Bitcoin Forum

When I read that Samsung was going into ASIC mining machines I had my doubts, but now the news are all over the place. Do you think that this will concentrate mining into fewer hands or it could possible make more accessible the purchase of ASIC mining equipment? Will it centralise or decentralise? What is going to be the community´s response?

Could this be the feared "Ethash ASIC"?

These are some news related to this topic, although they are quite non-specific as they say "machines to mine bitcoin or ethereum" which makes little sense.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/31/16954366/bitcoin-cryptocurrency-mining-asic-chips-samsung (https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/31/16954366/bitcoin-cryptocurrency-mining-asic-chips-samsung)
http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/01/technology/samsung-cryptocurrency-bitcoin-mining-chips/index.html (http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/01/technology/samsung-cryptocurrency-bitcoin-mining-chips/index.html)
https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/31/samsung-asic-cryptocurrency-mining-chip/ (https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/31/samsung-asic-cryptocurrency-mining-chip/)

I feel like this is the beginning of the most pitiful waste of human resources since WW2.

So many people will be able to buy these powerful miners, the difficulty and the price of Bitcoin may rise too.

whenever new companies enter mining, specially when these companies are in any other country than China, that is an excellent news for bitcoin mining scene because it has a lot of benefits:
1. it will create a competing environment among manufacturers which will then decreases the price of ASICs and also increases their efficiency as these companies try to compete with each other and do new innovations.
2. it will decentralize mining even more because the equipment is now cheaper and more accessible in other places of the world.


i seriously doubt that anybody is ever going to make an ethereum ASIC because of two things:
1. unlike bitcoin you are never sure about the future of ethereum. its price is too dependent on a lot of things such as ICOs which we saw getting banned!
2. unlike bitcoin the future of mining it is not certain either. they keep talking about switching to PoS and killing mining. so no manufacturer wants to waste their resources on that.

I heard about samsung trying to get into the mining world a few months ago. it is quite surprising even on some media to say that their smartphone gadgets can be used for mining. if indeed they seriously want to get into the miner's machine world I think samsung should make a different innovation in order not only to be a substitute

Production will grow, there will be more than a currency in the market, for certain will be more interested. Unambiguous plus to popularity crypto`s.

When Samsung is involved in the production of mining equipment, it is likely to be beneficial for miners. Because there will be strong competition between Bitman and Samsung that will cause the price of the equipment to fall and the beneficiary will be a miner. I think Samsung entering this market is very good because it will take away the dominance of Bitman.

in some sense, you're right, but let's keep things in perspective. money flowing into BTC represents money flowing out of other assets like fiat money and precious metals. brick-and-mortar banking and coin minting are extremely energy intensive, far more so than bitcoin mining.

there's also a question of what is "wasteful." a few months ago, there was a study that claimed the energy consumption of bitcoin mining was less than that of christmas lights in the US (https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/847484387298095104). which is more wasteful---bitcoin proof-of-work, or decorative christmas lights?

The first effect would be the competition between ASIC manufacturers.

With competition, the hardware prices might drop, creating a larger option for miners and in turn, more money pouring in for crypto. Also, a company as huge as Samsung would definitely get the heads turning over bitcoin's direction and might soon spark the interest of other companies to create a service around bitcoin. All in all it is a positive thing that the tech giant finally entered the crypto ecosystem.

It could also help decentralizing the hashing power that is currently concentrated heavily in China. The miners could be used to do some nefarious activities if the owners so do wish, see some Chinese mining farms rejecting transactions during the ATH rise.

i think the fear mongering around chinese hash power is misplaced. sure, chinese pools control a lot of hashpower, but if chinese government crackdown or censorship were a real issue at the pool level, that hashpower can just be pointed elsewhere. the hashpower distribution among pools =/= actual geographic distribution of hashpower. for example, i heard that a lot of chinese miners moved their farms outside the country after the rumors of government bans last year. but that hashpower is still probably pointed at chinese pools right now.

the real issue for me isn't geographic concentration of hashpower. it's bitmain, who backs several pools and has farms all around the world. the kind of monopolistic stranglehold they have over the market is hard to overcome. so i'm certainly glad to see samsung, GMO, halong and others entering the space. but it'll take some time to see if they can compete with bitmain.

