Topic: What's best - SHA256 or Scrypt? - page 5. (Read 3936 times)

You can do a hard fork to do anything in the future. 
You could fork Bitcoin so the mining reward goes up to 50,000 BTC per block.
You could fork Bitcoin so that transactions are irreversible.
You could fork Bitcoin so early adopter coins which haven't been spent are erased.
You could fork Bitcoin so that the UN has complete oversight of address allocation and the ability to block transactions, seize funds, and identify users.

Technically these are trivial changes to the codebase.  However it is very likely 99.9999% of people will never use your fork.  It is unlikely that any crypto-currency will have a hard fork on a fundamental aspect.  You will never get the consensus necessary for it to be effective.

So can you do a hard fork then in the future to turn say a Scrypt coin into a SHA256 coin?  Thanks.

I'm certain Bitcoin will get its own ETF soon and if that happens its gonna blow the roof off alt coins.

The bankers will come in - big money, pro developers and then the ASIC buying craze will happen and everyone you know will be a miner.

I expect this to really kick in high gear sometime next year.  It's gonna happen very fast and furious.  Lots of alt coins will go very high very fast.  Lots of money to be made for anyone storing up alt coins now.

Bitcoin was just the beginning and that ETF will probably make Bitcoin's price blow past $1,000 and it will drag most of the other alt coins with it.

Cryptography not encryption.  Neither BTC or LTC use encryption in the protocol.  Both use AES to encrypt client files.

Cryptocurrencies will forever be a niche so long as they remain anonymous. But that is the very thing that created the niche

So either be good at being a niche, or fall on your face trying to become what they set out to combat.

Can't have it both ways

I didn't mean me or you reprogram an ASIC..  I meant you can design an ASIC from the ground up to do any one thing well.  If LTC gets to $50 and demand goes nuts they'll build Scrypt ASICS, but those will only do that one thing they were programmed to do and not also go after SHA256 coins.

That's what I meant.

Edit:

I see what you meant.  I thought I saw guys using BFL rigs to merge mine Bitcoin and one other coin on Bitminter.  I'd have to double check.  

I would be losing time and money as well. 

Don't you think merge mining will mitigate the difficulty issue cause I agree, the difficulty will skyrocket.

And I don't want a coin to be a forever niche player in the scrypt underworld - I'd rather take my chances.  And people aren't gonna lose their money on my coin - nobody buy a rig just for ixCoin, they buy them for mining and they mine the most profitable things out there.

So if this doesn't work out I'm really the only one losing out, both, Time and money.

But it seems everyone wants scrypt so that's it.  I guess there could always be a re-launch, like a separate coin if it ever comes to that.  I mean, I can easily see a SHA256 version of Litecoin.  People will follow the namebrand regardless of which encryption it uses. 

No they can't.  LOL.  The AS part of the name "Application specific " says it all. 

I hate to break it to you Vlad, but in a world of ASIC miners (Future-proofing you claim) at a time when you can purchase a 50 G Hash/s ASIC miner for $300, the difficulty will be so high on every decent SHA256 based coin, that you will still be looking at making pennies a day.  Meanwhile the guys sitting on their 500 T hash farms will continue to pile in the profits from mining.  The algorithm you choose isn't going to change this.

The reason scrypt is better for a start me up alt coin is the fact that it is far more secure, especially when most big miners will be in the big coins, and not in your little alt coin.  You will be bound to attract smaller GPU based miners first until you can prove the coin to be worth something.  During that time, anyone that wants to watch your coin crumble will be able to do it with relative ease with a handful of ASIC's at their disposal.  Or possibly even 1.  

For you, sure you think "who cares, I didn't but any money into it" but in order to even get the coin off the ground, people (miners) need to put their money (electricity and time) into mining you coin.  Then people have to put money into your coin to give it worth.  If you as a developer only see the coin as your personal playground, and who cares if I cause everyone to loose their money ect from it, you shouldn't be developing a coin to begin with.  

    

You can program an ASIC to do any one thing.  Right now they hunt Bitcoins but I think they can be fooled into merge mining other coins.

Ok I hear you but those people can mine SHA256 with their GPU rigs so they're not getting shut out and they'll be able to merge mine as well which can be huge once they launch a merge coin.

While if you go scrypt you are cutting out everyone who does buy and ASIC and that's gonna be millions of people.  An ASIC can be had now for $300 and by next year it will be cheaper and better (And available) so many more new entrants will buy an ASIC rather than a computer or in addition to their computer.

I don't see how excluding the future - millions of ASIC miners from your coin can be good for that Coin's value.  I think this is shortsighted mentality thinking only about what I can mine for myself right now rather than what's best for me for the longer run.

how do you figure?

