Bitcoin Forum

Hi Admin, dont move this post to mining hardware, i'm not just talking about hardware.

i noticed that every miner r looking forward for the ASIC machine and worry about their GPUs.
why dont u worry about BTC itself?

when u join the BTC game, u must have asked urself a question
"Is BTC trustworthy"
the answer is yes because
1. BTC not base on the trust on any human even the creater but only math and logic.
2. anyone who wanna make a 50% attack to put many btc to his pocket will pay huge money and get nothing.
3. all miners r using same CPU or GPU made by INTEL or AMD, u'll never buy a 20% faster 5870 in any country, right?
so the game is fair and trustworthy.


but when we focus on ASIC machine
it's super faster than GPU and it's made by mom and pop store.
the guy who make ASIC machines is just a forum id
u dont know his real name, address or phone number, is he professional or just a liaer.
u dont know if any time bomb or bug in the machine
when many miners place orders for ASIC machine, some guy will have enough calculation power to make a 50% attack and dont need to pay a penny.

ok, let's back to the question
do u still think BTC is trustworthy when ASIC or other fast homemade machines join in the game?

Anyone is free to build something that would dominate the market, much like anyone with truckloads of cash can dominate a niche. It's the beauty of the free market.

i'm not talking about hardware or market
i'm thinking about BTC sys.
it was a perfect sys
but now......

maybe i should post it to Economy discussion?

What makes it less perfect now?

When everyone was mining on CPUs, those with more money were able to afford more CPUs than others,
when everyone was mining  on GPUs, those with more money were able to afford more GPUs than others,
when everyone will be mining on ASICs, those with more money will be able to afford more ASICs.

If you have a shitload of money to spend, you can go ahead and try to attack the network.
I don't see any big changes there.

i know of millions of people that buy gold and trade gold. but they dont mine it because its expensive to buy the machinery and too time consuming. they would rather continue with their regular day job and buy gold for other reasons, whether its for investing or for making things from.

bitcoin will be the same. hobbyists that gpu mine btc will start to either up their game and make it into a proper profession by buying / making their own bigger rigs or change their method of accumulating wealth.

much like gold miners had to upgrade from pan washing gold to using excavators and wash machines.. or they became gold merchants, trading mined gold which other people mined, for fiat currency and pocketing the profit margin in the middle.

bitcoin will be the same. you will notice more fiat exchanges pop up and other bitcoin related ventures. use this time to think up new avenues of income. EG google "drop shipping" and see if you can find legit products that you can sell for bitcoin without the hassle of packaging up the goods, as the supplier handles all that.

and if you truly want to help the economy and help increase future strengths of bitcoin. aim your plans at the outsiders.

try not to be a sheep making yet another gambling site that only those within the community will use, or another coin lending site only the community will use.all that will achieve is stirring the pot of cash within the same group of people. no wealth creation, just diluting wealth within the community.

and as for the identity of these secretive ASIC creators i think its now widely known that Sonny Vleisides and josh zerlan are behind BFL.. and their address.. you could probably find it..

but with that in mind about trust. do you know steve jobs or bill gates home address off the top of your head? yet people dealt with their companies without issue a few year back before they stepped off their CEO thrones for differing reasons.

i do agree that bitcoin businesses need to be transparent and honest as it creates alot of scepticism when they hide certain facts about themselves. and even now people are not 100% sure about BFL due to the vagueness of facts BFL decide to release. Which is totally understandable.

their PR does suck and i think aswell as miners having to up their game when asics come out, i think bitcoin businesses need to up their game too.

there are only a handfull of bitcoin businesses which i find great, and they are bitinstant, moneydealers, bitcoinstore bitpay. and strangely enough they are all linked together by certain people.

i think other businesses, oops i should say other hobby stores should learn from the legit businesses and up their game.

bitcoin is still growing, not dying. so look forward to change and roll with it.