I think its very positive news,
It simply shows that big tech companies see the potential in getting into crypto and of course increasing turnover and profit.

Recently, news surfaced BitMain made $4 billion in 2017.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3008366.msg30934312#msg30934312

That could give us 4 billion reasons why nvidia, samsung, russia and others have announced plans to produce mining hardware in the future.

Like Figment mentioned above, BitMain's monopolistic stranglehold is of concern. Greater decentralization and competition in mining markets could greatly benefit crypto and its userbase. If competition drives innovation causing silicon etching processes to reduce in size, it could also result in the creation of miners which consume decreased quantities of electricity while increasing hashpower rates on increasingly smaller die sizes.

They may very well make it a restricted edition only for professionals and further contribute to the centralisation of the crypto world. It could be dangerous.

I am afraid that is only part of the equation. The benfit of mining under competitive conditions is very low and only based on the coin rising in value. Normally, mining is not profitable for the home miner.

by now, that should just be assumed. to treat bitcoin mining as a business, you need industrial scale. home mining can usually only ROI based on speculation gains (i.e. holding the coins and selling them for a profit).

but i'd agree with Lock00Live that increased competition in ASIC manufacturing can only benefit miners---as long as they aren't ASIC manufacturers who could lose market share, like bitmain. everyone else, whether they mine professionally or casually, should benefit from competitively lower costs at retail. after all, bitmain has basically been the only game in town for years now.

I do not believe in the prospect of mass production of ASICS from Samsung. The more equipment will be included in the network the less profit they will bring to the owners. The cost of production of chips from this will not be less. Such equipment no one will buy because of the low profit margin.

There is a monopoly at hands when it comes to bitcoin mining ASIC and bitmain is ruling that with iron fist for a very long time ,killing its competition and controlling the price of the hardware and nearly doubling their profit by increasing the margin by a long way and with Samsung concentrating their efforts on creating good miners,it is going to be a healthy battle rather than one monopoly ruling the entire mining industry.

For me, mining is a business, a big kind o business since you would need machines. So I doubt that you will earn if you mine from one or two mining rigs, it should be atleast five to see the profit.

I am excited on how samsung will implement what they said and how they will compete to the market. Well atleast in places where samsung is only manufacturer of this rig will have the opportunity to buy their own hardware.

That’s a lie… Samsung getting into ASIC mining won’t cause Bitcoin to be centralized. It’s being done in other countries like China. If Samsung gets in, it will even make Bitcoin to be more decentralized that it is now.

And secondly, there won’t be anything like the Ethash ASIC cause of various reasons just as the guy who commented as number #4 said. So there is no reason for anyone to be afraid. Everything is alright.

Hopefully other chip makers will get in on the act. Would love to see what Intel and other can come up with. I find it hard to believe that they arn't thinking about it already - where there is potential profit, there are firms desperate to be part of the gold rush.

Them not being publicly open about their research fields doesn't mean they aren't thinking about it, or aleady working on it behind the scenes. In most cases they wait for one major entity to step up and get itself involved in a specific new market, where the others then with great interest watch and learn from the mistakes and obstacles the first mover (Samsung in this case) faces. The negative point of such approach is that if Samsung does happen to do everything right from the start, they with their first mover advantage will be able to outplay other tech giants with great ease. Samsung has the capacity to deliver in large volumes, which directly allows them to offer a lower unit price than their closest competitors, so it's going to be more than interesting when it comes to how Samsung is going to demolish Jihan's empire slowly but surely. What Banks felt when Bitcoin popped up, that same feeling has Jihan when Samsung popped up in his market field.

Interesting news. I see that already large companies willing to take at least some part of the crypto coins because they saw this perspective and of course benefit. I think that we will continue to hear this kind of news!

This news would certainly open uo the market for miners. This will not restrict them. And if the reports are correct, even their smartphones would mine. But after many years of advent of blockchain technology, the algorithms are getting tougher and tougher. When we talk about mining from smartphone, its of the collective power of many smartphones. Even the machines woukd now need to be highly efficient and cost effective. Unlike old devices, newer ones need to do more work by consuming lesser power which is going to be a challenge. And if a reputed company like samsung comes to this field them its going to be a nice competition for ASICS developer and manufacturers.