November 29th, 2013 
CryptoBadger Today is Bitcoin Black Friday, and that means there are some good deals to be had for shoppers using bitcoin to pay for their purchases. Remember that the long-term success of cryptocurrency depends on consumers that are willing to spend their coins—so consider making at least one purchase today in support of Bitcoin’s future.
Also, a reminder that Coinbase is waiving all fees today.
Update: Mt. Gox has now also announced that they’re waiving all fees today through Monday.
November 27th, 2013 CryptoBadger Just a quick note that I’ve temporarily disabled the ordering process for my custom mining rigs. I’ve had quite a few orders come in lately and I need a few days to catch up. Once I clear out the backlog, I’ll re-open the ordering process, so check back in a few days. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you everyone for the tremendous interest!
November 27th, 2013 CryptoBadger It’s been exciting watching litecoin go from ~$10 to ~$30 over the past 48 hours, and seeing bitcoin punch through $1000 today. But I’d urge everyone to not make any rash decisions about dumping large amounts of cash into crypto, with the hopes of riding this crazy train to riches. The current growth is mostly being driven by rampant speculation, and it isn’t sustainable.
Litecoin performance over the past 24 hours on btc-e.com
There will very likely be a correction at some point in the near future. Given the massive growth of litecoin, and bitcoin passing through the $1000 barrier, you can also expect a lot of mainstream media attention in the coming days—so we might actually see an even crazier price run-up before prices return to saner levels. But anyone that doesn’t expect a short-term correction is probably in denial.
In my opinion, before these kinds of valuations are justified, we need to see far more acceptance of cryptocurrency from merchants, and we need consumers that are willing to actually spend their coins on everyday purchases—instead of hoarding them in the hopes of a huge payday. In the case of altcoins, we also need better support from the major trustworthy payment processors and exchanges. Progress is being made on all fronts, but we have quite a ways to go. I believe we’ll get there, but it won’t happen overnight.
I’m absolutely not suggesting that you should exit your position in crypto immediately, and then re-buy after the inevitable correction occurs. Trying to time the market requires a lot of luck, and will likely result in regret for most of those that attempt it. I still absolutely believe in the $50+ prediction for Litecoin that I made 2 weeks ago (LTC was $4/coin then!), I just didn’t expect that we’d be more than halfway there before reaching the end of the month! If you agree that Litecoin has a potentially bright future, then the best move for most of you is to simply not panic when the inevitable correction happens.
Keep calm and continue mining. Try to not get caught up in the price hype, although I’ll be the first to admit that it’s certainly fascinating to watch.
November 26th, 2013 CryptoBadger Coinbase today announced that they’ll be waiving all fees on 11/29 in celebration of Bitcoin Black Friday. If you’ve been wanting to buy, sell, or trade bitcoin, it won’t cost you a Satoshi at Coinbase this Friday.
Coinbase is probably one of the more reliable and trustworthy exchanges available at the moment, if you’re not familiar with them. You can sign up here through my referral link if you don’t already have an account, and we’ll both get $5 worth of free bitcoin after your first 1 BTC transaction.
November 25th, 2013 CryptoBadger mcxNOW just put out notice that they’ll be shutting down temporarily on December 20th to work out some technical issues. The exchange is apparently a one-man operation, and going dark for a month or three to work out the system kinks was deemed the best option.
If you use mcxNOW, it’s probably a good idea to withdraw your funds as soon as possible.
November 22nd, 2013 CryptoBadger 
Virgin Galactic today announced that your bitcoins can be used to secure a trip into space.
So, recent bitcoin millionaires: what better way to celebrate your newly-acquired crypto-fortune than a ride on Virgin’s SpaceShipTwo? Ticket reservations are a cool $250,000 USD—or about 340 bitcoins at current exchange rates.
First sandwiches, now spaceship tickets. It’s been an interesting week.
November 21st, 2013 CryptoBadger 
For those of you ordering mining rig parts from Amazon, you can get yourself a free 30 day trial of Amazon Prime, which entitles you to free 2-day shipping (and a host of other benefits, including a streaming video library that is on par with Netflix’s service). You can cancel your Prime trial immediately after signing up, but you’ll still retain all of the benefits for the full 30 days—which is nice, since we’re heading into the holiday shopping season where that free fast shipping will come in handy!
November 21st, 2013 CryptoBadger Many of you have contacted me recently asking for my opinion of x brand/model of 7950 GPU, given that some of the top choices from my mining hardware guide are sold out everywhere. Thought I’d throw up a quick post with some of the best alternatives for those of you that are looking to build a rig.
Yes, the Radeon 7950 is still the best GPU mining platform (and probably will be for quite some time), assuming you don’t have access to free electricity. Click “read more” for the list.
November 18th, 2013 CryptoBadger This afternoon’s Senate hearing regarding the future of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies went quite well. In fact, the Washington Post is calling the hearing a “Bitcoin Lovefest.” It seems that many of the top US government officials recognize the potential value of Bitcoin, as well as the danger of stifling innovation by attempting to regulate it.
If you weren’t able to watch the hearing on C-SPAN, you can find an excellent summary on reddit of the main points made.
No doubt the positive hearing outcome helped drive today’s tremendous BTC price growth.
November 18th, 2013 CryptoBadger Just a quick note that I have been unable to reach a couple of the people that have purchased a custom mining rig from me over the past few days.
I need to be able to reach buyers so that I can gather mining pool worker credentials and some other information in order to set up each rig up properly—as well as give myself some peace of mind that the person on the other end of the transaction isn’t trying to scam me, which is unfortunately always a possibility with Paypal. If I’m unable to reach you after a few days of attempts, I’ll simply cancel your order and refund the purchase price of the rig to you.
If you’ve purchased a custom rig from me recently and we haven’t yet established a dialog, please contact me ASAP.
On a related note, it’s getting difficult for me to locate enough quality parts to build these things as fast as the orders are coming in, given the recent upward price explosion of cryptocurrency. If you’ve been putting off buying or building a mining rig, you may not want to wait too much longer.
