Topic: We really need ASIC competitors! (Read 2835 times)

no. because you could solar power asic's A LOT easier. less power needed means less investment in solar hardware, which means less over all capital, thus higher profit. power is everything.

How cool is this: Solar-powered 7970 rigs? Fantasy? Can they beat ASICs?

Well there's a classic pump.  You gonna dump now?  I mean who the hell cares what you said in some meanless blog about some company who isn't even proposing to do what you propose they should. 


That would be fantastic. Got any actual leads?

LeoNovus to become major bitcoin miner?
http://www.stockhouse.com/bullboards/messagedetail.aspx?p=0&m=32437815&l=0&r=0&s=LTV&t=LIST

I am surprised that AMD has not started their project yet, maybe samsung/nvidia already have something on going

I believe in 1-2 years time, ASIC miner will be everywhere, current silent is just temporary

What you do is whine at a high level!
My GPU-Rig with 2.4GH/s makes today much, much more profit than in 2012 or 2011 when the BTC price was at $3 or even $10! It's now $840/month or $28/day!
So what's the problem?
Or is it all of a sudden no hobby anymore for you?

I agree though, that a 2-4GH/s ASIC for $ 200-400 is missing on the market for hobby miners!
Except BFL offers him again!

That's why i'm switching to litecoin for now. I don't feel comfortable relying on these custom hardware operations. Way too much scamming and delays even after a product exists. Hopefully litecoin can stay in the GPU realm. I trust AMD way more than the rest. I'm positioned well with a 7970 anyways.

I feel like the only way to get affordable ASICs is for a company to make ASIC mining chips with the intent to sell singles, or small batches.  Preferably 2 or more of these companies.

 I totally feel the OP n this.The big will get bigger while the small  will go smaller, which will harm the btc in long term.I dont think Avalon team likes the centralisation of the descentralisation it has become but its not their fault.I hope btc will not reflect modern society where rich get richer and middle class cease to exist.We need  afordable asics, not very expensive ones that only few can get.
Why do you think the other alt coins had/have such a huge success lately? I dont think Satoshi ever wanted a monopolised/centralised btc

Competition would be great, but the only thing I see driving the price down is the market being flooded with ASICS. BFL releasing in the numbers they have promised should accomplish this. If you want to see a $1299 60gh/s miner, one of three things has to happen.

• Bitcoin exchange rate drops to around $10/Coin
• ASICs cause difficulty to surpass 700 million, yet exchange rate is stagnant
• New honest ASIC developer is willing to gamble on increasing BTC prices and offers BTC preorders to fund development

With the amount of new scams popping up every day, I seriously doubt the last one is going to happen. The real dilemma we have here is that we've already funded Avalon and BFL development with large amounts of preorder money. Now that both companies have a working or close to working product, what is their incentive to sell you a device that pays for itself in 2-3 days? Even if there is competition in the market, BFL and Avalon can make at least 20x as much just mining with the equipment they build.

Of course, if BFL can really push out 400 devices a day, they would quickly run out of DC space, so they have the highest potential of actually selling devices for profit. And in that event, at current exchange rates, I would expect BFL devices to at least double in price once more. If BFL does keep their price at 2x original, I don't expect to see another consumer batch from Avalon any time soon.

6 months. Not a full year. Please don't spread misinformation.

With that said, I agree with your criticism that we need more competition. Beside Avalon and BFL, we have ASICMINER, and the "100TH-mine" company (you can buy shares, see business plan and thread). Disclosure: I am long on 100TH-mine.

If the ASIC miner is too concentrate, the bitcoin will be ruined. That's why Avalon sell their products. At the same time, as bitcoin value is increasing, I believe more and more players will join the development of ASIC miner.
Therefore, I don't worry about current situation. It will soon be changed if the bitcoin value keeps increase.

Today is would be more profiable not to sell your asic
I don't understand why the Avalon are selling product
They should just start minning  and refund every one(customers) there money
about 3 days of mining and they have paid off there hardware cost and then make a large profit

Even if there is competition that pops up everyone will dismiss them as scams and not order. Only thing you can really do now and be sure you'll get a product is make your own chip.

Hopefully KNCMiner is legit

We definitely need more ASIC companies.

With the amount of money they could make just by selling the machines, I'm sure there will soon be no shortage.

Less people mining due to hardware availability. When the GPUS die out everyone mining bitcoin will depend on extremely limited amount of units to mine on. That can't be good compared to the GPU days when you could get a card instantly. Also in many cases people already had the hardware to mine so it easily attracted newcomers. Bottom line is that BTC is becoming more centralized with each tech leap.

How so? The same number of coins will be minted each day, whatever the total has rate or hardware used

Ok so at this time let's just say ASICs form 50% of the network. If the 25-30 TH/s of GPU/FPGA users leave, in a few weeks they will be happily replaced by the 2nd wave of ASICMINER and 2nd wave of Avalon users. The price won't collapse as the same amount of BTC are generated each day. The amount of BTC changing hands on the exchanges are not affected by the 3600 coins minted each day. The network won't be any less secure than it was pre-ASIC. Nothing would change.

