How will ASICs affect alt-coin mining profitability?

[sinner]

There are no ASICs for alt-coins (yet), but how will ASICs affect alt-coin GPU mining profitability?

numbers from dustcoin: ( dustcoin.com )

Bitcoin    SHA-256    N    237730    11187257    25    1.00000000    11193250    100.00%    0    0    $0.00
Litecoin    scrypt    N    358552    558.121    50    0.02355834    422344    94.44%    0    0    $0.00
Namecoin    SHA-256    Y    112506    2470852    50    0.00699024    39322    6.33%    0    0    +$0.00
PPCoin    SHA-256    N    49600    355726    409.43    0.00156887    29860    80.80%    0    0    $0.00

will the alt coin ratio vs BTC always tend to 100%?  If it does, then ASICs will make alt-coin mining unprofitable.

we can already see it is less profitable to mine pretty much every alt--you're better off mining bitcoin then trading.

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[crazyates]

There are no ASICs for alt-coins (yet), but how will ASICs affect alt-coin GPU mining profitability?

numbers from dustcoin: ( dustcoin.com )

Bitcoin    SHA-256    N    237730    11187257    25    1.00000000    11193250    100.00%    0    0    $0.00
Litecoin    scrypt    N    358552    558.121    50    0.02355834    422344    94.44%    0    0    $0.00
Namecoin    SHA-256    Y    112506    2470852    50    0.00699024    39322    6.33%    0    0    +$0.00
PPCoin    SHA-256    N    49600    355726    409.43    0.00156887    29860    80.80%    0    0    $0.00

will the alt coin ratio vs BTC always tend to 100%?  If it does, then ASICs will make alt-coin mining unprofitable.

we can already see it is less profitable to mine pretty much every alt--you're better off mining bitcoin then trading.

LTC has been more profitable than BTC for quite a while now, but I don't think that can be sustained when hundreds of people switch their GPUs from BTC to LTC. I don't expect it to go back to the 150% of BTC that it was at.

[sinner]

LTC has been more profitable than BTC for quite a while now, but I don't think that can be sustained when hundreds of people switch their GPUs from BTC to LTC. I don't expect it to go back to the 150% of BTC that it was at.

LTC mining is not more profitable than BTC now.

[crazyates]

LTC has been more profitable than BTC for quite a while now, but I don't think that can be sustained when hundreds of people switch their GPUs from BTC to LTC. I don't expect it to go back to the 150% of BTC that it was at.

LTC mining is not more profitable than BTC now.

None of the alt-coins are, atm.

[bcpokey]

Mincoin    scrypt    71322    0.722    2    0.001030010    mcxNOW    138.71%
Worldcoin Worldcoin    scrypt    74611    2.50674314    32    0.000190150    mcxNOW    118.00%
DigitalCoin DigitalCoin    scrypt    34530    1.683    20    0.000195500    Cryptsy    112.94%
BitBar BitBar    scrypt    8878    11.101    0.172421    0.140000000    Bter.com    105.71%
Terracoin Terracoin    SHA-256    134717    25063.342011809647    20    0.002620000    Bter.com    101.64%

All more profitable than bitcoin atm.

Now there's huge swings so doubtful that any of them will be long term winners. That aside, ASICs will definitely drive tons of GPU miners to alt-coins and drop their profitability significantly. Will it tend towards 100%? No, of course not. It is only tending that way due to GPUs being the majority of both networks. When GPUs are the exclusive domain of alt-coins (scrypt based at least) there will most likely be a push towards a ratio which makes alt-coin mining slightly profitable over electricity cost, as was bitcoin, on the semi-useful / new coin chains.

I would be more intersted to see if all the new coin nonsense that we see now will continue after ASICs dominate bitcoin, GPU miners sell off their rigs, and there is less people interested in network hopping and speculating in alts.

[bb999]

To the extent that ASIC miners can be switched between different coin mining operations (litecoin vs. bitcoin, etc) without hardware modifications profitability should become fairly stable between the various currencies as miners switch to whichever is the most profitable and drive down the profitability in that sector.