OT: shortage of boxes

[Animal]

Any sock puppet running an empty box up to £100 for that would have to be completely deluded. I don't think so.

[John Rumm]

It is fairly common with the "selling an empty box scam". If you are searching for a GPU and a result comes up for an auction ending soon, but there are no bids on it at all, you are going to pay more attention and ask "why?". If however you search, see one ending in 1 min, with lots of bids, but still at an "ok" price, then you might bid in a hurry to get a bargain GPU without reading more carefully.

[Andrew]

Some bitcoins have lost 99% of their value in recent days so expect a flood of 2nd hand well-thrashed GPU's on ebay (but remember the post from Canada Paul about the bios reflashing issue).

Massive hikes in electricity prices must have changed the economics of bitcoin 'mining' though.

[Paul]

To decide when to stop mining coins, you need to consult your spreadsheet that computes profit.

I thought it dropped below profitable, a couple months ago for Bitcoin (depends on rig efficiency).

Although more than a few of the operators, are sentimentalists and mine coins past when it makes sense to mine them -- for speculative purpose.

That would be people with a couple GPU cards maybe, not corporations sporting Intel mining rigs (the latest thing, is Intel makes a rig for mining coins and competes in the same space as BitMain).

If the coins fall in value today, you mine your butt off, so when the price triples again, you can make your profit from speculation rather than mining as such.

Or at least that's what you tell yourself, while ignoring the spreadsheet you're supposed to be using.

You don't have to mine, to speculate. You can just buy coins when you feel it's hit "rock bottom", and ride the wave back up. To speculate, you don't need a GPU or a BitMain/Intel box.

Like levitation, those coins just randomly ride back up again, when "fundamentals" do not predict such.

Back in the old days, you would buy one Bitcoin (because at the time it was worth $3), and then promptly forget where you left it. Later, when it's worth $10000, you're constantly looking about the room "is it under sofa cushion ? Did I leave it in shed ?" and so on :-) You never get to recoup your joke investment, because you did not take care of it. Nobody wants to be reminded of that Bitcoin they bought and lost.

Paul

[Andrew]

There is chap who lives in ?South Wales who binned an old hard drive many years ago, which held details of bitcoins that he had allegedly bought when they were a few dollars each.

He even tried to persuade the local council to mine the landfill site to search for it, in return for a percentage of the bitcoin value. They declined to take on the risk.