Bitcoin Forum

I was wondering if the ASIC miners will destroy bitcoin my making it flow more freely? Anybody have any thoughts on this?


<adding one of my replies to my OP so it can be more descriptive>
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it will definitely speed up the process, but im curious as to how much? i mean, it wont destroy them, as the difficulty should skyrocket to proportions that would make it hard for even low end asic machines. remember, there are more than just bitcoins. lite coins and terra coins are like silver and copper as bitcoin is to gold if you were to relate them to something more real world. namecoins will always be useful for some, and im sure there are others out there that will slowly dwindle away and fade. but those 4 are from what i believe after 3-4 years of watching all of this go by, and am now confident to say those are the four to mine. im more curiouse as to what asics will do to those other three, seeing as asic is for bitcoin only... or am i wrong?

The network will continue to adjust itself, and blocks will continue to be solved (on average) every 10 minutes... for now, and until the end of time.  ASICs do not change this.

At this time, ASICs have only been developed for sha256 double hash, which Bitcoin uses.  Litecoin uses scrypt, so current ASICs won't work.  Litecoin won't see ASICs until there is much broader adoption and higher competition.

So long as Bitcoins are used for something, they cannot be destroyed. The fact that there is a 21 million limit on Bitcoins makes it inconceivable that they could be destroyed. Sure they might drop in value but I do not suspect by much. There is continual demand for Bitcoin as it has become a widely used international means of exchange, and it's growing every day. I used to trade penny stocks and they would run up high with nothing going for them, and with over 200 million shares issued, that would still be considered a very low amount. Google's stock trades at nearly $799.87 (last price) and they have 267.71 MILLION shares floating out there, with 329.66 million "outstanding." Do the math. Bitcoin could go VERY high. This could just be the beginning.

No

ASICS will save the environment since efficiency would be higher! I dream that one day only ASICS will mine
all the currencies :)

don't think so

asics out btc price up

yes

no of cource not, just make it more rare

ASICs would destroy bitcoin, only if their ownership was highly concentrated. Given that there are many initiatives to distribute them among bitcoiners, ASICs will rather make the network more robust.

ASICs won't destroy anything. Hash rates and difficulty will rise and that's all about it. GPU mining has to go just like CPU mining has gone already unless you've got free electricity.

My fear is that ASICs will out mine everyone, giving only a select few, with the capital to afford asics, the ability to mine. Since there is no government forcing people to use bit-coins unlike EUR, USD, etc..., as they become more rare people wont waste there time because unlike the USD they have other options. Then BTC will drop for another Coin and thus will begin the cycle of crypts-currencies. Once they are no longer able to be mined, why waste time? Due to the difficulty of BTC, i rarely try to mine anymore and with ASICs in the picture I will not at all unless i can pony up to get one. I have moved to other coins in hopes that I can ride them up before the difficulty gets too great.

To me one of the beautiful things about crypto-currency is that through decentralization, if someone controlled too much of it, it will just be sold off by everyone else because whats the point in dealing with a currency that only a few people control, and you don't have to because no government is backing or forcing you to use it.  But using this premise will asics bring the beginning of the end?

I guess my fear is that due to fast over mining, will the cryptos just cycle in and out, BTC then LTC then PPC then TRC then etc... making them not appealing to the massses, allowing for a centralized version to step in, defeating the entire purpose of the cryptos in the first place?

This is just something I have been pondering and really wanted to get some input from others. Should have been more descriptive in my OP.

Naturally with ASICS coming out, scrypt based coins will be the only ones available to the common masses. I wouldn't say that ASICS would destroy the bitcoin, rather just make it so that only a small amount of people will be generating bitcoins because the difficulty will be so high. I think that there might be a dip in price because ASICS will be pumping out coins, but once the difficulty is raised to a certain point and the flow of bitcoins trickles down, the price will steadily rise again.

Mining btc with anything but asics? yes.
Kill the currency? no.

the amount of coins are limited, so it's just a matter of time since all are found.
at first the rate may go down a bit, but will recover...

