Look dmwardjr, I've learned a lot from you in the early days, you actually inspired me to build my own mining room back in the day, but I gotta say you seem a little off the railz regarding this issue!
Hi cryptotore, I "respectfully" request to please refrain from "off the rails," Sir.
I'll try to discuss with you:
No problem...
In my mind ASIC's is good because its the most efficient tech available to date. This means that a network consisting of asics are less vulnerable to takeover from governments/companies. Simply because they cant produce more efficient hardware in secret, and take over the network.
That's your mind... However, the "company" to take it over would be BITMAIN. I'm not saying BITMAIN is in league with the Chinese Government. I don't believe they are. I'm saying BITMAIN is the "Company" to takeover PoW coins.
With that comes RISKS of 51% attack, Giving them increased power in the trading space as a Composite Group sitting behind the scenes and manipulates the coins to your disadvantage if you do not understand the game as he plays it; and to your great profit if you do understand it. However, MOST don't understand it as some of us do and BITMAIN wins again by manipulating not only the mining market but the trading market as well.
Bitmain (and others) could have chosen not to sell these machines, and basically taken over the network in secret if they wanted to.
GPUs are WAY more available to get then ASICs. To say GPUs are currently hard to get is incorrect. Sure there was a month or 2 when they were overpriced, that was due to the high demand when they had a ROI of 90 days.
Even then you could still buy a smaller graphics card, they were not ALL sold out. The 1070/1080 TIs were the hard ones to get, other models were more available.
What advantage would we have if everyone moved to ASICs? It would just raise the current bar for everyone, reduce us to one supplier of hardware, and starts a arms race. Atleast with GPUs we are all on a level playing field without having to worry someone will have a GPU that does x100 the hashrate for 1/10th the power. All the hardware is relatively close to each other in terms of performance, keeping the difficulty from ramping up x10-x100.
ASICs dont save power, they dont make the network more secure, they are limited in availability, only have 3 to 6 month warrantys, run loud and hot, manufacturers keep a large number of the them for themselves and keep secret other rigs that are far better then sell them as new later while replacing them with new hardware, etc...
This is suppose to be a ASIC resistant coin, why dont you ASIC people go mine other ASIC coins available. Ohhhh ya thats right, you cant make your money back off them ASIC coins anymore because of the difficulty have ramped up so much. So you want to come and ruin Zcash’s difficulty with ASICs to make a quick buck and act like its the future of mining.
I'm HERE to tell you, that QUICK buck is an ILLUSION.As you KNOW, I've been in the space for a while and have had a LOT of experience with BITMAIN. My LAST round of ASIC's I bought from them was 42 x Bitmain S7's in late 2015. All of which I sold in February 2016 and never looked back. I USED to be the one to DEFEND them when they were attacked by others and I believe you KNOW this. THEN I TOOK THE RED PILL AND WOKE UP in February, 2016!!! I did a LOT of research and weighing pros and cons of GPU versus ASIC. ASIC would be fine "IF" {and it's a big if} the manufacturing of ASIC's were not CENTRALIZED, if governments did not pose a risk of banning ASIC's when they are shipped into their country, [GPU's are not so easily banned; as they have multiple purposes], and manufacturers pulling shenanigans in regards to better hardware while selling the scraps to unwary greedy driven miners trying to make a buck while being oblivious to the true "end" of what Bitmain works towards. Which is lining their own pockets at the expense of unwary individuals who are being seriously taken advantage of.