It IS a perfect system, becourse there isn,t one ASIC hanging on the chain yet in amounts that could be dangerous for the system  and the system is now protected by the (mostly) GPU en FPGA rigs..

So as long as there is a lot of talking en theories about ASIC nothing happens ..look at some quotes from september/oktober 2012 lots of theories about the hashrate would (for sure) be 100th and al kind of predictions IF ASIC would hit the market...wel here we are today hashrate still between 20000 - 25000 GH vs 3000000 Diff BTC@ $19,- very good news en numbers for Gpu miners who now really building big stacks of coins even due to halving day its very profitable if you started building a farm 1 year ago, even 1/2 year ago...

So in theory IF ASIC keeps delaying this makes gpu and fpga farms ROI even better, also keeping out the new people finding out about BTC mininng who will not throw 10k in a new GPU rig at this moment..they just wait (good thing for miners with gpu/fpga) or pre-order some non proven devices becourse they think the now shit..maybe the ASIC guys run big GPU/FPGA farms or mining pools and waiting to ROI them by keep delaying the new ASIC..could make sense to me after al these Bulsh!t like bASIC, Avalon ( we will now very soon) and ofcourse BFL Labs.

Good luck the system will be safe, your pockets could get empty believing the wrong people...but he whats new about that...??   8) 8) 8)

thanks for reply, i'd like to discuss about it. if i'm wrong i'll be very happy.
u talked about gold.
but gold is different.
in the ancient time, people like gold just because it looks wonderful and rare and easy to store.
now we know it's really rare.
but if alchemy can change something to gold.
do u think gold it worthy?
just like ruby and sapphire.
several hundred years before, it was very expensive.
but how about now? why?
everyone like diamond, but any country has diamond reserve? why not?

as a virtual currency.
BTC must stand on the top of current technology.
since GPU is not the most efficient way to mine, it'll be kick off sooner or later.
ASIC is a good plan, if ASIC machine is made by TI and well tested for a year, that's great!
but homemade? it's a nightmare.

and...anyone can tell me why butterflylabs website is blocked by GFW?

The point is, ASICs are not a philosopher's stone to Bitcoin,
they are no secret alchemy that could change something to BTC by some math-magic.
ASICs are just better shovels, they work the same way as old shovels, they just dig deeper, bigger holes, because they're hydrauilic.

If you throw enough money on FPGAs, or GPUs and electricity, today, you can also try to attack the network (if that's your main concern),
it has always been possible with enough resources/enough money to spend, the thing is, that if you have that much resources/money, it's more profitable to be an "honest miner" than to attack the network (which doesn't make you any profit at all).

With ASICS nothing changes.

at the beginning i said anyone wanna make a 50% attack will pay huge money and get nothing, that's also what u r talking about.
but manufacture of ASIC has enough source but no need to pay anything.
because all machines just in his hand before shipping
can u imagine the mint join in the market directly?
who can supervise and control the manufacture of ASIC?
NONE!

ok, maybe u can say "i trust that guy" or all miner trust this guy.
then back to my first point
BTC sys not base on the trust on any human but math and logic.
even all miners and developers trust someone is not enough.

I don't get it.

If you don't trust that guy, don't give him any of your money.
If that guy already has your money and only want's to scam you anyway, why would he even bother creating a product and not just take your money and run?
If he doesn't run and actually creates a product that could make him more money, why would he bother attacking the network?

 

A 51% attack is happily doable with like 10 millions $ , cpu, or gpu, or fpga, or asic, or alien technology.

And no, asic will not kill btc, lol. Stop spreading this fud, stop this idiocy.

guys
i'm not talking about Avalon or bfl or any other ASIC machine

everyone in BTC area want BTC to be well known and accepted by the world.
but how?
before ASIC, we can say "everyone use same cpu or gpu and mining in a pool to get little btc and support the network working"
but now we must say "everyone is mining with a machine, well, the machine is made a guy well known in btc world, the guy made all machines and he doesn't play the game." hey, am i talking about pyramid schemes？

if ASIC kick all GPU out, the market will never be a free market, for a long time it'll be in a mass and controlled by several ASIC manufactures.

i know my idea is very hard to be accepted when btc price raising.
but if i'm right, u'll see the price drop down very soon when ASIC test report shown to public.