I think ASIC can't destroy bitcoin, but it will change all market, mining with GPU will be no profitable

>I guess my fear is that due to fast over mining, will the cryptos just cycle in and out

There is no overmining. The reward is constant at 3600 BTC per day since Dec-2012 until the next split in ~4 years.

Scrypt based ASICs will also appear some day. Litecoin is too weak now, not worth to spend a few million $ on such a project.

Asics won't destroy bitcoin but will be a part of bitcoins evolution and maturing network. I believe everyone who wants to, will be able to take part in the asic era. Currently the demand for asic mining machines is higher than what is available on the market which drives up prices for machines and even pre-orders, but that will change when other companies build asic mining machines and don't forget that people in this community are also working on a DIY (Do It Yourself) asic mining machine.

ASICs themselves cannot destroy Bitcoin. Though I believe that it will however have a big impact on the community.

The small student miner will in the future no longer be able to mine profit out of BTC, due to the large competition from bigger miners who got ASICs.


I personally like Litecoin more due to the fact that there aren't ASICs for it, but in the future this might change for Litecoin as well... Who knows.

ASICs won't destroy bitcoin at all. It will cost more to mine but that's about it.

Personally, I don't think it really makes sense to build / buy something that will essentially 'kill' regular mining. Was BitCoin even designed for coins to be mined by specialist hardware?!? People buying ASIC's are wasting their money IMO. It wont be long before mining difficultly outweighs the use of an ASIC -- whilst completely killing regular rig mining.

I too and curious as too what'll happen once butterfly labs delivers, my only worry is without GPU miners there wont be as much traded by people who don't have ASIC turning it into a "boys club"

This.

Partially yes, for "farmers". Because difficulty will boost up and mining with "farms" will be unprofitable. On the other side, I think, bitcoin's rate can rise up, cause it some kind of exclusive for ASIC-users.

I actually contacted BFL and asked if I could mine TRC with their asics since TRC is sha256 and they said they will only support bitcoins.  But technically anything that uses SHA256 can be mined with the asic.  It was a cryptic reply from BFL support.

Valid point.

But hybrid engines are already existing and they making so tiny effect to cars' market... so comparing this to subject is uncorrect. Btw, they don't making cars ride slower or heavier.

I agree. Script cryptocoins are the only alternative to this ASIC horror. More of that any SHA cryptocoin may be exploded by a couple of ASIC miners. So the only future is script.

I want to order one! 50Ghz Single SC!

That is exactly what i am afraid of and then due ot the inherent nature of bit-coin it falls.

ASICs won't destroy bitcoin.  It will only be profitable for those that own it right now.  As more ASICs come online  the profit margin on mining will collapse even for ASIC owners.  In a year's time I expect that more Bitcoin miners will be using ASICs and ASIC units will cost about $1500 per 50GH/s.  It will still allow the average joe to get in but they will have to buy an ASIC to participate.  That might dissuade the newbie from getting in.  Especially when the margins will be thin.  Instead the average joe will be better off daytrading bitcoins against other cryptocurrencies and against the fiats.  As miners jump from currency to currency trying to anticipate the next one that has a lower difficulty increase traders can try to trade ahead of the miners.

The same number of Bitcoins will be mined no matter what the technology is.  Who gets them is all that might change.  The higher the hash rate the harder it is to mount an attack against the block chain itself.  So ASIC and all future increased capability will strengthen it.  Just look at how things changed when we went from CPU to GPU and GPU to FPGA.  It strengthened the network.

It strengthen the network in the past but CPU to GPU was an easy transition for most miners because the hardware was easily accessible.  ASICs are not easily accessible.  There are only 2 maybe 3 producers and they are slowly deploying them to their clients.  As a result early adopters capture the majority of the coins mined.  They profit the most and have more capital to deploy the next round of technology (100Gh/s units???).  So the bigger get bigger and the small guys are just out of reach. 

My guess is that most casual miners will walk away, cash out what little in bitcoins they have or hoard them as an investment in hopes it appreciates.  Over the next year the ASICs will drop in price and fewer of them will come to market as they become less profitable to produce.  Look what happened to FPGA boards. How easy are they to get now vs 1 year ago.