I have essentially no experience with hardware design but I gather you could make a custom sha256 ASIC for under $500K.  If that's the case, I estimate it would take less than $1M to dominate the bitcoin network's hashing power.  If I was working for a government agency trying to disrupt bitcoin, I would start there.

On the other hand, the way the MtGOX hackers drove the USD exchange rate to approximately zero did seem extremely inefficient, and a perfect way to discredit bitcoin as a secure store of value.

I am a little curious about this currency? Why have you opted to make it GPU 'hostile'? What do you mean by this? I'm a little lost as I'm used to mining with GPU for everything else.Can GPU mining work but with limitations or is it all blocked from GPU? How can Tenebrix tell if CPU/APU/GPU/FPGA is used to mine it rather than being CPU mined like intended? Theoretically some guy can just point his GPU to a named worker set to mine this currency?

So, how much would I be at a disadvantages with my Widnows 7 Intel machine?

@ripper234, “bitcoin silver” is a funny analogy I don't quite get. It's not fundamentally any different than bitcoin in any way. Scrypt vs sha256, short rounds, and a larger monetary base... that's all cosmetic. The last two are literally one-line changes, with very little practical effect. It's still bitcoin protocol, bitcoin scripting language, bitcoin generating curve, and a hash-derived proof of work. It's bitcoin through-and-through, except for a choice of hash function that makes it resistant to parallel implementation.

And why? Because a few people on this forum didn't like that parallel sha256 made mining unprofitable for those without means? Please don't forget that the role of the miner is to provide security to the network, not to make you rich. Those hoards of GPU, FPGA/ASIC mining rigs provide security far, far better than any CPU-based system could. That time traveller attack? It still exists in bitcoin, but thanks to parallel miners, exploiting it would set you back millions of $$. With these new CPU-friendly, security-hostile *coins, any reasonable botnet operator will be able to herd more hashing capacity than the entire legitimate network, far into the foreseeable future.

“Tenebrix/Fairbrix/Litecoin: Bitcoin, minus the security!”

I only have 1 solid question !

Will CPU mining be optimized for Intel Proc. in Windows ?

3 new ones have been working with us (and seem very trustworthy/reputable), but whether or not they will be up at hour 1 or not we won't know. They certainly *WANT* to be up at the release. There is also 2? I think currently working exchanges which should be able to seamlessly migrate to SC2.0 .

One of the newer requirements for exchanges if they want our support (which is essentially linking to them and telling our users that they are ok) is a very clear indication of WHO they are. We want to avoid this anonymous exchange situation so that people have more security.

SC2 has no central authority, a word of advice if you see the name Lolcust/artforz/bitcoinexpress/sac posting anything regarding SolidCoin you can be clear there is a motive other than the truth. If you want to continue to believe lies then I guess you're one of "them"

SC2.0 isn't vulnerable to the 51% attacks bitcoin is, so if Bitcoin is attacked in the near future and loses all it's wealth what will people be saying then about the lack of changes? The average person doesn't care about the pools/gavin/etc bickering about which changes to take and which to not. They simply expect one thing, that their BTC will be there tomorrow. And they cannot rely on that, it is why I think the bitcoin price has dropped recently.

There is more education getting out there on how much work needs to go into BTC and it isn't being done. I've seen the same thing prior to starting SolidCoin with no one caring about the problems I raised. So I developed the solution, unlike most people I have the luxury of the skillset and the time to do it.

Some of it could be applied, sure, but certainly not all of it. Bitcoin is secured by hashing power. This is a joke that needs to be eliminated. I've spent too much time thinking how to get away from how bitcoin works, so no offense, but I'm not spending any effort on trying to figure out how to hack the encoin idea in.

PERSONAL VIEWS:

Namecoin: mined during subsidized periods, ridiculed during patsy only periods.  Made some BTC.
Ixcoin: Jumped on a bit late, but still made a few BTC.
i0coin: Jumped on early, made some BTC.  Still have some.
Solidcoin: Jumped in and out early, made some BTC.
Tenebrix: Jumped in fairly early, made a relative ton of BTC.  Still mining it until Litecoin shows up.
Fairbrix: Have a small amount of coin, not mining until an exchange shows up to allow me to make some BTC.
GeistgGeld: Still have a few.  Got in early, made some BTC.

I think you see a pattern here.  So far the approach of adopting *every* chain that comes along early (with the possible exception of Fairbrix) has been very lucrative compared to doing nothing.   The longer you wait to speculate (whether through mining or investment) the higher your risk and lower your reward, as it is with all pyramids.

It's getting a bit more difficult to choose now that multiple chains are being announced simultaneously.  But so far hopping on the freshest one has been an overwhelmingly winning strategy.

If you like giant countdown timers :- http://solidcoin.info/

Monday 10th October 23:35 UTC

Also of note, 3 wannabe hackers from this forum claimed they would take down the SolidCoin 2 public beta and none have. Welcome to the future of cryptocurrencies, a truly secure network.

Amm ... why yes?
There are numerous reasons I think LiteCoin is good, the release schedule being one of them.
As for SolidCoin, a thread of an IRC chat between Gavin and Coinhunter showed me that I should have no dealings with SolidCoin.

OTOH, it's released w/o source code, which will make the analysis much harder.

how many needy children do you have?

SC is dead before it launched.  It has too many drawbacks.

Now, the first alt currency I like and will probably speculate long on is "litecoin."  It's like bitcoin, but using a CPU friendly algorithm.  And without a ridiculous premine amount.  It's intended to be the silver to bitcoin's gold and IMO it's the first alt chain with a shot of making it.

As far as impact?  Short term positive, long term neutral.  To speculate on the various shitcoins people need to buy up bitcoins.  Those 2000 bitcoins up on the bid on btce are not in circulation, so every alt chain to come along is a slight, imperceptible boost to bitcoin price.

At least until that chain collapses.

LiteCoin (not launched yet) seems to be very promising. Here is my take on it.

I wonder if someone could compile this package for Windows i5 & i7 users ?