60G*300=18000G it's Avalon q1. and Q2 and bfl ASIC followed.
guys, do u know what's total hashrate of the whole network now?
when u say 51% not possible and need much money, use ur finger to make a calculation first.

Maybe now finally people will notice that bitcoin is not about mining. I'm tired of people that arrive on the forum hoping to become rich by mining with their computer. That is ridicolous.
This said, mining with ASIC is much easier than with a computer. You just buy a Jalapeno, few hundreds $ and done, you mine. No need to mess with drivers, clocks, cooling etcetc.

Oh and as i said, 51% attack cost like 10 millions $, now or with asic it's the same. And it's not a lot of money. Or do still someone here believe that a million $ is a lot? Lol

Your idea boils down to "someone rich can buy tons of asic" wich is nothing new. Now someone rich can buy tons of gpu

I suggest you get "What is Bitcoin?" video fixed, and all the other websites that say this is done, then. 

All these video and guides are from 2011, and yes they should be fixed. Today they are just misleading. Mining with your computer today don't even repay the electricity you use.

i'm not a newbie
what in ur mind was also in my mind
if u just see the title then reply and say it's a bullshit, forget this post or read through again.

i have explain all, no more reply for this post. :-X

just your arguments don't sum up, sorry.
Either you haven't understood how the Bitcoin technology and ecosystem works, or you are susceptible to fears and believes instead of rational arguments. The fact that you mention alchemy when it comes to gold mining seems to support the latter. Alchemy is no real possibility and never was. The things in science fiction movies (and in most mainstream movies anyway) are fictitious. No one can fly with warp speed, no one can hack into a computer just by saying "beep beep" into some phone, and likewise, there is no way some guy can make a homemade or even professionally made device which magically cheats and subverts the bitcoin protocol without anyone noticing it right away.

So your fear is generally ill guided. You should not be afraid about some hypothetical weakness of the system, rather you should be aware of individual people (your business partners) attempting to scam you. Even an ASIC producer could indeed be a scammer, but such an ASIC scammer would have to take substantial risks on his side too, so it boils down to risk assessment for individual business transactions. But the fact there are scammers doesn't allow you to deduce anything about the strength or weakness of the system as such.

The mining of bitcoins and the miners are part of an economic construction, not of an idealistic system. So it doesn't matter if mining "feels good" when you tell about it to outside people. What matters is only if mining fulfils its function within the system, and if this fulfilment of function is guaranteed an perpetuated by a technological and economic mechanism.

>50% of all BTC that will ever exist are already mined and on the market.
Even if a single person mines all the remaining coins (which is highly unlikely), it wouldn't turn Bitcoin into a pyramid scheme somehow

ASICs will kick GPUs out just the same way as GPUs kicked CPUs out, but that doesn't change the market.

It's not miners that drive the market, it's buyers and sellers, supply and demand.
The demand isn't changed in any way by miners at all, the supply more or less fixed, the number of coins mined per day/week is always the same, no matter if there's just 1 guy mining, or a million guys, no matter what hardware they use.

/Mining speculation/ ?

Just reading your title,,, ASICs are far from being "HOME" made.

Let suppose a person built a super ASIC mining cluster and have more than 50% of the network hash rate. This person have 2 choices:

1- Mine, secure the network, make $50 000 per day and be a hero.

2- Corrupt some transactions, make Bitcoin insecure for a couples of days or weeks until the developers change the hashing algorithm, loose money because of the electricity and hardware cost and be an asshole.

