precious metal, which takes time and energy to mine. the value comes from the rarity. the algorithms that dictate bitcoins only allow a finite number of bitcoins to ever exist. and they take a lot of computing power to mine them. if i were to cash out now, i'd have made 400 bucks. that's real enough for me.