Quote from: Red Emerald on February 24, 2012, 02:07:20 AM

Quote from: rhubear on February 24, 2012, 01:30:24 AM

Quote from: Red Emerald on February 24, 2012, 12:20:47 AM

Quote from: rhubear on February 24, 2012, 12:11:35 AM

I like the idea of mining BTC, am currently using 1 x 6970 @ 400MH, not profitable, so discontinuing GPU mining & will be researching the FPGA options. However using exchanges to just buy BTC seems to me like the best overall option. Just buying BTC is approx 1/2 the cost to me of mining with 1 x 6970! Buying from an exchange is cheaper for me than even using 3 x Radeons for mining (assuming approx 400MH per card).

When mining starts to pay 25 BTC/block, then I don't see the point of any mining, and BTC payment has a long way to decrease from 25 BTC/block!
Why bother mining for 1/2 (and then less & less later on) the previous reward? Just buy the BTC!!

..... unless BTC _really_ jumps in price & mining using the expensive FPGA options actually becomes more economic than buying using fiat money.

Anyone's comments on the economies of mining for 25 or less BTC/block??

Hopefully fees will be large enough to make up for the subsidy.

OK so you're saying that miners will be paid "fees" to topup the decrease in BTC earnings?

Where do I find documentation regarding these plans, or is this just an idea so far? I've seen nothing on the internet to explain this to me.

You haven't heard of fees? Really?

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees

Thanks. Yeah, I don't remember reading that before. Certainly not understanding it previously.

So I take it the idea/hope is to maintain an approx payout of 50BTC per block indefinitely, made up of BTC earned & fees gathered from community transactions.
So the less raw BTC that is earned per block, the more fees needs to be payed out to miners to maintain their current level of payout per MH.

I may be really behind the curve here, but I haven't been aware of any transaction fees in my few BTC transfers yet. I seem to remember that the wiki piece does mention the fees is optional currently. If I'm right here, then transaction fees will become much more important later on, minimum fees applying etc.