Bitcoin and ASIC dilemma

[e521]

Do you think the millions invested in ASIC technology will affect Bitcoin technology in the future?

Let's say tomorrow the dev team decide that SHA256 is not enough, and they want to implement a fantastic new algorithm
(take this for granted, it's Speculation after all) making ASIC a nice piece of bitcoin history.

What's going to happen? Probably BFL will ship everything in a week, but I mean, apart from that?

Do you think ASIC miners will ignore it and they will continue to mine on the original chain keeping bitcoin alive?
What's going to happen to the price?

Please no troll/offtopic, I really want to understand what people think about this 

[Frozenlock]

Related:

to what ?  scrypt ?    LTC already use that tech  

If for some reason that's what needed, sure, why not?

I don't think the Sha256 ASICs can be modified for Scrypt. They hold enough hashing power to ensure SHA 256 remains. Scrypt would be a hard fork which the ASIC users wont adopt. Most users will protect their investment at any cost.

That's the point. If the proof of work algorithm were to change, the SHA256 ASICs wouldn't hold any power.

This would be a hard fork, probably with temporarily two competing blockchain version.
But if the Bitcoin's survival depend on it, everyone with a vested interest will just switch to another proof of work algorithm
(Even if some miners don't like it.)

Furthermore, we would have a bunch of Litecoin miners that would gladly use their processing power to mine bitcoins.

Marvellous, isn't it?  

If by marvelous you mean blocks that take 100 times longer to complete until difficulty adjusts back to GPU level . . .   Which would take maybe 6 years, if we hit 2 Ph/s in in the next few months, which I bet we do.   Also, in a competition, how would GPU's ever out compete ASICS?

Do you guys even know how Bitcoin works?  

Ok, imagine that everyone is using gold as money.
There is a great overlord who owns most of the gold mines on earth. Most think his power is almost absolute.

Now everyone, for whatever reason, decide to switch to using silver instead of gold.
All the gold currently in the people's hands immediately turns into silver, but not what's still underground.
All those able to mine silver are quite happy to mine for something that is so valuable.

What is the power of the gold overlord? Nothing. He had power only as long as people were using gold.

Back to Bitcoin.
What is the power of SHA256 ASICs if the proof of work changes? Zit, nada, nothing!
They can't prevent a change in the proof of work.

In a hard fork, that's really not a problem to adjust the difficulty level to account for the now missing ASICs.

You seem to think that Bitcoin is now as it will always be.
Bitcoin has changed and will continue to do so in order to improve itself.

If a 2 min per block time is really needed, then Bitcoin can be changed for that.
Most of the alt-coins advocates don't seem to realize that for everyone invested in Bitcoin, it's in their own interest to improve it if needed.
Bitcoin could even end up as an identical copy of Litecoin if that was needed.

What would the advantage versus just moving to Litecoin?
Every bitcoiner could keep his "wealth" already in the blockchain.
Merchants can keep using the same software.
And every blockchain uses are still valid (such as proof of existence).

[Saint!]

I'm not exactely 100% on this but from my point of view SHA256 is the backbone of bitcoin.

If you were to take it away and use another it wouldn't be bitcoin anymore you'd just have a new Coin. So yes miners will continue to mine bitcoins because that's the accepted currency.

It would be the same as if another coin was created, essentially ASICs provide insurance that bitcoin is "the" go to coin. Since it has dedicated hardware built for it. ie they can't just flick over to a new coin and start mining that instead.

[BitcoinAshley]

The question is pointless because there is absolutely no reason for this to happen in the near to mid future.

SHA256 is secure. The amount of energy require to crack it, according to the principles of thermodynamics, is nearly impossible to fathom. We're talking entire stars worth of energy. "[...] brute force attacks against 256-bit keys will be infeasible until computers are built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space." This is, of course, assuming the mathematical principles leading up to this conclusion are sound, which have not been disproven as of yet.

Furthermore, the massive hashing power we have accumulated is one of the many things that contribute to Bitcoin having value. Please don't retort with a snarky smart-ass comment like "Actually, people wanting it is what gives it value." People want it for many reasons and one of the reasons is that the triple-entry distributed accounting ledger is secured by massive amounts of petaflaps or yodabops or whatever.

Suddenly switching to another algorithm that would make all this hashing power simply disappear... yeah I can see that happening.

It's a question with the relevance of "Hey guys, what would happen if the NSA kidnapped the core dev team and their families and forced them to release a hard fork giving NSA control of everyone's wallets? And then what would happen if reptile aliens kidnapped the NSA and made the NSA give THEM control of everyone's private keys?"

[dnaleor]

I'm not exactely 100% on this but from my point of view SHA256 is the backbone of bitcoin.

If you were to take it away and use another it wouldn't be bitcoin anymore you'd just have a new Coin. So yes miners will continue to mine bitcoins because that's the accepted currency.

It would be the same as if another coin was created, essentially ASICs provide insurance that bitcoin is "the" go to coin. Since it has dedicated hardware built for it. ie they can't just flick over to a new coin and start mining that instead.

this

even if the Dev team changes SHA256 to something else, the massive ammount of ASICs will make sure the original 'True BitCoin' will continue to exist AND have value.
I imagine a new forum: truebitcointalk.org and exchanges accepting them because there is a lot of liquidity...

[Qoheleth]

the dev team

Who?

decide that SHA256 is not enough, and they want to implement a fantastic new algorithm
(take this for granted, it's Speculation after all) making ASIC a nice piece of bitcoin history.

What's going to happen? Probably BFL will ship everything in a week, but I mean, apart from that?

