Bitcoin Forum

ASIC - is this just a pipedream of hope, or is it really coming this year?



Hi All,

  Starting in October 2012 I got very excited when I read that the very soon to be released ASIC Bitcoin Mining hardware would make FPGA Bitcoin Mining hardware fully obsolete, and that a new dawn would be ushered in where the first adopters would make some serious bitcoin very fast.

 But this same news gave me (as well as many others I suppose) severe pause when it came to investing in any FPGA mining hardware last October on the sole promise of pay up right then, and then hope and pray it comes to be!

I suppose I could have taken one company or the other at their word and just ordered the FPGA hardware then offered and hoped that they would later live up to their promise of trade in value later when the ASIC hardware came out but it all seemed fishy to me then, and still does to this very day.

 Not to mention where one company offered a seemingly finished product it seemed all too often it wasn't carefully assembled, nor very stable, not to mention not very reliable. Where as the other company offered what really was not even really a finished product at all, nor even recommendations and links where to obtain what could be termed their officially recommended missing parts needed to make a complete and safe product.

 Yet since October 2012 a full 5 months passed us all by and we are all 5 more months behind the Bitcoin curve and falling further behind every passing day!

 See, I really would like to mine Bitcoins. But I only want to mine them efficiently, and hopefully in an extremely timely manner, not to mention it be profitable. O, and safely too, lol.

 All I do know is that a couple of companies kept stating release dates that they couldn't back up, and kept taking orders ("pre-order" payments) for many hundreds if not thousands of units costing hundreds to thousands of dollars each! Gee, free money for months on end. Not nice!

 Yet the overall marketplace for ASIC hardware can't be unlimited, nor very large in the scheme of things. Heck it's got to be rather tiny in the very scheme of things when one computes how extremely efficient these ASIC units are said to be at creating the limited amount Bitcoins still able to be issued.

 Anyway, I read about the November release dates for ASIC hardware back in October. Then the delayed releases, many of them, one reason after another, all the way into December, then on to January 2013. Alas now at the end of January I am really wondering if this ASIC hardware will be forthcoming anytime soon! Or even in the next few years time! Or even if just maybe the doubters are correct and this was all a big scam, or scams, to fleece those maybe more than just a bit too trusting?

 I recall bumping into and haphazardly reading some article earlier today that was supposedly written by an engineer or whatever, stating that ASIC hardware is extremely expensive to develop and produce. Well after doing a quick search on that concept it appears that happens to be the case, unless I am missing something. Go ahead, google that concept yourself, because you may not like what you find.

 Yes, ASIC hardware would be a Bitcoin miners dream come true. But looking back I really wish all these hardware companies had learned about the phrases "loose lips sink ships" and "on a need to know basis only". Why? Because those just like myself would have eagerly rushed on out and taken the plunge into purchasing FPGA mining hardware last year! And I would have 5 months of mining done already! And also there by giving these same companies an always welcome cash flow infusion while they not look like a bunch of amateurs with mud all over their faces, or worse.

 No, I am not calling out anyone for any fraud, that doesn't make much sense, as they both started out ligit with FPGA mining hardware. Then again, I wasn't about to let someone play with my cash as they please for maybe months on end either, or forever for that matter! And all for only a promise that I would be in front of a long line of waiting customers, and I would get shipping rights ahead of most of those behind me. Of course by last October I would have barely made it into the 1st or 2nd round of orders as they put it so it didn't at all seem worth taking any chance by that time.

 So anyway, I feel for those out their funds and still waiting for refunds, or waiting for their line in the cue as these bumbling amateurs (or worse?) claim to, and finally do get their acts together.

My best guess is that ASIC hardware for bitcoins is years away, maybe many years away. Of course I could be very wrong.



 A few other words: Never, ever get into bed with any Communists.

 China is Communist just in case any of you didn't know! When the USA got in bed with China it was the beginning of the end of the USA.




ASIC - is this just a pipe dream, or is it really coming this year?

Best Wishes,

Slingshot

I'm concerned about this as well. I have around 2k$ USD to invest in asic mining equipment from a stock sale. However I'm concerned about investing in a FPGA device now that Avalon has (supposedly) shipped its ASIC units. I've been sitting and waiting. Right now none of the calculators I look at show me making any type of return with FPGA devices.

Well, considering the fact that the first ASIC miner just went online yesterday.... wait, why the hell am I even answering this racist drivel?

Someone needs to hit the history books. Please open to the chapter that includes information about operation paperclip. Oh wait there isn't such a chapter. The US is hardly the bastion of freedom and defender of fair play your goobermint wants you to believe.

ASIC arrived yesterday. Case closed.  ;D

China is about as communist as the USA is free-market oriented.