Bitcoin Forum

What is your opinion about ASIC miners?

It's a blessing for those who already got them. Especially if you got it before the peak in April.

A curse if you have ordered them and still haven't got them. Especially for those who have ordered at BFL!
Even worse, when over time 90% are in hands of ASIC miners like BFL, Avalon, ASICMINER and others

....imho

What do you guys think? Please share your thoughts.

I expect the value of litecoin to rise and a lot more activity in the altcoins as more and more of these are pumped out and GPU miners flock away from BTC

No the value will crash.

All the GPU miners will move to litecoin and other alt coins when they can't mine bitcoins anymore.

The litecoin difficulty will shoot up. GPU miners will be desperate to pay for the miners they built for mining bitcoins but they will find their are no buyers. Supply will be greater than demand and as everyone will be mining but no one will be buying. Price will crash. Altcoins will die.

most altcoins are get rich quick projects

I think the future of bitcoin is largely in the hands of the ASIC manufacturers. If they keep most of the ASICs for themselves, they may end up controlling a significant chunk (maybe even most) of the bitcoin network once the remaining GPU miners have left. We would then have a situation where the network's computing power (and most of the newly mined bitcoins) are concentrated between a relatively small number of ASIC manufacturers. If that happens, I could see it crashing the value of bitcoin, but it could be good for the scrypt-based alt coins.

Yeah I agree, it's going to be hard to stay up to date with mining equipment.  Looks like there is enough money in it that the larger players soak up all the hardware before it gets to us.

It will come to the point where the most people won't be able to make a profit to mine , hence the interest will leave btc, price will drop and stay down, hype might take some interest in alt coins for awhile but won't last long. Greed will kill bitcoin where it will be something that's still there, but hard to profit. Diff will stay up and keep going up due to pre orders and people hoping that btc will skyrocket so pay for their minin g equipment but that's just wishful thinking

Bitcoins aren't about making profit from mining. Mining has always been a difficult, low-margin way to make money. Some people will be able to make and make money on it. It doesn't matter who it is, as long as someone does it. People aren't going to lose interest in bitcoin just because mining isn't the easy money that they expected. Just like after the gold rush, gold didn't lose its value because gold ming wasn't easy anymore.

Exactly!!! Those big fishes will swallow up everything and leave us small tiny leftovers....

Even with the higher bitcoin price now, I get far less I used to.
I used to get more a few years ago with graphic cards than with the bunch of usb erupter sticks now.
Thank you BFL, Avalon and others for not delivering! Leaving me with just a bunch expensive usb sticks  :P

They are neither a blessing nor curse, they just are.

Dude this is what I was going to say!

Blessing for those that have them.
Curse for those that don't.

The current situation is no longer social nor democratic nor in the best interests of the internet community.

I would think we are fostering an oligarchy here. Their only worry would be a shift away from double(SHA-256).

they're a curse, damnit

just like AOL was a curse back in the 90s

Those that think mining is the main part of bitcoin are missing the larger picture.

If it causes all the GPUs to drop out then it'll at least decrease the amount of electricity spent on mining because ASICs are much more energy efficient.

I welcome the ASICs to the bitcoin market. (Yes I have some already).

As I experience, people are rushing to buy any ASICs to get their hands on without carefully considering the price and circumstances.

I believe, once AVALON and BFL finished shipping, 50GHs will be today's 300Mhs.

As for buying 300Mhs for 2 BTC.....FACEPALM :D

They are going for more than that. There's going to be some serious butthurt people around, left scratching their head what went wrong.

Mining with them in a few months will be pointless. My prediction is they will start pointing them at another SHA256 coin(s). Question is what ones? (And take advantage of it now.)

+1

BTC is now a reserve for a rich elite. ASICs have isolated BTC production just like a central bank.

These projects can only survive if they have a broad support base and rewards are distributed. BTC will die and LTC will rise to take its place

Until LTC difficulty rises too much and everyone moves onto something else.