Topic: ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It - page 1052. (Read 3917543 times)

Can anyone estimate what would be the return, in bitcoin, of 1000 ASICMINER full shares for the next 30 days ?
Thanks

It would require many, many attempts to get it done. And this wouldn't go unnoticed.

Double spending usually requires the other party to be malicious. The chance that the entity you're trading with, is the same as the entity who owns 50%, is rather slim. There is a chance for unintentional double spends, whenever you have a block reorganization of >6 blocks (To study this case, lookup the recent fork due to v0.7 vs v0.8, which can be interpreted as a block reorg). As those instances would be noticed, people would just require more confirmations (e.g. 10), making the cost of an intentional block reorganization higher. Bitcoin is already a "slow" payment processor, so going from 6 to 10 is a non-issue for most transactions.

Impractical. The disruption, due to changing the hashing algorithm, will damage the reputation and introduces severe uncertainties with respect to the security of the network.

No.
My guess is something would be done to bitcoin to block asicminer.
Would be the most reasonable step to take to avoid the risks.

OMG! 50% issue over and over again.

If anybody approaches 50% it means network isn't secure as it was promised to be.
Value goes drastically down and even if you mine twice as much coins you will get 100x less in fiat out of that.

If there is any sign that somebody has such power (even unpowered hidden in a garage) that is a bad news for the coin.
Friedcat or noFriedcat. That won't make a difference.

What if friedcat distributes his hashing power into multiple mining pools? In that case, he can go over 50%.

+10

I'll add that something many don't seem to grasp here (all those claiming for going near 50%), this is also in the interest of the AM share holders and anyone who owns BTC or BTC-related shares! BTC will be way more valuable if its network can be looked at as fully resilient against potential major events.

Tkone, you're very naive if you think you can trust any one entity ever for a whole host of reasons.

Others saying 'we know AM will behave' are being similarly naive. Nothing against AM here of course.

Even outside of that, a third party could use AM to construct an attack through an exploit (technical, human) or force (government, other agency).

As others have pointed out, other areas of the network could get taken out for a host of reasons so even 30% for any pool or party is too high in my opinion.

A cleverly co-ordinate physical and virtual attack on a very small number of organisations could severely compromise bitcoin, and that goes against the whole peer to peer nature of the security. This attack would probably not be financially motivated, although it could be done to massively drop the price in the short to medium term. It wouldn't be easy to pull off but it is a problem with the set up at present.

Bitcoin tech is design to be trust less, but now we're trusting a very few entities and that's not good (if you get your blind folds off).

AM is doing the right thing in general. Fighting for a higher mining percentage will only damage the in the long term as they need to balance what they're doing with what others are doing, or they knacker their own buyers. Hardware is the way to go for them. They have first mover advantage and can effectively control the market through their mining and hardware pricing. A steady approach with prices starting high and then shortly dropping before the competition arrives is probably the best way to do it, then follow up with more hardware priced in similar fashion - first adopter but profitable, and then competitively going for higher unit counts priced to maximise overall medium to long term profit.

which is the possibility of redemption from other users.
what is the profit of the company's shares. A month a year?

The owner doesn't have to. Let me quote kano's source: http://xkcd.com/538/

If someone wants to hurt bitcoin, and someone else has control of a large portion of the hashrate, then the first someone just has to put pressure on the second someone.

I hope friedcat has thought about his own personal security and that of his family.

ASICMINER will not issue more shares, if any more are to be sold it would be from bitfountain's stake.

how the issue of shares in the company. distributions from the company. Unless action is released.

even if asic had 70% of network, why in the world do you think they will double spend?
it makes no sense if asic had so much power they would want bitcoin to be secure, because so much is invested in bitcoin, so they wouldnt double spend at all, that would make bitcoin price drop as ppl will not have faith in it.

anybody actually controlling a high amout of hashrate percentage, is like having a centralized currency, but even then, anyone else can just plug in more power and take over control, but still it wouldnt be as easy for anyone...

anyways why would asic fail if it has more then 51%? it would only help secure the system more, as we know asicminer is a honest working company, they would not double spend there bitcoins it makes no sense for them to do that...

it makes better sense for them to have high amount of power to stop ANYONE ELSEfrom double spend attack the system...

ELAZAR

STOP IT! Blocks in a row is necessary but not sufficient for a 50% attack.  You need more than just 6 blocks in a row to successfully 51% the network.

Stop with the FUD. 

VERY good point. (and i love xkcd.)

IMO, at the prices they are currently selling, sales are much better than ASICMiner keeping the blades to mine with.

They should do enough mining to have very healthy consistant cash flow and then sell the rest.

Opposite of what I have once said ...

The issue with a source having 50% is basically however you'd like to interpret this joke (and the other obviously related issues)
Only you need to interpret it seriously ...
http://xkcd.com/538/

This subject has been brought up before, but the current discussion seems to have totally missed it ...

Patently wrong, since who is "contributing the total" could easily change it to solo mining.

More than 50% is a problem if it is all on one pool or solo miner.  If the hashing power is distributed across pools, then you need only consider the individual pools share of the hashing power (i.e. who "controls" the work directed to the miners).  If AM is using Solo, BTC Guild and Bit Minter, the community worry should be directed at whoever of those three breaks 50% of the total, not who is contributing to that total.

And then there is the possible 340TH due to come on line from BFL ASIC sales (68,000 5GH chips being packaged) in the next, what, three months?  The Erupter blades (50BTC) are match two of the 5GH BFL miners, which are about 6BTC total.  Best sell the Erupter baldes hardware to those willing to pay for it now, since it will be worth less in 3 months time. (Or have I just uttered a heresy?)

The only time I would say ASIC/BTC guild should go for over 50% of the network is if there was a coordinated plot to destroy bitcoin and it's infrastructure for whatever reason and they went for its destruction with pure hashing power. Seize all the hardware then use it to take over the blockchain etc.
Of course that's a pure doomsday scenario but if someone could take control of all that hardware with malicious intent it could create a lot of havok.
That said Bitcoin has developed pretty far and I would say that it becomes increasingly difficult to do such an attack as more time passes by.

I agree that while theirs an incentive to grow the network for more rewards the biggest rewards are in the hardware itself not the mining for the long run and lowering those costs by making more efficient modules with high spreads when reselling them will result in greater profits.
As a near monopoly the prices can be set a fair bit higher.
That said if the userbase trusts ASIC and factors in the increasing difficulty of the network with over 50% of the chain then that's an interesting conversation.