ASICS killing BTC ?

[fenican]

Seems that ASICS is have a detrimental impact on BTC.

(1) A huge amount of hashing power is now in the hands of companies that can stamp out one set of chips after another.  Few seem to make it to retail (i.e. BFL)

(2) Most of the former GPU miners, once a large support base for the coin, have lost interest due to the BFL fiasco and the fact Avalon shipped only a tiny number of retail devices

(3) Concentration of network power in the hands of a few is a disaster.  Precisely the opposite of what BTC was supposed to be all about

(4) Raw gh/s figures are irrelevant given that only a tiny number of firms have ASICS designs.  THESE COMPANIES NOW EFFECTIVELY CONTROL THE NETWORK

LTC is looking very strong right now.  Holding its USD value as BTC falls.

The two may meet in the middle

[dillpicklechips]

No. Slowly it will decentralize again. IMHO, ASIC's are going to be one of Bitcoin's biggest strengths in the future!

[empoweoqwj]

What a load of nonsense. Seems to be an amazing number of LTC supporters showing up this week talking nonsense. Part of the FUD campaign against BTC in preparation for MtGox's launch of LTC trading I've no doubt. LTC has been pump-and-dump since inception. Please take note everyone.

[DeathAndTaxes]

No. Slowly it will decentralize again. IMHO, ASIC's are going to be one of Bitcoin's biggest strengths in the future!

This.  If LTC ever gets large enough it too will have ASICs and be stronger for it.  Without ASICs the miners = network defenders are fighting with one hand tied behind their back and the attackers will be using miniguns. 

Not having ASICs deployed doesn't mean an attacker is somehow prohibited from deploying them against you.

[eleuthria]

I don't see ASICs killing BTC.  There's a growth problem right now.  ASICs start expensive and get cheaper.  As a result, you see an early concentration.  This is why I'm very happy with ASICMINER's cheaper price point for the USB Erupters.

They are not a great investment.  There's still a reasonable chance that even at 1 BTC they will not make a full return on the investment.  But there is a chance.  Meanwhile, they're an extremely low barrier to entry mining device.  330 MH/s isn't a lot in the scheme of things...until you have tens of thousands of them distributed all over like we do today.  BTC Guild alone has sold over 2,000 in 5 days.

Once you have one, you never have a reason to turn it off.  It's extremely unlikely that they will hit a point where they cost more to run than they generate at 2.5w each.  They're a small step towards decentralization, and you can expect as ASICs mature there will continue to be more low level offerings.  They won't have the RoI of the bigger units, but they will help keep the hash rate from being fully concentrated in massive mining farms.

[stdset]

Part of the FUD campaign against BTC in preparation for MtGox's launch of LTC trading I've no doubt. LTC has been pump-and-dump since inception. Please take note everyone.

Many former bitcoin GPU miners indeed think the way the OP stated. Try reading BTC-e trollbox.
I think the problem here: those people earned some money with mining and they got accostumed to think about cryptocurrency as an easy way to earn money (they don't understand how bitcoin works, what they actually do, why it's valuable, they don't even want to know that). They frustate about the need to invest money in new hardware to remain profitable and want everything to remain the same. Btw many of them were denying ASICs existence until very recent days. Most likely their frustration is increased due to the fact they sold huge loads of BTC before the price went up.

[Stephen Gornick]

(4) Raw gh/s figures are irrelevant given that only a tiny number of firms have ASICS designs.  THESE COMPANIES NOW EFFECTIVELY CONTROL THE NETWORK

AMD is the only manufacturer with a GPU design that has 3,200 ALUs, in addition to having BIT_ALIGN_INT.   Therefore, ONE COMPANY (AMD) EFFECTIVELY CONTROLS THE LITECOIN NETWORK

[see what I did there?]

[Littleshop]

What a load of nonsense. Seems to be an amazing number of LTC supporters showing up this week talking nonsense. Part of the FUD campaign against BTC in preparation for MtGox's launch of LTC trading I've no doubt. LTC has been pump-and-dump since inception. Please take note everyone.

I disagree.  Most of his points are accurate and reflect the people that I know.  The price lowering though is coming more from the larger ASIC players not only controlling the supply of BTC's but also selling more of them then a typical small miner would do.  A small miner is more likely to spend  BTC in the Bitcoin economy while a larger player is most likely selling most coins right into the market. 

The real failure is that many small miners DID invest in ASIC hardware and they DO NOT HAVE IT.  If they had that hardware now, the price would probably be more stable and higher. 

[xmcx]

i dont think so.asic can prove a huge power of calculate.it can improve shield of this system.and also reduce confirm time.

[wheatrich]

Yeah they are.  The people that bought these asic's invested a lot of $ (or were early and didn't) and are trying to get the $ back/quick profit as fast as possible.  This will continue to happen for awhile.

[DeathAndTaxes]

What a load of nonsense. Seems to be an amazing number of LTC supporters showing up this week talking nonsense. Part of the FUD campaign against BTC in preparation for MtGox's launch of LTC trading I've no doubt. LTC has been pump-and-dump since inception. Please take note everyone.

I disagree.  Most of his points are accurate and reflect the people that I know.  The price lowering though is coming more from the larger ASIC players not only controlling the supply of BTC's but also selling more of them then a typical small miner would do.  A small miner is more likely to spend  BTC in the Bitcoin economy while a larger player is most likely selling most coins right into the market. 