No, you can buy a 5GH ASIC miner from BFL right now for $300.  And 5GH is 15 Times faster than a similarly priced ATI Radeon 7870 while consuming 50 watts compared to closer to 200 watts.  

Only problem now is they're taking about 3-4 months to ship if you order today but by next year they will definitely be doing much higher production.  The slow hard part is over - they spent the last 12 months designing the ASIC.  Now it's shipping in volumes.

And there's other ASICS companies coming online and like all tech, imagine ASIC 2.0 and 3.0, they will get much faster and much more efficient while getting cheaper.

Anyone thinking they'll make any money with GPU's by next year is nuts.  

And this is part of what will bring in the masses - cheap and effective ASICS costing 1/8th the price of a good computer like the one I bought for mining.

That's why I think SHA256 is the way to go cause you'll be able to mine and get your coin mined via a merged pool or a mergeCoin along with 10+ other coins.  Cause at that point there won't be any money left in mining 1 coin so people will find ways to mine more and more coins together but if your coin is scrypt it won't be invited to the party so scrypt coins will be fringe coins and that's a very bad thing for valuation. You want a coins as mainstream as possible.  

Satoshi wasn't a fool - SHA256 is the way to go for the future.

This thread makes me wonder if there really is a surplus of idiots in the world. "What's best, chocolate or strawberry?"..

Just stop you absolute moron.

It's not about CPU vs. GPU vs. ASIC vs. ??

Are people really so fucking clueless that they don't understand that with value comes innovation. If SCRYPT would have been the algorithm to become "mainstream" first we would already have optimized SCRYPT ASIC. It's all about the market driving research and innovation.

FUCK people are just dumb.

In 1 year there will (if the altcoin muppetry keeps up) be SCRYPT miners and some moron will ask " what's best: SCRYPT OR "next algorithm without a turn key game changer""

Fucking humans!

Except you haven't a clue as to how to do this and are relying on polls to find answers rather than actually working on researching this yourself. You are the laziest and probably least competent person to ever try making a shitclone. But kudos for trying to come up with super original ideas like "paying myself 1%" and such, I am positive this will be a keeper.

ASICs are a problem because it costs a lot of money to sustain a GPU mining farm (enough to somewhat offset the profits made from them), whereas it does not cost a lot of money to sustain an ASIC farm. The problem is 99% of the people who spend these coins do not have the time or patience to create an ASIC operation in their garage. By consolidating the creation process you are only alienating people who wish to support it without having to deal with a company like Butterfly Labs. I think everyone can agree that AMD is a respectable company that is not out to scam people. ASIC providers? Not so much

GPUs have other uses besides mining, bitcoin ASICS do not. This allows people who are interested in computer hardware but do not know about cryptocoins (aka, huge amount of people) to be able to discover and enter the foray out of their own interest, not because a bunch of short-sighted shysters found a way to create a temporary separation of power that forced people to conform to their ways or get out.

considering we are talking about a currency that is all about having built in mechanisms to counteract possible exploitation, ASICs certainly spit right in the face of that.

AsimMiner USB miners are down to what?  1BTC or so?  That's plenty under $300 ... Jalapenos are also $274, and about the only thing shipping en masse atm.

EDIT: I may be redefining "en masse" here, but these two are the only things shipping more than a few atm that I know of. >_>

In my opinion most upstart coins will be obsolete in a few years ... SHA256 for ASICS doesn't equal longevity.  Bitcoin already exists, so unless you are bringing something revolutionary to the table, it will be hard to see a lot of potential in it.  LiteCoin will probably keep its spot in second because it is the first/most used scrypt implementation.  Merge-coins may survive a while because they are mergeable [is that a word?], but they often don't have much value, and aren't traded for anything but bitcoins, adding little to nothing to the value of just mining bitcoin.

Most altcoins are miner driven coins, and scrypt mining is often more profitable than BTC mining, so I think that a coin is often most profitable in scrypt.  Otherwise they aren't very popular at all.

EDIT: Profitability is most important to most miners, and longevity has little or nothing to do with what they care about.  It doesn't matter to most miners if TRC or PPC or LTC or DGC goes bust in a year, they are profitable this second, so miners jump to the most profitable one.

ASIC's will be $300.00?  

I thought they were thousands...

I'm hoping to start an alt coin but I want to do something very different.  I want to design it as much as possible with the advantages and preferences going to the miners since nobody has put them first, from what I can tell.  

I'm running these polls to find out what people want and what they care about most.

Odd, some want Cherry Coke and think Justin Bieber is a hot lady.  Weird group of individuals but I still wanna put out a coin to their liking.