Topic: Will ASIC mining destroy Bitcoin? - page 2. (Read 43026 times)

Moores law man (kinda). At some point ASIC will become the "new" GPU and it will have to be upgraded or completely changed at some point. Will it destroy bitcoin? That was just a title to entice readers. It will only strengthen competition for miners which can only be good right?
And what can be wrong with strengthening the power of the miners? It will only make it more difficult for a 51% attack.

The ASICs don't do the actual transaction validation part, just the proof-of-work, which is unlikely to change ever (the only reason that's ever been put forward for it was an attack from a single big ASIC miner - but having ASICs available to the general community mostly prevents that). Even quantum computing doesn't break SHA256.

The one concern I have is that it makes it effectively impossible to fork the network for any protocol change that would alter mining, because >95% of hashing power will be these ASICs, and so it would be impossible to get a majority of the hashing power to switch.

This may be totally unfounded on my part, as I don't know how likely such a requirement is, but regardless I'll be getting out of BTC once these start shipping until the dust settles and price+difficulty stabilise

Even if ASICs are the main cause of GPUs being unprofitable, it doesn't justify making up FUD about ASICs harming Bitcoin.

My GPU's would still be (barely) profitable with 12.5 BTC as a reward if difficulty stays lower than 3,000,000, yes 3 million.
If yours aren't you are doing something wrong. ASIC will ruin GPU's. 25BTC a block shouldn't unless you are doing it wrong Mr. FUD Jr.
I don't get free electric either.

Then the Bitcoin community would need to approve of this change with a large majority choosing to switch. However, the only reason to do so would be if 1) the ASIC miner were compromising the security of Bitcoin (not going to happen with BFL distributing these diversely), or 2) big-investment GPU miners make up enough FUD to scare people (so their income isn't compromised). So far, most of the panic seems to be #2, though I don't see what the GPU miners really hope to accomplish considering the subsidy halving will make them unprofitable either way.

Good point. Similarly, I remember there was a alternate blockchain that was designed for cpu-mining only, but forgot its same.

Don't forget mining NMC and all the other SHA256 forks like DVC, IXC, IOC as well as BTC at the same time !

ASIC will probably be the best thing for BTC since sliced bread for the world !

Technically speaking, if one wants to be un-nice to the Bitcoin network, you could setup 3-addresses for a regular Bitcoin miner...

I doubt ASICs can be used for that.  EC Key generation is an entirely different beast.

Part of profitability is risk. If the market is assuming that Bitcoin mining is highly risky, the apparently profitability can be very high even if the total profitability is zero.

Of course, no-one knows how risky mining actually is.

There's a coming vanity key gen market brewing...

My understanding is that an FPGA could probably be reprogrammed and flashed to whatever.  However, an ASIC cannot and does one thing forever.

Just my little thought, since I cannot see it anywhere, and everyone seems so positive (or only concerned about 51% attacks).
Just think it this way: why do miners make money? Because they use differently, better hardware -GPU- that is priced (for them) low because the vast majority of its buyers value it much less, becayse they only need it to play fancy graphics.

If everyone can use ASIC and price is completely determined by its use in mining, is there one reason for why competition and prices shouldn't rise until the profitability is basically zero? Free market works like that.

hopefully one that hasnt been totally brutalized

If a really big player desired to dominate Bitcoin, ASIC may be the way to go. FPGA would not be competetive enough because they are already in the wild. Placing large buy orders would be too obvious and drive the price too high. Instead, they would be developing the latest technology for mining. I wonder how they would do that secretly, so as to alert others to compete?

OTOH, if someone wanted BTC bad enough, they would pay a little extra for electricity and use whatever technology they could get their hands on. Bottom line, I don't think any major players are even looking at Bitcoin. Makes no sense.

I also agree that ASIC will ultimately be good for Bitcoin too, I have serious reservations on both BFL's specs and timeline, but I do think it's going to happen, regardless of who is first.

I consider ASIC to be a great bitcoin development. Currently, if someone wants to mine, they must be extremely geeky. Even being moderately geeky isn't really good enough in the existing mining climate, since 'the edge' is so important to having a viable setup. Surprisingly few people can set up a computer from parts at all, let alone one that's good for mining.

If BFL (and their inevitable competitors) can nail their UX to the point where less-geeky and eventually totally normal people would consider buying and using an asic (and thus bitcoin), this could trigger the start of mainstream acceptance of bitcoin. Bitcoin is fairly well-proven on a technical level. The biggest problem facing bitcoin is a social one, and removing the high barrier to mining is (imo) a very big step toward getting wider interest in the system. If you could just plug something in and make money, you'd do it right?! The way it is now, people look at it and decide it's too complex, not for them. But if asic can simplify it... it'd be very cool. It's a big 'if', but I think asic suppliers will understand that if their UX is really great, they will sell a lot more (and a lot more to the less geeky types). Imagine if apple made a bitcoin asic... now let's see the existing asic mob actually do that.

Glad to hear that :-) We'll jump into ASICs as well :-)

As the most stopping factor was fear of algorithm changing...

We'll focus on tiny devices for mining and usable with p2p-pool (as with fpga it is quite difficult to upload tasks fast enough to them).

Of course, to bad that there is no other use for CPUs and GPUs besides mining that keeps the prices of that hardware at a decent level.