why do people say asics secure a network like bitcoins better

[jdh015232]

wouldnt a network like bitcoin be way more secure being mined by 50 million cpus/gpus/differant people, and no matter what asics are never going to be as popular/readily available as cpus/gpus and asics are ALWAYS going to be destroying the decentralization of these networks. once you have the asics and if you get them early, you are now at such a distinct advantage it is statistically impossible for anyone else to catch up to those lucky few. and so in reality changing the equation to have some kind of variance disallowing asic development would be a way better endgame than all this asic scam/wastedtime/people like ghash.io who could now just buy 50 more bitfurys and own bitcoins network AT ANY TIME THEY WANTED TO. NOBODY in this community thinks this should be a possibility and my friends, at this very moment it already is. the developers and community see the underlying issues.. i understand bitcoins network is NOW more secure because of asics, but if asics werent able to be developed than it actually wouldnt be, see what im saying?

power to the masses is how this was meant to be

[jdh015232]

i think we went wrong in our original asic development concepts in that-it all came down to being about profit, when in reality asic development we should be finding ways to make hashing/securing the network more EFFICIENT while keeping it in the hands of everybody. instead it became only about hashpower, and how much profit can i make NOW
bitcoin wasnt originally intended for any of this..it is intended to make transacting day to day easier and cheaper while keeping it decentralized and in the power of the people-open source
we are losing it i feel

[jeliman]

so it might be one of the few issues Satoshi didn´t foresee, or he(whatever he is) just simply owns (invested into) the butterfly labs ??

[crazyates]

Bitcoin ASICs are new. Look at how ASICMiner was able to grab 1/3 of the hashrate when they were new. Now imagine if someone had developed ASICs with malicious intent. It would have been easy to dwarf the network with a single data center of ASICs.

Now imagine you've still got those same 50 million people who are mining, but they're all using ASICs. The network is still decentralized, but they're all running 50TH/s each, rather than a few MH/s each. See how stronger the network is?

[jdh015232]

Bitcoin ASICs are new. Look at how ASICMiner was able to grab 1/3 of the hashrate when they were new. Now imagine if someone had developed ASICs with malicious intent. It would have been easy to dwarf the network with a single data center of ASICs.

Now imagine you've still got those same 50 million people who are mining, but they're all using ASICs. The network is still decentralized, but they're all running 50TH/s each, rather than a few MH/s each. See how stronger the network is?

yes the network is stronger=hashpower wise. but that is useless extra power..it is not needed with a network that is backed by being compeletely decentralized..in the hands of the majority. the way these coins work..the math behind it..the more people hashing the more random and harder it gets to hack/steal/double spend/whatever. so in theory, making a coin that is asic resistant or changing bitcoins mining algo is what is going to HAVE to happen in the future for elongated success, or else what you described will most likely happen at some point EVEN IF we think it cant now that we have asics.. and you think over time asics are gona end up being in peoples houses like gpus or cpus were when bitcoin first came out? their not, asics will never be as decentralized, everyday person isnt gona buy an asic. maybe in 20 years theyl have some material that makes computers 100 times faster and then theirs superasics or some shit...which is when what you say could happen, would. this path we are on isnt the best is all im saying when we could make them somewhat asic resistant to support the nature in how they were originally intended

[jdh015232]

The more decentralized-in the hands of more people- this network is- the stronger it gets. Because the chance of you hacking/double spending/ whatever decreases exponentially with the more people on the network,Not the more hash power the network has...or am I missing something?

[Jcw188]

To me it's better if mining hardware stays on the cheaper end because then more people can get it.  Even if it's not a lot of hashes.  When they're really expensive I feel like it's anti-BTC, like the rich just get richer because they can afford the good stuff.

[jeliman]

the real danger, I beleive, is the potential flactuation of miners.

There are tons of alternatives to mine now (and surely many to come) and people might simply switch to mining other currencies for profit and hence endanger the security of BTC....

[byronbb]

Could a situation arise where bitcoin holders might have to mine at as loss just to defend their bitcoins? Is this ever a possible outcome or would they just all panic sell? At this point bitcoin would be a depreciating asset.


edit

To continue to talk to myself, if people panic sold at such a juncture, the price would collapse and difficulty would follow....hmmmm

[jeliman]

what if it is happening right now for some?

The difficulty is spinnig out of control, so you either keep buying hardware or play lottery.

To mine just for sake of maintaing the network does not have to be necessarily bad thing.
It just means that you have a lot of believers who are ready to defend the idea itself.

The price will collapse in only few scenarios like:

51 %, sha cracked, US, EU bann etc. ..