--The Miners

gold is wonderful because it can be used for jewelry, decoration, in electronic devices and many other things. it also has a limited supply. hence why its the 'big thing' in investments
you cant do as much with rubys and sapphires as you can do with gold. so yes in ancient times pretty things meant alot more to the rich then today, multifunction of limited resource matters more these days, take gold and platinum for instance.
diamonds can be man made... need i say more
i agree home made is a nightmare. but going back to the gold analogy once gold miners dropped their pickaxes and wash bowls and started to convert cheap second hand farm machinery into makeshift mining machinery the 'game' increased. yes it was a nightmare but it kickstarted a new industry and then came the professional machines. gold miners use to buy a pickaxe for under £50 now they spend a few hundred thousand on professional machinery.
with bitcoin what you will find is that those that do not have ASICS will start diversifying their business plans. to either not mine at all and start producing products to aid others mining, and profit from product sales. offer services to change the mined coins into native currencies for the miners, or create other wonderful businesses/services. creating new industries revolving around bitcoin.

back hundreds of years ago only the kings metalsmiths were the only ones able and skilled to do anything with the gold once it was mined. now anyone can do anything with it. take samsung for instance. they invest alot of time and money into getting gold for their components. and solar panel company's are currently right now seeking out alot of silver to ensure adequate supply to make solar panels. but you would never imagine them to be gold miners or investors as that is not their niche. but they are part of the gold//silver industry.

i will say bitcoin is not a commodity. it is a asset. so using a gold analogy has its limits. as bitcoin only has one purpose a store of value. (you cannot make jewellery out of a bitcoin).

although the program to generate coins is called a miner, i have always felt that satoshi's paper was a work of art and that using gold mining analogies was a failed comparison due to its limits in comparisons. if only miners were called vectors or designers or something more related to the art, people would not be seeing bitcoin as a commodity purely on its gold references everyone uses, but as its true representation, an asset.

so lets take an asset that cannot be used for any other purpose but to view, admire and store value... ART:
paint brush companies, canvas companies, art galleries, auction houses, art schools, and many other 'rich' businesses have succeeded in increasing wealth without themselves putting paint to paper to create the asset themselves. bitcoin will be the same. it will change the game.. not kill it.

The introduction of ASICs may cause issues with the distribution of reward blocks and control over the networks though it is unlikely.  Sure there will be winners and losers but long term it has to happen.  If ASICs are slowly added to the network until they make a majority of the network, more of the coins will go back into the economy then now.  The reason for this is that some percentage (maybe 10%-25%) of the network hashrate comes from botnets.  The owners of these botnets probably do not care much for bitcoin (though I could be wrong!) and just want the cash.  The reason is that they have not invested in the hardware or the electricity that does their mining. 

Once ASICs control the network, botnets will be out of the picture.  It is unlikley that an ASIC controller is going to get compromised, and if so not for long.   The hands getting the reward blocks will probably be friendlier to the bitcoin economy. 

I agree with OP. ASICs means centralization, which is opposite to BTC "definition".

hey, it's me
i said i wont reply, but i ate my tongue.  ;D

because i realize i made a mistake.
i post this issue and speak in a Chinese way.
that means i just lift a corner of the mask, the rest need u to think more in that way.
if u work in a Chinese company
sometimes u'll get a strange question from ur boss
but remember, no strange question from boss, never
he must wanna say something else, u need to think more for that strange question.
it's a funny game, only smarter can survive. u'll like it.

to agree with me or not is not important, the market is the final judge.
if i'm right, BTC will drop and LTC will rise
when btc drop to $10, i'll back to this post.
good luck, everyone.

If there is just one company making ASICs then it is centralization.  But with multiple players in the market it is not unlike the GPU market.  With CPU's AMD is the primary supplier, but there are other was such as FPGA.

If Avalon and BFL both make asics the situation is not that different.  There may be other players in the market soon as well. 

What is stopping someone from making an ASIC for litecoin?

Furthermore, your claims that there will just be a few big players in ASIC manufacturing are already happening with GPUs. How many GPU manufacturers are there? Two. And really only one of them is used for bitcoin mining (AMD). Does bitcoin still work? Yes.