ASIC's (and the wider network) as encryption crackers.

[TomHartburg]

CAUTION: Possible noob question ahead.

My technical understanding here is limited, so please forgive my ignorance if this is a stupid question.

As I understand it, bitcoin (and altcoin) mining involves cracking sha256 (or other) encryptions by brute force, does this not mean that a huge amount of effort is being poured into highly efficient brute force encryption crackers (ie ASIC's)?

Furthermore, and probably even less likely, is the network as a whole not just one big super efficient encryption cracker? Is there any way that it could be exploited to be used in this way?

Was satoshi a government op with an ingenious plan to make the crypto community undermine their own methods or should I just stop smoking so much pot and getting paranoid? (Joke, obviously gonna carry on)

[Lohoris]

No, and no.

[TomHartburg]

Cheers for your informative response bro. I'm glad you contributed.

[notlist3d]

CAUTION: Possible noob question ahead.
Was satoshi a government op with an ingenious plan to make the crypto community undermine their own methods or should I just stop smoking so much pot and getting paranoid? (Joke, obviously gonna carry on)

Lol good for a laugh.

[KSV]

No, and no.

wow, that was a pretty impressive response with as little words as possible.

+2

[androz]

not asic,
(maybe future quantum computer? )

[razorfishsl]

No, and no.

wow, that was a pretty impressive response with as little words as possible.

+2

Yep but the noob completely missed the point... and possibly the links....

[crazyates]

Unless someone hashes passwords with sha256d, which would be REALLY stupid, nope, ASICs cannot be used in that way.

Even still, ASICs used for bitcoin mining couldn't be used to find a password even if it was in SHA256d. IIRC, ASICs take the input variables, and internally increase the nonce range +1 and rehash until they're done, and then return the results. For a single Avalon or ASICMiner chip at about 300MH/s, this takes about 14 seconds. During those 14 seconds, you don't send any new data, the chip just hashes away. This design really doesn't work for password cracking.

[djtriggz]

Keep mining and if you wanna smoke pot get from silk road and pay in bitcoins.

- Head of Satoshi Government Brute force operation -