Do you think ASIC miners will ignore it and they will continue to mine on the original chain keeping bitcoin alive?
What's going to happen to the price?

There would be a fork. "The dev team" - and by this I assume you mean the core bitcoin-qt developers - do not have some magic power to convince everyone that SHA256 is old and busted. There are perfectly good arguments against it, that have nothing to do with an individual's sunk costs - for instance, that right now it would take a year and tens of millions of dollars for an attacker to outvote the network (whereas, if we switched to a new proof of work, this would probably not be the case).

So, it's a True Fork. Each user who had bitcoins now has an equal number of SHA2-bitcoins, plus an equal number of Newhash-bitcoins. Users who think the old proof of work is safer will probably trade their Newhash-bitcoins for more SHA2-bitcoins, and those who favor the new proof of work will do the opposite. Exchanges will have to decide which to support (or, possibly, that they will support both). This will be accompanied by, at minimum, about a 50% drop in the value of each coin, weighted by which variant turns out to be more popular (for instance, if Newhash-coins are more popular than SHA2-coins, maybe Newhash-coins will be worth 2/3 of the old BTC price, and SHA2-coins will be worth 1/3) - there's only so much fiat in the system. Furthermore, the schism will probably make people more willing to move their wealth to altcoins - BTC's advantage as the original and best-supported will have been undermined, since neither Newhash-coins nor SHA2-coins can make an unambiguous claim to be "the" Bitcoin anymore.

[oleganza]

The question is pointless because there is absolutely no reason for this to happen in the near to mid future.

SHA256 is secure. The amount of energy require to crack it, according to the principles of thermodynamics, is nearly impossible to fathom. We're talking entire stars worth of energy. "[...] brute force attacks against 256-bit keys will be infeasible until computers are built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space." This is, of course, assuming the mathematical principles leading up to this conclusion are sound, which have not been disproven as of yet.

Your quote about 256-bit keys has nothing to do with hash functions. It was about AES encryption.

Double SHA256 used for mining and hashing transactions is safe and will be safe for a very long time. Collision attacks and first preimage attacks are irrelevant. Only interesting attack is a second preimage for a given transaction hash or pubkey hash. But then it is still very constrained as you don't want *any* data matching existing hash, but a particular key that you can use or a transaction with keys that you own.

Then, even if second preimage attack suddenly becomes feasible, we can switch to SHA3 in tx merkle trees and bitcoin addresses, but still keep double SHA256 as a proof-of-work. The difficulty simply will get bigger and that's it.

[mmitech]

OK guys we have to use a common sense, any technology that is good today could be outdated in few years, SHA256 is widely used for few years now, but this doesn't mean that it will be good forever, did you really think if Bitcoin still existed that we would use this technology till lets say 2050? ?

if Bitcoin will still exist and don't give me the Bitcoin will survive forever shit, all what it would take is a better idea the same as Bitcoin was to kill it, so if Bitcoin still exists and SHA256 would be outdated and a threat for its survival than developers could just discuss the implementation of a new encryption with a hard fork.

the only problem is that BTC is decentralized and making such a decision will be hard because there will be always people against it, just take the block size issue, minimum transactions...


I am afraid that Cryptos will die only because of people cant agree about the strategy and the goal of what the Coin has to do .

[SOSLOVE868]

If SHA256 being useless ,then all bank accounts are naked.....the world's finance system will be destroyed...

If you do not know what SHA256 it is , you should not write this topic.

[Crypt_Current]

OK guys we have to use a common sense, any technology that is good today could be outdated in few years, SHA256 is widely used for few years now, but this doesn't mean that it will be good forever

"common sense" is not a scientific term.  Personally I find life experiences oft resembling anything I've heard about "common sense" less and less, seemingly at a geometric rate wrt time.

[e521]

If SHA256 being useless ,then all bank accounts are naked.....the world's finance system will be destroyed...

If you do not know what SHA256 it is , you should not write this topic.

My topic is not about SHA256, you are not getting it.
This topic is about how and if the continuous investments (millions $?) from various actors could slow bitcoin technology and innovation, and how this can influence the price.
Do you think in 10 year we will still use SHA256 and the same technologies we use everyday? Sure!

To make it even simpler for you:
My dad is still using windows xp, this doesn't mean he knows how to use a computer, he only knows how to use windows xp.
Do you use windows xp as well?

[SOSLOVE868]

If SHA256 being useless ,then all bank accounts are naked.....the world's finance system will be destroyed...

If you do not know what SHA256 it is , you should not write this topic.

My topic is not about SHA256, you are not getting it.
This topic is about how and if the continuous investments (millions $?) from various actors could slow bitcoin technology and innovation, and how this can influence the price.
Do you think in 10 year we will still use SHA256 and the same technologies we use everyday? Sure!

To make it even simpler for you:
My dad is still using windows xp, this doesn't mean he knows how to use a computer, he only knows how to use windows xp.
Do you use windows xp as well?

Totally different concept , that in cryptology field are much much less innovated as what you stated ..
http://www.ridex.co.uk/cryptology/

[Frozenlock]

Do you use windows xp as well?

Do you use windows 8? 

[e521]

Do you use windows xp as well?

Do you use windows 8? 

I am actually on Dos, still using fiat 

[dnaleor]

Do you use windows xp as well?

Do you use windows 8? 

I am actually on Dos, still using fiat 

I'm using this computer:
and still using Gold and Silver coins

[e521]

Do you use windows xp as well?

Do you use windows 8? 

I am actually on Dos, still using fiat 

I'm using this computer:
and still using Gold and Silver coins

well, you see, that can still be used to count everything in decimal unit, we still use decimal unit