Its natural to assume that if the trade value of BitCoins falls low enough, the chances of miners dropping out would also increase.  What would this do for the overall difficulty?  How long would it be until the difficulty begins to drop if this were to happen.

I am looking for any resources (but PHP mainly) that can be used to help validate BitCoin transactions, possibly for use with a Doubler or Multiplier service.

I am assuming the "simplest" method would be to just generate a new BitCoin receiving address for each Entry/Person and save those in a SQL database, then anything that is received by that address can be sent back to the Entry address tied to it.

I've already messed around with the API via PHP for awhile and messaged around with validating information via BlockExplorer, but that relies on a third-party service, and parsing the JSON data seemed a little messy for my tastes.

in all fairness to those currently playing, could you add on an amount of time equal to the time it has taken you to deal with this issue.  So if you spent an hour dealing with this, bump the game up an extra hour.  If 2 hours, add 2, etc.

okay, that clears it up. 

Still not understanding.  Was "anodyne"s 1.2BTC entered into the game or not?  If it was, and it is the ONLY 1.2 that is listed on the page, he already got his winnings thru the natural course of the game.  Am I wrong with this assumption?

from the looks of it, the way other places handle knowing "who's who" is to give each person a dedicated address to send to and ask for a payment address to be entered.  This way, no matter what address a payment comes from, as long as it goes to the dedicated one, any payouts will be sent to the "payment address" of the user.

actually that is quite a good analogy.  As the snowball gets larger (larger winnings), more people are needed to help push it up the hill (fill in the bids of earlier bidders).  BUT, whomever is the LAST person to join in with helping push it gets to ride it all the way down the hill (wins the remaining pot at the end).

my question is this: was the 1.2 BTC eventually entered into the game?  or was not not entered at all?  Not asking about when it was entered, just if it was or not.

Any specific reasons why you think Bitcatch is better?

Honestly, it's not about high roller or small amounts, but rather its more about the possible bid ranges.

0.5 to 1, is only a difference of half a BitCoin

5 to 10 is a difference of 5 BitCoins.

what I mean to say is that with these types of games/pyramids, people bid if they believe there is a good chance of making something back (sometimes).

With bids like 5 - 10, once people start bidding 10, no one will bid anything lower than, because it slows down the whole chain overall, and then what would be point of even having anything other than 10 as a bid value?


Games like BidCoin work for larger bid ranges because you aren't waiting in a line.  BidCoin has a random number generator.  Even wins, odd loses, and a roll of 500 wins the jackpot.  You're not exactly waiting for anyone else.

but in the end it's all still a gamble.

added another 1 BTC bid.  Keep the bids going people.

people are waiting for the final few minutes in an attempt to be the last bidder, i guess.

I'm not bidding because I only have 5 bitcoins at the moment.  Will probably wait and see if and when bids start coming in near the end of this weeks game before I decide to bid.

The hardware would be installed before it gets THAT cold, probably once the temps are in the 50F, October-November.  We usually get our first snowfall in November, right around Black Friday. I can only hazzard a guess that if the system is operating to a good degree (pun) before the real cold hits that it can compensate.

I am definitely thinking that a linux distro would work better and installed on a bootable USB thumb drive, or maybe even a USB3 thumb drive due to the increase in speed.


The 6870s are cards I already own, so they are kind of the default to start with.  Would there be any problems with me added a 5830 as the third cards in the system?


Does anyone have an opinions on the board or the processor to be used?  Is 3 x16 slots and no x1 slots worth it?  It does have two non-e PCI slots, and I know there are adapters to convert those to x16, but i have yet to hear a consensus good or bad on those cards.

Nice.  is it sad that the first and only Compact Flash card I have every owned, and still have, is an 8 MegaByte one?

I was about to ask where the mounting area for the hard drive was, but then I realized you could just plug in a USB Flash Drive and use that as your boot drive with a linux-bitcoin distro.

Or, if it is supported, possibly a USB3 flash drive.  Not sure of actually real world usage, but some of the reviews I have seen possibly put it at least on par with PATA drives (according to Wikipedia, PATA can do up to 133 MegaBytes/sec.  USB3 apparently can do 640 MegaBytes/sec, plenty of room to breath).

Is GPU2 running above 90C?

true, though i would like to have the ability to easily move the rig as a whole without having to move much of the individual components, and the open air frame sounds like a fun project overall.

So I have decided to make my Northern Michigan Winter rig that will be running in a room that is snow-proof, but not heated.

Before I start gathering the parts together, I want to get some opinions on the CPU and Motherboard choices.


I am looking at an "Intel BLKD975XBXLKR LGA 775 Intel 975X ATX Intel Motherboard"

The board has 3 PCIe x16 slots, and irregardless of their speeds, we all know they will mine just the same.

The CPU I would possibly use is a Celeron Dual Core.

The power supply would probably need to be 1000w so I have some room to add that third card.  Or would it be better to go with two lower watt power supplies that way a single wouldn't be taxed as much?  Two 600w's perhaps?  700?

The case will either be one of, or will be based on, Detritus's "Open Frame Mining Rigs" and as said before, stored in a room that IS snow-proof, but is not resistant by any stretch of the imagination to the temps outdoors.

The lows it gets around here from December to March can be around 0F to -18F (-18C to -28C), but the averages are usually 25F to 5F ( -4C to -15C ).  These would most likely be the ambient temps in the room the rig will be located in.

The rig will start with two VisionTek 6870s, adding another card and or swapping them out with better hardware soon after if the rig performs well (enough).  I plan to use the x16 extension cables.

I have extra copies of WindowsXP Pro, and am more comfortable with it than Linux.

There will be no hard line connecting the rig to my main network, so I will need to use Wifi.  Only way to run a hardline would be to dig up the parking lot and run the line, and we don't plan to do that for normal network extension until next spring.

I have a number of WiFi signals I can connect to (my personal/private networks, and an encrypted motel guest wifi for my customers).  I believe if I can get the rig to connect and remember all of the wifi networks, I should be able to reduce downtime due to signal loss.  I will work to get the antenna placed properly though, thats for damn sure.


What I do wonder is, in a cold environment like this, if I should adjust Detritus's open frame design to support the graphics cards with fans facing down, rather than on their side like in his case design, in order to pull in cold air better.  Then again, spacing out the cards just enough should help.

just received my second payout. 

got my payment too, thanks