I'm trying to work out exactly how much the electricity costs for my rig are and while I don't live in a jurisdiction that has cheap electricity, quite the opposite as electricity costs are rising pretty fast here, I'm thinking that it will only be another couple of months and I'll turn off the rig, sell whatever bitcoins I have left and then forget about them forever.
Bitcoins are absolutely irrelevant to me and with the difficulty rising so fast my rig will be more or less obsolete in a few months anyway. What many American-centric commentators on this forum forget because they are too busy, as my friend puts it, "sucking on the anti-government wang" is that the chronic self-hatred and self-loathing that many Americans have for their government, their institutions, their financial apparatus, their politicians and their fellow countrymen and women isn't translated in other parts of the world.
So while many Americans think that everyone else hates on their own respective countries and cultures and that bitcoin is some panacea to these ills, their combative attitudes don't even come close to translating to the rest of the world. In fact, it's gone the other way, where given the American preoccupation to play policeman and try to bring the hammer down on anyone who doesn't see eye-to-eye with whatever administration happens to be in power, it's actually most noticeable in financial services where in Europe particularly, many banks, fund managers, brokers and investment houses just refuse to deal with Americans as they're disinclined to put up with the arrogance, mock self-righteousness and legal extrapolations to satisfy the whims of 'American compliance'. Take a look at any European mutual fund provider or even an everyday bank, most of them explicitly exclude US persons from using their services, indeed, it's up front on their disclaimers and you have to tick the check box "I confirm that I am a non-US person" before being able to access the prospectus or product application form. You can be from Somalia, Mongolia or even the Moon as long as you're not American, you can access their products.
Time and time again people argue on this forum that bitcoin will somehow save individualism, restore capital to the people and wave a magic wand over so many other areas of supposed global concern which aren't global at all, in fact, we just hear this rhetoric from (marginalised?) Americans who try to extrapolate their insular hatred of authority to the rest of the world... and it's just not the case.
Far from bitcoin promoting individual liberty or libertarian agendas, it's actually the opposite - as individuals like me wonder about the cost efficiency of running their rigs and trying to figure out whether they should keep mining or maybe buy more hashing, it's pretty easy to come to the conclusion that individual miners will always be playing catch up spending more and more on miners and getting less and less by way of return due to rapidly increasing difficulty. How does the individual miner compete with corporate mining farms? - well, they don't, do they?
I've made ROI on my rig, probably made double or more than double what I paid for the rig and that's fine, no complaints here, but so what? Many stocks, options, futures and other far more accessible, liquid and flexible instruments have easily done the same for me. Bitcoin hasn't gained any regulatory traction, quite the opposite, it's being rejected as a currency in more jurisdictions than accept it and if the 'hammer boys' in the US aren't prepared to regulate and provide a free framework for the promotion of the unit, what's the incentive for other jurisdictions to promote it? They already deal with enough grief from Americans in the financial sphere so why would they bother to promote bitcoin and generate more antipathy?
Bitcoin may live, it may die... but either way I don't give a damn because it's absolutely irrelevant and intrinsically worthless [to me]. Give me a stock or a future on a regulated exchange any day. You might get a rough ride on the NYSE or CME, but whatever happens you've got enforceable rights, half a chance of making a profit and you never get Goxed.
*flips two cents and walks away*