You just need to mine LTC instead. BTC is gonna get ruined with all this custom hardware and it's limited availability.

Yep, but as the ASICs hit the market, probably the GPU minin will not be profitable.

Actually, that is false. The majority of the network as it stands right now (over 60 TH) is still comprised of GPUs and FPGAs. Avalon has only 19-20 TH in the wild and ASICMiner only has online about 7 TH at this time. Of course, this is subject to grow in the next weeks, but still, that only accounts for ~26-27 TH of the entire network. Unless there are some ghost ASICs hashing away in a hidden Illuminati bunker, most of the network is still made up of old tech. The recent growth spurt the network went through (and I'm talking about the last couple of weeks) is due to the price going to insane heights and luring in more GPU miners from the general public.

Too bad that only Avalon delivers while other ASIC companies bombed or failed. It's bad enough that someone is selling their Avalon pre-order on eBay and has 0 feedback at all. It seems to be motivated by greed after all. GPU/FPGA mining has become obsolete or just mining other cryptocurrencies.

GPU/FPGA miners have already become the minority with regards to hashing throughput. Sure, I don't have actual numbers, but we're around 60 TH/s at the moment compared to ~20 TH/s a few months ago. Even if the remaining GPU/FPGA miners leave, it would have a minimal affect on BTC. It does concern me though that mining has gone from a hobbyist project to a concentrated business so quickly. More, cheaper mining devices would help push this off a bit.

You might want to mention that the complete lack of ASIC competition is bad for the market in general.

If ASICs become rare, then a limited number of individuals/companies will dominate the bitcoin mining market, and the vast majority of GPU/FPGA miners will see their margins plunge.  If bitcoin doesn't give them profits they might switch to litecoin instead, causing a fundamental destabalization of the bitcoin economy and an untold shift in the proportional confidence of the two currencies.

But there's no use just sitting here bitching about it.  The time to act on this is yesterday. It might be a good idea to circulate a public petition to Microchip manufacturers (using change.org or some other service) to demonstrate the real market need/interest for these devices

The more patientence we have, The less bitcoins we earn, you should know that~!
If more ASIC's come out later, Whats the good is it if Mr.Avalon has 10 avalons. It'd be like buying a GPU all over again, Except it only mines coins
But atleast then we'd have SOMETHING... 

In other words, If you know what your doing, Start building and selling ASIC's PLEASE!, It'll be a great way for you to have a Turn Key operation once it's setup, And everyone will love you

In multiple threads I've been expressing the need for a smaller cheaper device. We don't anymore $1000-15000 devices, we need more sub-$1000 devices. GPU mining took off because you could drop $150 at a local shop on a HD 5830 and bam, you're making $20-30/month. What happened to that? Avalon pricing is ridiculous, bASIC imploded, BFL has little incentive to deliver on a schedule(they already have your money), and scammers are having a field day.

So, Butterfly labs, But im actually an investor? Doesnt sound too bad

What if you could just buy shares of a little-known public company that was possibly gearing up to become a major bitcoin miner? 

Mining is now a 250M$/year market.

Just be patient, there will be a lot of competition. I'm actually afraid that my Avalon investment will be eroded by this.

So as it stands, correct me anywhere I am wrong, The ASIC market is Compleatley Monopolised and Dominated by Avalon, Why do i say this? BFL has no fucking product, They are almost a YEAR behind schedual! Just go and look when they originally started taking "pre orders" and thier first few updates!

If Avalon increases prices, thier is nobody out there to stand up and say "Thats overpriced!, I can get one for cheaper!/Its not worth that much!" Fact is, You cant get an ASIC from BFL/bASIC, the bitcoin community is going to split between Rich fuckers with avalons, And measly free engery GPU miners.

Why? Because we dont have $15k to drop on mining hardware, We need a MUCH more entry level price!!, We will Never be able to save up $15,000 for an ASIC if saving for a GPU takes us a month!
At the rate its going, by the time BFL delivers, Everyone with an avalon will have made thier money back and will be able to afford another avalon, OR just buy Every Fucking BFL order!
Making it EVEN HARDER for the little guys to get an ASIC

Us small miners have No Choice when it comes to "i want an ASIC" and that needs to be fixed!
BFL Has no fucking PRODUCT, They have SHIT customer service, They conned thousands of people into Investing in thier company, Have a Con Artist on thier Lead Staff, Keep pushing back the shipping dates, and frankley they are Assholes!

WE NEED ASIC COMPETITION!!!
One of the big issues is the rising difficulty due to the ASIC's that are already being sold.
We cant simply "wait for a competitor to appear eventually" because by then something like a cheap entry level 5gh that everyone wants will be as effective as 50mh/s