Bitcoin Forum

When the scrypt ASICs come out what would be best mining alternative for someone who can't afford to upgrade?

Please don't say stop mining  :)

My best guess is to keep mining altcoins. There will always be a currency out there which has no asics mining!

I moved away from litecoin a while ago and have been mining alts ever since, converting to ltc/btc but keeping alt coins as well.

Try ones which are CPU specific
Quark
Dimecoin

Ive also done earthcoin, dogecoin

Vertcoin

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=404364.0


 ;)

I like Quarkcoin and I'm mining it with a basic laptop: 1 quark a day  :)
Earthcoin and Dogecoin are not so bad neither.

Are you sure? I tried that on a intel i7 with 12 threads and got 1 Mh/s and 0.04 QRK/day?? I would need 23 of those CPU to get 1 QRK/day, or have I missed something? What I can see the reward for QRK is extremly low.

When Scrypt ASICs come out, it'll be time to switch to another algorithm. Make them hardware manufacturers play perpetual catch up..

To be honest, I don't quite get this anti-ASIC sentiment. I tried to mine LTC on my PC and it wasn't worth it, and there are even no scrypt ASICs yet. I think this "no ASIC so normal people with their own PCs can mine" philosophy works only in the early stages of the scrypt-coin, after the difficulty raises it isn't worth it, when you don't have free electricity.

Today, I would need at least one rig with 3 graphics cards to mine litecoins for example, but this thing would be noisy and consumes a lot of electricity, so I basically can't put it in my apartment. I would much prefer to be able to buy dedicated scrypt ASIC and mine with it. It will be more eco-friendly and will not be mis-using graphics cards.

To sum it up, I don't support this proposal, I want the scrypt-asics to be sold.

you got a long till any asics come out, buy a gpu.

The problem with asics(my opinion of it atleast) Is that once the asics go online the difficulty goes to the point were noone can profit unless they have an asic.  The result is the asic manufactures control the supply and use their products against the system (by mining themselves) and gouge everyone to get in, I hope that it will stabilize eventually, but asic manufactures are gaming everyone.

Ok, I mostly agree with what you are saying. My only reservation is, that what you are describing here, is already (to a large degree) valid for litecoin as well. You need to assemble for-mining-only hardware (rig with graphics cards), otherwise you can't profit from mining (and you also have hard time to compete with those who have got free electricity). The crux of the problem is still there, and it isn't any cheaper (or easier) to build scrypt-rig, comparing to buy ASIC.

ASICs aren't available everywhere. You can buy a GPU pretty much anywhere on the planet but ASICs tend to only be available where they are made i.e. China and where there is a lot of demand i.e. Western countries. In other parts of the planet there isn't enough demand to justify shipping them there and importing stuff isn't something that ordinary people can do anyway - there are a lot of hoops that you have to jump through such as dealing with  overzealous customs officers. Another problem with ASICs is that to buy them you need crypto. That rules out those places where buying crypto isn't easy (which is why you are looking at mining in the first place).

TLDR: GPUs are democratic, ASICs are elitist.

If you look at the ASICs coming out,  they are not radically faster than GPUs at scrypt mining.  They are more efficient in terms of power draw,  but GPU computing is going to be far from obsolete.  Look at the prices/Mhash of Alpha-Ts asics for example,  it is like $2000/5mhash,  and they project their product being shipped in the fall.  Gridseed is priced similarly.   I'd say GPUs are at least 1+ years of from being obsolete. 

scrypt asics can't be made fast enough.  from easyquest's litecoin thread today:

Litecoin, the largest scryptcoin, is currently vulnerable to a 51% attack with enough hashes.  we need a lot of asics to secure the scrypt currencies, or a lot of value will be lost.  we need GPU, ASIC, anything to shore up these coins.  

You do realize unknown is pretty much everyone who solo mines or does not report as a "big pool," right?  There's no way in hell that'd ever be one person.

Anyhow, due to the memory intensive nature of scrypt, ASICS will come, but they won't be the night and day difference they were with bitcoin.  It's just not possible.

what i'm saying is the global hashrate of litecoin is small enough that a few groups could get together and attack the blockchain.  I'm not saying the attack is happening, i'm saying that it's possible.

Even if you think it's 'just not possible' for litecoin, it could happen to weaker scrypt coins, which is all of them.  the ASICS are required to protect litecoin (yes, litecoin!) and all the other altcoins.  

stop trolling , its not vulnerable at all.

so litecoin is too big to fail?

yes litecoin and bitcoin have the biggest networks.

I want scrypt asics to come out. People here bitching about not being able to make money is embarrassing. If all you care about is making money, then you are missing the whole point of cryptocurrencies. We need asics to increase the diff and secure the network. we need more efficient miners instead of power hungry GPUs.

