Is It Better To Buy Or Generate Bitcoins?
I'd say: it depends.
if you need coins to do stuff right now, there's no guaranteed way to generate them anyway, can't be "better" that way.
if you dont need coins and just want to support the network, there's no need to buy any (or generate, to
try would be enough).
can't even say which is cheaper, or
less expensive, that again depends on where you live and what you have to invest (in power and/or hardware).
for me:
i just went down from ~8000khs to ~1500khs at the latest difficulty-step, so i'm actually not expecting to gain lots of coins in the near future, but still
generate to help find new blocks.
running a machine (that sucks up >20W) only to
generate coins is already useless to me (or needs to be bought/build/invested in first) and (watching current difficulty and market-prices) will prolly result in a loss.
i'm wondering anyway, why the market didn't change at all the last 2 diff.steps, watched and waited a bit, but this is it for me, i'm done generating coins.
sad thing is, that i have to wait about a month to get coins from MtGox too, but i'll at least get some more than 50btc at once, we'll need some other payment-options there quick.
nice article!