Bitcoin Forum

Please forgive me if this has already been posted.Since I am interested in discussing the potential effect on BTC price and not the chips themselves I thought this would be the appropriate forum.

So the question I have for the community is what effect short term and long term do you see this having on BTC price.

My thought are thus (please bear with my parameters for short Mid and long term I am just using those time frames for this thread)

1.Short term(1-5 days to account for SEPA transfers and other slower fiat transactions) rise with people grabbing BTC quick to be one of the first to order.(we may already be  seeing those effects)

2.Mid term (6-14 days)rise caused by

A.community confidence on rise with price breaking $100,which may be in no small part do to hypothesis 1.

B.community confidence in future of more widely available ASIC products,which  hopefully mean a more secure network(unless of course some non-benign entity buys the vast majority and puts them to a nefarious purpose

3.Longer Term(14 days - 6 months)rise-

A.at approx 3 month mark hopefully we will see the first products roll out based on these chips and DIYers will have their rigs on the network thus driving up difficulty.

B.Cheap and available mining solutions will be available-meaning more people can get into mining thus increasing interest in BTC

C.BFL will probably still not have delivered and even if they have their ridiculous prices will have most people cancelling thus putting this entire 1 year confidence draining fiasco into the footnotes of BTC history.


Now of course I know that the Avalon chip offering will only be one of many variables exerting themselves on the BTC market but I am just curious what the rest of you think of its effects(if any) on the future of this thing called BTC so much of us have vested ourselves in.

None.

Really?You do not think the largest ASIC chip distribution in the history of Bitcoin so far will have an effect on the price?Short term or long term?I assume you are just trolling then.people have been been clomaring for asics and now this will open the floodgates to widely available ASICS form a number of manufacturers(or at least thats my hope).

Nope. No effect.

Mining difficulty is not correlated with Bitcoin price.

In the very short term it might drop a few bucks and in the long term it will add to the security of bitcoin thus potentially increasing its price more through potential scalability than anything else. These may be already priced in though. Very little change even if it is not.

I understand that mining difficulty does not correlate with price.However do you believe that having widely available standalone mining units will make mining more accessible to the masses.This  hopefully will result in more users and higher demand.The resulting increase in hash rate should make the network more secure,this plus the increased user base should make bitcoin a more attractive market for businesses.This is all hypothetical of course but I feel they are valid and that this offering will have a significant impact on bitcoin.But hey thats just one persons opinion.

People generally use btc then mine, not the other way.

No, if anything ASICs make mining less accessable due to the increased initial hardware costs. GPU mining was much better 'for the masses'.

ASICS will be 'for the masses' soon enough as well.

Wrong.  It is a fact that difficulty and price are correlated.  However, difficulty is not a major causative factor in price.

My thinking exactly.GPU mining was not that available to the "masses".Yes plenty of tech savvy folk had rigs that could be used for mining at varying degrees of difficulty,but most GPU miners had a better thean avergae tech level and tweaked their GPUs extensively.Now I am thinking more of the people I talk to at work or while hangin out who are interested in Bitcoin and wouldnt hesitate to throw a few bucks at a plug and play miner.I personally could see cheap(100 USD or less )miners being cool gifts for some of my friends.I could see 1-2Gh miners going for less then 100 by Sep/Oct.Now I know the network difficulty will be way higher then but it will till get people vested in the community.But hey if our coins hit 1000 USD then they will still be a reasonable investment IMO.Just my two bitcents.

On the contrary, they are strongly correlated.
What I think you mean is that difficulty does not affect the price, but instead price determines the profitability of mining, and in that way drives difficulty.