Help review my PC workstation build list, please and thanks.

[Hammerskjold]

Good enough category. All the reading I've done on RAM, is that the differences in performance are so neglible it is barely detectable. I have the option to install more for a full 32 gigabytes later on.

Yep. Even if they do bring out DDR4 soon\this year, DDR3 prices are still pretty good at the moment and near future from what I can see.

Worst case scenario: I have an extremely powerful gaming / video rendering rig. Boo hoo.

Reading some info on those ASICS and FPGA machines you've mentioned, my own impression and I could very well be mistaken here. They're very specialized. They might be too specialized, like a motorized melon baller machine. And when they're obsolete, they're basically doorstops. And this is in addition to what you say about some of them being not readily available for purchase to the general public.

Like you say, at least with a general purpose PC, the worst case scenario you'll wind up with a hell of a PC that can be used for something else.

However... the prices of bitcoins have shown there's worldwide speculation and investment due to the cypress banking breakdown (which will only get worse over the course of the next month ) with europeans investing. The recent spike to 260 seems to have been due to asian investor speculation. However.... people's demand is what makes any currency worth anything and there's serious demand.

I readily admit here I'm still reading further on the subject, lost a good chunk of my afternoon on various articles on it, thanks.

It's a fascinating subject, particularly on just who is this Satoshi Nakamoto? I'm inclined to believe that it's more likely a group of people rather than just one, however some of the reasonings I've read that it -can't- be one person is hilariously ignorant IMO.

IE: It must be a pseudonym, since his\her english text is written like someone who speaks it fluently and idiomatically. Pseudonym is one thing. But do the people who believe this ever encounter a fluently bilingual person before? They do exist, I've met a few, and they're not riding unicorns. Or if this Satoshi was born in Japan, but raised or moved elsewhere at a young age.

Having said that, it's not impossible either that Satoshi was a group that was led by an individual or an overall principle\idea. Or something like this, simply due to how funny it would be if it was true.

Someone else wondered whether the name might be a sly portmanteau of four tech companies: SAmsung, TOSHIba, NAKAmichi, and MOTOrola.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/mf_bitcoin/all/

Overall I think it's a very fascinating ongoing experiment\idea. A little de-centralization and competition never hurt. And the ones that do cry foul, IMO are usually the biggest and worst offenders that needed a few corrective smacks themselves.