The problem of course is simply that so much hashing power is required to mine ANY significant fraction of even ONE BTC, that only institutional miners like the NSA or KNC has any chance of accomplishing anything.

For the past few months, I have been mining on GHIO with FOURTEEN Zeus, Lightning-X6 miners (574 MegaHash) … all the while burning through 14,000 Watts of electricity — 24 hours a day — or about 10-Million Watt-Hours a month.

As soon as the electric company noticed the the rate at which I was deforesting the planet … they sent a political missive informing me just how unfair I was being to everyone who couldn’t afford to use power at the “staggering rate” I was becoming accustomed to … They even sent a really nice graph that showed MY consumption compared to my Neighbors … The graph unfolded vertically five times. It must have cost them an entire electric bill just to produce the thing. Anyway, when that didn’t work, they raised my rates by a really non-trivial amount.

Even if I did have to bypass the fuse box and wire the little buggers right into the mains, I thought that if you use MORE of a commodity, it is customary to pay LESS for it. Besides, if I want to keep my garage at 142 degrees … It’s MY Business, Not Theirs.

At any rate, Bitcoin will never be accepted as a fiat replacement simply because the average person can never acquire even one of them by the force of his own efforts and after I finished paying 6 months worth of electric bills, I just broke even on the extended effort … but not of course on the cost of the miners.

Think of it this way; Even a neophyte hooker can acquire Dollars, Rubles or Euros ( and a LOT of them) just by offering discount BJ’s on any street corner. That can’t happen with Bitcoin, so She will never have any BTC either to hold or to spend and neither will any of the rest of us. Given the rate at which the USD is about to collapse, I think the poor little thing will probably be carrying a sign, just like everyone else that say’s “BJ’s For Food” … And She is going to qualify as the Smart one.

It’s really terribly unfair.