Are ASICS the death of alternate SHA-256-based cryptocurrencies?

[Radacoin]

With a couple of Avalons (65 ghash/s each) one could easily launch a 51% attack on smaller coins like Freicoin, no?

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[markm]

Or one could make shitloads of all the merged mined coins.

They have been waiting for ASICs for a long time, in the meantime people have been stockpiling them, some were even practical to mine with CPUs for months at a time so lots of small players are looking forward to being able to buy ASICs to strengthen their "sleeper" / "below the radar" hoards.

-MarkM-

[chriswen]

This means that for new currencies power will be concentrated to the people who have the ASICS.

[markm]

Which is why everyone eagerly awaits consumer ASICs, ones you can order for immediate shipping. Right now ASICs are still custom speciality items you have to order several months or a year in advance and still might not ever even get.

When people can order them from bitcoinstore / newegg type sites for immediate delivery hopefully things will even out more. Especially if big miners continue to leave all the merged mined coins on the table for the small miners to pick up at low difficulty.

-MarkM-

[crazy_rabbit]

I for one welcome our new ASIC SHA-256 Overlords!

In all seriousness, the ones to fear are the ones without ASICs.

Ie: Botnets.

Otherwise, in the meantime no one has been waiting a whole year on an ASIC pre-order just to finally get the machine in the mail and mess up some puny alt-coin. Botnet's are already clear and present dangers. The faster you get your hashrate up, the better.