Topic: An ASIC Company's Guide to Maximizing Profit while Destroying Bitcoin - page 2. (Read 10504 times)

Pretty good! 

One little point though, it's not just americans who have an interest in bitcoin, in fact I think there's more people active in bitcoin outside of the US than there is inside the US, I'm not sure. But I am sure of one thing, those who are outside the US don't give a monkeys about all the 3-5 lettered US gestapo agencies...

I know I don't.

Peace 

ooo..


sounds like BFL.


/tinfoil

Such language is standard-issue spin terminology for getting those less-informed/less able to be informed/less capable of being informed to join the pitchfork party.

It's a thought experiment, not a reflection of my actual thinking.

That being said, the issue of whether Bitcoin is or is not a "threat to national economic activities" has less to do with reality and more to do with how governments decide to label it. I'm no conspiracy nut, but when motive and opportunity meet with no legal recourse, it is in your best interest to examine where that path leads.


One such popular ASIC hardware company has this to say about canceling pre-orders: "Payments made for pre-orders of ASIC based products now under development should be considered non-refundable until products begin shipping or 1 January 2013, whichever is earlier."

Please cancel your pre-orders and STFU

Thankyou :-)

So creating a new anonymous crypto currency that can potentially destabilize the US dollar leading to possible government collapse/run on banks is not a threat?

This is quite scary.

Mining or speculating in bitcoins is not a "threat to national economic activities" by any stretch of imagination. Contrary to the fantasies of some delusional conspiracy theorists, the government is not threatened by the existence of alternative currencies nor does it give a damn about it, nor it ever will. 

Sorry to self-bump, but I realized this might be better-suited for Economics or Mining Hardware discussion.

Mods, please move at your discretion.

Here's a fun little scenario I came up with the other day. Below I describe the most profitable business model for an ASIC hardware company to follow if they are looking to solely maximize profit without regard to protecting the Bitcoin network.

I sincerely hope for the sake of Bitcoin that no company decides to go this route - but where there is massive profit potential with no legal repercussions, there's fire:

Step 1. Recruit the team needed to make a legitimate ASIC offering

Step 2. Get in bed with SEC/FBI/[whatever three-letter agency that wants to see Bitcoin fail while painlessly hiding their involvement in it's failure]

Step 3. Start taking pre-orders and begin furnishing all pre-order information (full names, addresses, payment info) to the given Three Letter Agency. Three Letter Agency now has a dataset containing a very large portion of the United States population that could be considered a legitimate threat to national economic activities. To make it into this list of pre-orders, it implies the following about you:

a.) you have a significant interest in anonymous, decentralized cryptocurrency (this could be argued as an interest in "anti-economic activities" depending on which Three Letter Agency and their interests)
b.) you have the resources to invest significant sums of cash into these "anti-economic activities"
c.) you possess a higher-than-average intelligence and capacity for critical thinking, and further
d.) you have taken definitive and documented action to utilize the above resources to further your interests in these activities (placing a pre-order for a mining device)

Step 4. Continue collecting large pre-order USD/BTC sums, assemble first batch of ASICs

Step 5. Slowly bring ASIC units online in different pools (maybe even your OWN mining pool for maximum control!) as well as solo-mining, and begin funneling your mined BTC to a central location

Step 6. Delay, delay, delay as long as possible to maximize mined BTC profits and lure in any stragglers for pre-orders

Step 7. At some point - the "tipping point" as I will refer to it - you announce that you are on the verge of delivering on all pre-orders. Several important things now happen:

a.) Take your substantial USD assets and artificially inflate the exchange rate (the "pump")
b.) Hold this exchange rate long enough to create a massive bid wall at a desirable USD rate
c.) Execute the "dump" at this favorable exchange rate, turning your pile of BTC into a monolithic pile of USD

Step 8. Congratulations! You've devalued BTC massively, walked away with pre-order profits + mining profits, all amplified by massive and controlled speculation, and to top it all off you got some extra cash from Three Letter Agency and a Get out of Jail Free card for playing ball with them. Now all you have to do is deliver on the (now essentially worthless) hardware, and you have mitigated all your civil suit liability as well!

BONUS ROUND: Do a 51% attack right before delivering to really upset folks' confidence in the market
BONUS ROUND 2: Cancel orders and return BTC to their owners (although they're hardly worth anything now). Continue 51% attacks to keep Bitcoin from recuperating!


I hope you all have enjoyed my theoretical scenario, and I'll look forward to your comments and speculations. Oh, I am so totally not writing this to implicate any specific company either, in case anyone was drawing correlations that I did not intend.