Topic: [Archive] BFL trolling museum - page 122. (Read 69394 times)

If the hashing algorithm were to change, what would happen, would the blockchain be forked from that moment on? Or will the miners using the new algorithm generate orphans until more than half the hashing power has updated?

Regarding the update - I don't think it's a question of "if", but a question of "when". Wikipedia says"Currently, the best public attacks break 41 of the 64 rounds of SHA-256 or 46 of the 80 rounds of SHA-512". I think it's pretty clear - as long as Bitcoin grows it will become a more and more attractive target.

This means that EVERY ASIC unit produced for mining will be rendered worthless. Personally, I plan to sink money in ASICs at a very slow and controlled pace - one or two cheap units at a time. If shit hits the fan at least I have only a few small losses.

ha ha

i'm just hoping competitors have a lot more time.

That is correct. The SHA-256 ASIC device does not necessarily have to be used for Bitcoin mining, though; it could be used for password cracking.

Sub

*EDIT*

I have a question. From what I could understand, ASIC, once printed, can't be changed and if a ASIC is made for the SHA256 algorithm, it can't be used for anything else, you need to make another ASIC. Is that correct?

That did not even come into my mind, but yes, sell replacements on for the purchases made. Damn, evil circle of money

cause thats what people do when purchasing a single

And they could send these singles coming back to people still waiting for them today, total win for BFL. The question is : did they plan this from the beginning ?

As I posted else where, the trade in program has not been announced. What if it is a case of send back your singles, and you are now in the queue, along with anyone one else who has purchased. This means that you are back in the position of Wang x months for the new hardware without any old / current hardware mining.

This means that people who have singles already could spend months more waiting. I very much doubt that bfl would put previous purchasers In front of new money into the company.

Phil

No, I mean if anyone believes the price:performance ratio is true. To achieve that kind of performance with this price I see two possibilites:

a) they invented something noone else has (very little probability, but they will be rich if it's true)
b) they got a really good deal, be it legal or illegal

To be first to receive their ASIC.

I meant, 'Why would you offer them your BTC at this point any way?' ...

This is what I have been thinking since this announcement.   As a community, we need to think about this issue hard and long and see if its the best interest of Bitcoin.   I am leaning towards this being a hack job and someone really trying to be clever.   Because if not, BFL would be basically giving is the "bird" in a sense because they gave no guidance to the many people who are trying to grow the network and create value,  if I released a product like this, I would be very aware of how this is going to affect so many people, that I would give guidance so people can make plans and investments.  If they didn't think it was their responsibility or didn't care then that would tell us a lot about the heart and soul of BFL.   If you think that is all about the dollars and sense and nothing about the community as a whole and how your actions affect us all, then YOUR IN THE WRONG PLACE. 

We already have enough people that want to see us fail, the last thing we need is some company with smart people coming in swing their "you know what" around without any thought of the long term goals.  If we allow the network to fall into a few hands then we are lost and we might as well come up with Bitcoin 2.0 now, because when you have a few points of attack, then that makes your a target.   Yes, I have ordered their products and have contacted them about this but I said the same thing in it as well to be consistent.  I have no problem with the product, but it is such a game-changer, you OWE it to Bitcoin miners everywhere to let them know when it is coming and how you are handling orders and who is first.   That is sound business and will go a long ways to make many people happy and less stressed.


Sincerely,
Dalkore

I tentatively think for BFL to maximize its profits without causing its miners/customers to lose money, it needs to sell enough devices to drive almost everyone out of the market (ex. all the gpus, and at least stop new production of fpgas).  This might mean increasing the hash rate by around 5 times - so they would stop people with very cheap electricity (like in Quebec) from profitably mining with GPUs.

Then it needs to restrict supply of the ASIC devices and price them so that miners get their money back within, say, 6 months.  The payback time frame needs to be very short because another company (or group of people) might produce an ASIC and then the hash rate will go through the roof (factor x100 increase), and there is no other known use for the devices (If password cracking turns out to be lucrative - then this changes everything).  If BFL can make a profit doing this than that is good. Otherwise BFL and/or the miners are in for losses.

The ASIC devices also all need to be delivered on the same date.  Or whoever gets them first will benefit a LOT.

So they need to be sold once, and then not sold again until there is competition in the ASIC market or the miners have had time to earn back their investment.

Or BFL could takeover the network and mine 90% of the bitcoins for itself until a competitor arrives.

I completely agree with this. While I think that changing the algorithm just because there is an ASIC in the wild won't happen and would be a silly thing to do, it's completely possible that we need to change from SHA256 for another reason in the future.

The history of cryptography is full of back-and-forth of new techniques and those techniques becoming outdated and insecure for a variety of reasons. One thing that remains constant is the people who bet on their encryption technique being completely secure forever have run into big problems sooner or later.

Probably because they won't be ready to manufacture these units for a *really* long time.

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY? :/

Just send them your hard earned BTC, they'll accept them for shure

Most likely then this is just Version 2.0 of last September ...

Have some marketing ploy that's full of crap to negatively impact their competitors ... since people like giving them money for stuff LONG before they ever get it
They may well produce it- but given how long it took the 10 years of experience BFL hardware techs to make shippable 'Single's I'd not expect any true ASIC from them for quite a while.

----

Anyway back on the sha256 ASIC issue:
Um, there is a quite reasonably serious reason why we could dump sha256 and change to something else.
Exactly the same reason for NIST's directive that U.S. government agencies had to stop uses of SHA-1 after 2010.

Once problems are found with sha256, then we'll move on to the next choice (sha512 I'd guess - or sha-3 if sha512 is considered problematic at the same time as sha256)

So anyone looking to invest 100's of thousands (or millions) of dollars into making ASIC miners is taking a much larger risk than making FPGA hardware

Bitcoin has already went up 300 times over the past two years or so. So, what's the difference now?

There is still NOTHING on BF website. IMO it is all FAKE.