Asics may be just what Bitcoin needs to grow stronger.

[yrtrnc]

Once the asics start mining the hash rate will rocket, and with the introduction of low cost miners more and more people will be interested in mining. This will protect the currency from 51% attacks, it will almost be 100% safe. What do you think?

[aqrulesms]

Once the asics start mining the hash rate will rocket, and with the introduction of low cost miners more and more people will be interested in mining. This will protect the currency from 51% attacks, it will almost be 100% safe. What do you think?

The key word is LOW COST miners.

What's stopping large corporations from dumping a ton of money on easy to set up and easy to operate miners and using that to take over the network?

Meanwhile GPUs are much more difficult to use as a way to take the network due to their large power consumption and heat generation.  If you wanted to take 51% you would need to have complex cooling and circuitry and that would be difficult to devise.

All of that has been removed with low consumption ASICs.

[scrybe]

Once the asics start mining the hash rate will rocket, and with the introduction of low cost miners more and more people will be interested in mining. This will protect the currency from 51% attacks, it will almost be 100% safe. What do you think?

The key word is LOW COST miners.

What's stopping large corporations from dumping a ton of money on easy to set up and easy to operate miners and using that to take over the network?

Meanwhile GPUs are much more difficult to use as a way to take the network due to their large power consumption and heat generation.  If you wanted to take 51% you would need to have complex cooling and circuitry and that would be difficult to devise.

All of that has been removed with low consumption ASICs.

So Microsoft starts mining? That is the worry? If that happens someone will step up to compete. Within 6 months we would have a Google Miner or iMiner to balance things out.

Mining as a small business would be on limited time though, but the chances of a large company investing millions in mining equipment at this stage is hilarious. Let alone the billions that will be needed once a few ASIC generations are in the wild.

[yrtrnc]

Well ok, so what I meant was, it will make attacking the currency harder for the average person.

It will be better. The downside will be that profits will be split up and people will make less cash from mining.

[Frequency]

Well ok, so what I meant was, it will make attacking the currency harder for the average person.

It will be better. The downside will be that profits will be split up and people will make less cash from mining.

thinking in cash maybe yes, thinking in secure the network yes, but if 1 btc gets a $ price or whatever of $1000,-
all small bits makes mining worth again, maybe just buy btc en sell will makes money in the future....i think lots of miners will regred that they have sold btc for $ later.

[niko]

Lots of confusion regarding network strength, security, and >50% attacks. Things are simple: mining is currently worth 7200 coins per day. Soon it will be worth 3600 coins per day. Unless people are willing to mine at a loss, this is roughly what it takes to take over the network.

EDIT: honest miners expect ROI within some reasonable timeframe, say one year. Multiply 3600 coins by 365, and you get 1.3M coins. Anyone willing to invest that much into an efficient equipment will be able to disrupt the network. This will always be the case, regardless of hash rate, ASICs or any new technologies, etc. Simply, an attacker buys the same equipment honest miners are using, and start mining.

[Fjordbit]

I think it strengthens it because of the botnet issue. With profitable mining requiring special hardware by people who have an understanding of bitcoin, it reduces the chance that bitcoin can be overcome by pwned machines.

[bobitza]

I think it strengthens it because of the botnet issue. With profitable mining requiring special hardware by people who have an understanding of bitcoin, it reduces the chance that bitcoin can be overcome by pwned machines.

Good point!

The only "logical" attack would come from someone or an entity that wants to destroy Bitcoin not profit from it. That's because people will find out and stop trading or even worse, will lose complete faith in it and the value of the coins will plummet. The attacker just spent million of dollars to buy equipment to now mine a worthless cryptocurrency ...