From my experience, befriend a Bitcoin miner. He'll sell you bitcoin in bulk, and give you a nice bulk discount. Fuck the middlemen, get coins direct. From there, you can sell them on CoinBase (if in US) or locally (via localbitcoins.com) and lock in an instant return. But, be careful not to withdraw too much $$$ or you may get flagged for suspicious activity. Know your limits.
Also, another reason why is because usually they have a shit ton of coins to throw around. After befriending the guy over a couple months, he rented my condo out and knowingly paid 30% over market rate. Can't reveal numbers, but between $30k-$50k worth in BTC, 12 months rent up front. 30% above market + time value of money over 12 months - yeah, I got pretty lucky. You may think I ripped him off, but I didn't. It's a win-win. He needs a place to live, but no one will take his bitcoin. I was one of the few that did. Supply/Demand, and then there's exchange-rate risk.
Regarding Mt. Gox, stay the fuck away from them. US seized over $5 mil from them, and no way you'll be able to withdraw cash for awhile. If you got cash at Mt. Gox, best bet is, buy Bitcoin, and withdraw, and do it soon, as they are already putting halts on some Bitcoin withdrawals.
Last takeaway, I hope that in our lifetime, monetary policy decisions made by a few individuals will be replaced by heavily-researched and mathematically-proven algorithms. Honestly, I'd rather let robots/computers run the monetary system in an unbiased manner, where everybody has to follow the rules, instead of pretending that human beings can do so without a hidden agenda. I think and hope Bitcoin is a step in that direction.
I use CoinBase and LocalBitcoins. But I only use the latter for in person meet ups. In Chicago, we have a couple merchants. Never done LocalBitcoins with bank deposits, seems more shady but it seems like people have done it. Maybe try small amounts first.
Tormail was supposed to be private/anonymous email. But, I hear a lot of tormail users' data had been compromised by the Feds. Tor is not tormail, it's just a way to hide your identity when streaming the web by using another random person's computer to stream the web for you and then relay it back to your computer. Tor is still up and running from what I understand.
My friend recently bought an additional GPU from china for his farm and he said it's gonna pay itself back in about 1 month. I'm not sure if i believe him though, sounds too good to be true IMO...
(10-21-2013 11:30 AM)The Great Basilisk Wrote: My friend recently bought an additional GPU from china for his farm and he said it's gonna pay itself back in about 1 month. I'm not sure if i believe him though, sounds too good to be true IMO...
He's bullshitting. GPU mining is all but dead for anything except the most obscure cryptocurrencies. I typed up a decent-length reply showing some math behind why it's bullshit but naturally, I closed a window and lost it. Basically, go to dustcoin.com and crunch some numbers. A $260 graphics card (MSI 7950) will get about ~700 kH/s doing scrypt, and that's only if it's overclocked and properly cooled. That's about $1USD/day profit, and that's at current market prices and mining difficulty. That's a nice ROI, but not exactly going to make you rich unless you scale up massively. It's also only going to get harder and less profitable.
Unless he's referring to an ASIC rig, in which case he's either very lucky or he might just be parroting what the marketing material told him.
unrelated: there's tons of silkroad copycats already, lol