"a few weeks and amassed a fortune of 0.02 btc" lol

Donny or someone representing that site really really needs to come through.

fantastic

Remember the bitcoin client still is set default to .01 btc for all the previous client versions. The new client is barely a couple weeks old.

I don't think you can call this a scam just because he hasn't updated his client yet. Yes he should update his policies and fees but don't go muddying his reputation by calling it a scam just because he hasn't yet.

this site was talked about on the newbies forum. the page doesn't stay open. it eventually logs you out after a few minutes. either it's a scam or just a poorly coded setup.

Even if transaction fees weren't the case, it's not really any more of a scam than deepbit charging 3%

I've been using it pretty much since it started, mining 24/7 on a quad and 2 core 2 duo desktops (all 64 bit linux). I've also had about 7 other core 2 duo desktops (again all 64 bit linux) adding to that at weekends. Net result? Very little -- about 0.20BTC roughly.

But as has been pointed out, this is largely due to the inefficiency of the applet used: it's a CPU miner, not a GPU miner.

That said, the 0.01 transaction fees are a relatively new feature, and since they were introduced so quickly, they should have been reversed to 0.0005 equally quickly in my opinion. On top of that, the embedded miner earns the owner about 17% as I recall, so this guy is making a reasonable cut even if it is not a huge net total.

My biggest gripe, though, is that the payout is decreased every 2 weeks, supposedly as an "alternative" to the difficulty increasing. The explanation is that rather than increasing the difficulty, the payout is decreased instead. I have never understood the maths or logic behind that, and from my experiences of watching the mining on these machines, the difficulty indeed does increase (or more specifically, the frequency of payouts decreases) in conjunction with the payout value lowering. So this is a double-whammy: a reduction in payout amount, and a reduction in payout frequency. That annoys me a lot.

Don't know what version of bitcoind and OS are they running, the latest builds nags if they're using Debian 5 for an instance, so their fee may still be 0.01.
Anyway, CPU mining is inefficient and can't compete with GPU mining. So any possible earnings of CPU mining pools will be small.

While I agree with you that the leap to use the word 'scam' isn't helpful
- neither I think is the implied attitude that 'cents' or even tiny fractions thereof don't matter.
They matter a great deal to new bitcoin users - who may have about 0.01BTC total and are interested in trying out the system.

Really - I think many must have walked away from bitcoin because it feels like their wallet is just being eaten up by fees - just like the ordinary banking systems.

I know bitcoin isn't really optimised for microtransactions, but due to the uneven wealth distribution - this is already a problem for uptake.

It's not a scam. But it is a poor deal.

Not scam just poorly run and the issue was the inherit fee in the system.

Real life counterpart:
I go to shop by something for 0.98€, then I pay it with 1€ coin, I don't get my 2 cents back, as Finland don't use those. I'm not screaming scam, I just accept it...