Bitcoin Forum

Share this around please. The Bitcoin network needs more strengthening!

Mine Bitcoin with ASICs Promo Video
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1i0loa/mine_bitcoin_with_asics_promo_video/ (http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1i0loa/mine_bitcoin_with_asics_promo_video/)

Asic's do not actually strengthen the netwerk.
The technology is available to ANYONE, that includes potential people with bad intents.
If someone wanted to kill the bitcoin network 2 months ago, he had to go buy a million graphics cards, motherboards to plug them in, and about enough powersupplies so you can use them as bricks for a special powersupply-skyscraper. If he would be able to work out a special deal with his local nuclear powerplant (which you can't just do all of a sudden), he would be able to power his army and fork that blockchain.

Now, all he has to do is go to BFL or another asic company and order a big bulk of asic's. They will probably be willing to give big price reductions. Power consumption of asics is much lower and you get more bang for your buck.
The asic technology doesn't secure the network. It just makes sure only the 'elite' who have enough money to buy a special device that can't act as a PC simultaniously are the only ones who can make a big impact.

But i don't disagree. People should be buying asics now, because the technology is out there and not using it would give those malicious people an advantage. In a way, bitcoin is forcing us to further feed it's hunger for higher Hashrate, and if we don't obey the hungry beast and give it it's cookies it's gonna get mad and explode. So far the notion of "bitcoin, freedom to the masses, democracy in it's purest form!"
This is why i think new evolutions in the field (like scrypt and the newest primecoin hashing system) are important and interesting.

Oh and my the way: the part about skyscrapers and nuclear powerplants consists of metaphorical images. If you start nagging about not providing exact figures, i'm going to internet-slap you trough my screen :p

Its unclear if that video conveyed any information whatsoever.  At least it may confuse people enough that they will further research bitcoin mining.

Actually, they do.


All someone would have needed to do 2 months ago... well more like 4 months ago, and going back 4 years... would have been to make a few ASICs.  Just a few!  Now an attacker would have to make many, many ASICs.


Exactly... now an attacker would have to order a 'big bulk' as you put it.  That's way up from the very small amount that were necessary before four months ago.  Furthermore, a botnet is no longer any kind of threat.

The actual point you have come closest to making is that the network is more vulnerable now than it will be in the future.  There is no know technology that can supplant ASICs anytime soon.  However, the cost to mount a 51% attack is HIGHER now than it EVER WAS.  And it is getting higher every day.  Now, would bitcoin be more secure if humans didn't have knowledge of ASICs, or if somehow the laws of nature prevented them from being?  Maybe.  But that is not the case.  In this world that we actually live in, the cost for a 51% would have been no higher than the cost of designing and manufacturing ASICs.  This was possible back in the CPU and GPU days and is still possible now.  Now an attacker would have to actually ramp up production to make enough chips, and by then end of this year the cost of that attack will be many $10's of millions of dollars.  And it will cost more than just the silicon, getting everything connected is expensive too.



I agree with this.  But the technology has essentially always been there.  Bitcoin mining ASICs are comparatively not too difficult to design, so an attacker could have made bitcoin ASICs three years ago if they had wanted.

Yeah, no. All he needs is a gun and a list of high-profile targets. Remove the doers and shakers, watch BTC plummet to cents and die an eternal lingering death.

No, not really.  The cost of a 51% attack is not just.... lets make all of the ASIC's we can and take the network.  The cost of a 51% attack is simply compromising two powerful miners such as the big self mining ASIC player and a large pool.  There are times when a 51% attack was even easier then it is now, but we have drifted to less security as ASIC companies have decided not to sell but to self mine. 

Right now a 51% attack would be harder against litecoin then against bitcoin. 

Compromising a large pool to take down the network would be quickly followed by every ASIC miner switching to an uncompromised pool or solo mining, further decentralising mining pools. This would be a very good thing. Your point about large ASIC companies self mining over selling is valid and disconcerting.