bitcoins
my 24/7 bitcoin operation has come to an end. three reasons. first, the difficulty of mining bitcoins means i'm mining them significantly more slowly. second, the price of bitcoins has dropped. mining 24/7 pushed our monthly electric bill into tier 3 which costs $.30 per kilowatt-hour. ouch. it still makes sense to mine when the computer's going to be on anyway. the mining card draws less than 100 watts. that should keep us in tier 2 which costs $.14 per kilowatt-hour. which is cost effective. at least until this bitcoin bubble completely bursts. or until the next bitcoin bubble appears. still though. it's amazing that the amount of computation power is still growing exponentially. i guess feather merchants like myself are being replaced by specialists. i'm wondering how much mining is being done under questionable circumstances. like say, by a someone using their employer's computers. or by botnets. heh. you can mine profitably at any difficulty if you don't have to pay for the hardware or the electricity.