Its evolution baby. 

No.  GPUs are for the masses, ASICs are for the rich few.  Keep scrypt in the hands of the people.

I completely agree that the fundamental purpose of crypo is not about profit, however without profitability there would be very few miners and that would entirely defeat the purpose of crypto.

Asic efficency vs "power hungry" gpus is moot.  Yes an asic will produce about 250 times the hashes for the same amount of electricity, however the bitcoin network is currently much larger than when gpus ran hard for sha-256 and is only a fraction of what it will be when all of the new asic hit the shelf. Not really an improvement, except that I can buy a gpu anywhere and asic's take control out of the community and put it at the manufactures.

There are also 'Scrypt Jane' based coins, with a changing N-factor. Scrypt ASICs aren't in the position to mine these coins, as they are going to be made for Scrypt based coins only.

I think that's why a coin like MicroCoin has potential, as those Scrypt ASICs won't rule that market.

the story will repeat, just more scrypt-jane will be released and we gpu user will move to that, or a completely new algo will be created...

You mean GPUs are for the poor. ASICs aren't that expensive. $10000 isn't expensive when you look at mining as a business and not as a get rich quick scheme.

The number of people I know that could risk $10k are very few.

Same here. But nothing ventured nothing gained. I saved up a lot to finally be able to buy asics. I run the risk of not getting ROI. The reason people want to keep GPU mining is because they can ROI in 3 -6 months. Most businesses in the world don't get anywhere near that, except for maybe selling drugs. Scrypt coins will never be excepted if the networks are secured by a ragtag of GPUs in someones basement. ASICs is what really boosted BTC. GPU mining is easy money but people shouldn't be upset that those days are coming to an end.

If it wasn't for mining, most people wont be here or care about cryptos. Well thats too bad, times are changing. Either get on the train, or just become a end user of the coins being produced.

I wouldn't hold my breath on Scrypt asic's being a problem for a long time... GPU mining will be profitable for quite a while.

already scrypt asics are ready
http://mall.diginforce.com/goods.php?id=39

Script ASICs will not dominate as they did in the sha256 community. The ASICs being developed are already 23nm. And a few are low cost. And the performance gain from them is nominal. They only scale through electrical power performance.

The thing is that I run a 120MHs GPU farm. I ran it for a year mining bitcoins until Avalon started shipping. They were saying GPU mining was dead for a year before that. Even if Ltc gets more difficult for GPU mining for a short time as price goes up it makes it profitable again.

2014 will bring huge changes to  AMD GPUs. So you will catch up quickly.

And GPU mining is not for the poor. GPU mining is a lower barrier of entry. Adding a GPU to a computer is about 200 to 600. Buying a script ASIC will cost at least 2 grand. For some one just getting in for the first time it is easy to get a GPU while buying an ASIC is a huge risk.

would you recommend someone start a gpu farm at this stage in the game?

Really? 300KH @ 60W? This isn't a step beyond GPU's... it's practically in the 50% +/- range of a top end GPU. R9/290X = 950KH~300W.

That's what people are trying to tell you - even with the 1st gen ASICs, they are not a quantum leap in efficiency above the top end GPUs. Remember, the GPUs most people are using these days are built on the same 28nm die size that the 3rd gen ASICs used for sha256 mining are/will be.

It'll be quite a while before the scrypt ASICs will represent the kind of hashing power that puts GPUs in the back seat again... and even the AMD's of the world could easily beat out this efficiency with a mining-only GPU which I've heard rumors they are considering.

Please quit spreading FUD.

Yes.  As I stated, I started mining on 2 GPUs 20 months ago when they said GPU mining was going to die in 3 months.  I switched to exclusive scrypt mining 10 months ago.  I do not plan to sell the farm as I plan to move it to scrypt-jane coins.  LTC was a red headed stepchild back then and was considered a joke.  Terracoin was considered the better coin.  When BTC was getting more difficult to mine that is when LTC started taking off.

I expect that scrypt-jane coins will be the next big wave.

its happening...Scrypt Asic baby yea!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=424987.0

I am very skeptical.  You know what they say, a fool and his money are soon parted.

skepticism is warranted, i'm not taking orders till they get here, so no one is getting burned by me.

not anymore!  so do you think doge too big to fail now?  


http://www.reddit.com/r/litecoinmining/comments/1vsd1g/dogecoin_just_overtook_litecoin_total_network/

i think from what we've seen in the last 3 days demonstrates that no scrypt coin is really immune to a possible attack, and would be vulnerable to a large influx of asic miners.  This includes Litecoin, which no longer has a bigger network than dogecoin. As many others have said in other threads distributed scrypt ASICs will be essential to maintain the security of these altcoins to prevent attacks.