I've started playing about with mining at the moment, I have 3 pooled workers going at the moment, but none generating anything significant. Currently looking into methods of using pre-paid credit cards and a real time bitcoin exchanges, the mark up between a verified exchange and local bitcoins is interesting, though the risk of being caught up in something untasteful is increased, and I'm really not keep on handing over personal documents that could facilitate identity theft over the internet. I don't care how good your security mechanisms are, you're not that secure.

My friend in china got me some USB ASIC Antminers pretty cheap
useful having friends all over

as a sideline to my Penetration Testing Career
ive got a watercooled 7990 that can mine Litecoins

the actual mining part is a massive money sink.
the currency is in its infancy, its incredibly volatile
think as of this moment its halved in price 1k$ to 500ish$ per BTC

there are 2 things for sure about Bitcoins
1)its a gamble at the moment its just as likely to go up as it is down its like playing roulette
2)there is a definate need for some level of anonymous electronic currency- this need is being driven by the criminal element - however if you commit large enough crimes to get the NSA/FBI interested they can track your coin transactions to you.

so in future some form of cryptocurrency will exist wether its BTC and what value it will stabilise at i dont know
if you were providing a service and accepting BTC would you really stake your home and everything you own on goods you sre selling for a currency that can half in a week ?
no..

Quite true, and as with any type of gambling I would never spend more than I'm willing to lose lose, and as such I don't have a particularly fantastic mining rig, just my standard gaming desktops. In terms of criminal requirement, bitcoon exchanges are clamping down on the anonymous aspect, making the value of the currency directly proportional to how easy it is to extract without leaving a trace. It is still possible to evade the FBI through bitcoin tumbling (albeit difficult) but you have to compare it to the same extent you would do so for traditional currency.

The only possible gain that could be made bears the same risk as stock trading, you're simple trading I'm a different commodity, both could be worthless next week, but also got increase. The only thing I know right now is that unless you have the gear for it, mining is effectively pointless, I have about a few pence right now...

Mt.Gox has filed for bankruptcy, this was one of the biggest exchanges available, I would think this may cause a small hit on the value of bitcoin as some people may lose faith in the currency and attempt to get their money out. Might be a good time to grab a few before it gets stable again.

I hear Bitcoin is now offline?

Bitcoin offline

MtGox apparently owe hundreds of millions of pounds. Clearly that can't be given back to the user without a large decrease in value therefore for the vast majority of users, the stability of Bitcoin, if it does come back online again, would be questionable.

I think you've misquoted the article as it only talks about Mt. Gox going offline. I think it'd be pretty much impossible for the whole of bitcoin to go offline. The price is still around $600 on all other exchanges. As sad news it is about Mt Gox I think bitcoin will be ok.

It's very unlikely to take the currency down altogether due to the sheer size of the network, that article is skewing the perspective a bit to make a better headline, but the price has already started to dip a little bit, with waning confidence in the currency. Overall it will be ok though.

Interesting to find this thread at the top of business/making money

I have been trading crypto currencies since 2012 and I've made a small fortune, I'm also involved in a new start up selling hardware which is going pretty well.

LTC is probably a good long term hold right now IMO, but I tend to urge anyone who will listen, its always worth holding some amount of BTC long term just in case.

When you say "some amount of BTC", how much roughly are we talking about?