The real failure is that many small miners DID invest in ASIC hardware and they DO NOT HAVE IT.  If they had that hardware now, the price would probably be more stable and higher. 

The largest ASIC player is owned by thousands of shareholders each who receive a relatively small amount of Bitcoins.  If Joe Smith average AsicMiner shareholder gets 3 BTC in dividends and sells them how is that any different than Joe mining 3 BTC and selling them.

[Littleshop]

(4) Raw gh/s figures are irrelevant given that only a tiny number of firms have ASICS designs.  THESE COMPANIES NOW EFFECTIVELY CONTROL THE NETWORK

AMD is the only manufacturer with a GPU design that has 3,200 ALUs, in addition to having BIT_ALIGN_INT.   Therefore, ONE COMPANY (AMD) EFFECTIVELY CONTROLS THE LITECOIN NETWORK

[see what I did there?]

You did nothing with a point.   AMD is NOT mining and the products are distributed well and fairly.  Litecoin is now more decentralized then Bitcoin.  I still think BTC is the way to go, but the current security of BTC and LTC are probably near equal now thought he methods of attack would be quite different on each network.

It would be quite hard to raise enough scrypt mining power to take 51% of the LTC network.  Right now very small combinations (as few as two) of ASIC companies and pools are more then 51% of the bitcoin network.  

I think this is temporary as Avalon may ship out large volumes of chips that would at least break up some of the centralization.  I

[lucasjkr]

(4) Raw gh/s figures are irrelevant given that only a tiny number of firms have ASICS designs.  THESE COMPANIES NOW EFFECTIVELY CONTROL THE NETWORK

AMD is the only manufacturer with a GPU design that has 3,200 ALUs, in addition to having BIT_ALIGN_INT.   Therefore, ONE COMPANY (AMD) EFFECTIVELY CONTROLS THE LITECOIN NETWORK

[see what I did there?]

But that ONE company sells to any and all who want it. No shortages. No taking orders months before availability. AMD is an actual supplier.

ASICMiner has kept the vast majority of its output for itself, then spread around a bunch of USB's to even out the rest of the network at a hugely inflated prices.

Avalon appears to be very slow in fulfilling promises (i.e. orders)

Butterfly Labs... well, I got my Sept 2012 order yesterday, which explains that.

And all the other rumored ASIC producers are targetting those who are already wealthy from mining bitcoins already, ramping up production on multi-thousand dollar machines.

Face it, the reason that Bitcoin took off the way it has so far was because everyone could participate, profitably, with a minimal investment. Seeing the recent shifts towards Litecoin from Bitcoin (LTC is now 60% more profitable to mine than Bitcoin, and this is after a probable influx of GPU units that have fled BTC do to lack of profitability, that should be the biggest wake up call.

Seems everyone with either ASICMiner shares, Avalon miners or the small contingent who have started getting orders from Jalapeños are content so they're quick to defend the status quo and say "of course nothings wrong!", while the populace that created and drove BTC's value is slipping away.

And I say that as a new ASIC owner. I'm more than happy to sell, BTW, but not at the prices that get thrown around on here, as running it will be a money losing operation after month two. Until it sells, I'll be using the BTC's generated to:

A) buy ASICMiner pass-through shares
B) accumulate Litecoin and PPCoin.

And the dividends from those shares will be devoted to buying LTC's as well.

Greed and ASICs are killing Bitcoin. Litecoin at least attempts to restore the peer-to-peer aspect... my hope being that if Scrypt is as vulnerable to ASIC's as some nay-sayers say, that the developers can stay a step ahead of ASIC hardware if at all possible...

[lucasjkr]

i dont think so.asic can prove a huge power of calculate.it can improve shield of this system.and also reduce confirm time.

Bitcoin generates blocks (and confirms) every 10 minutes. So many ASIC's have flooded the market that apparently blocks are getting generated a little faster than that, but as hashing power stabilizes, it'll be 10 minutes a block. Extra hashing power doesn't translate into faster confirms. Or at least that's my understanding, I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong, though.

[Littleshop]

What a load of nonsense. Seems to be an amazing number of LTC supporters showing up this week talking nonsense. Part of the FUD campaign against BTC in preparation for MtGox's launch of LTC trading I've no doubt. LTC has been pump-and-dump since inception. Please take note everyone.

I disagree.  Most of his points are accurate and reflect the people that I know.  The price lowering though is coming more from the larger ASIC players not only controlling the supply of BTC's but also selling more of them then a typical small miner would do.  A small miner is more likely to spend  BTC in the Bitcoin economy while a larger player is most likely selling most coins right into the market. 

The real failure is that many small miners DID invest in ASIC hardware and they DO NOT HAVE IT.  If they had that hardware now, the price would probably be more stable and higher. 

The largest ASIC player is owned by thousands of shareholders each who receive a relatively small amount of Bitcoins.  If Joe Smith average AsicMiner shareholder gets 3 BTC in dividends and sells them how is that any different than Joe mining 3 BTC and selling them.

First, that is false.  There are not thousands of INDIVIDUAL shareholders of ASICMINER and secondly they do not pay out enough of their profits to make this matter.  

[Stephen Gornick]

Face it, the reason that Bitcoin took off the way it has so far was because everyone could participate, profitably, with a minimal investment.

Ummm .... no, sorry.  Profitability in mining is not "the reason that Bitcoin took off".

[Technomage]

ASIC mining power will be decentralized. I stopped mining with GPU's because it was more work than it was worth but with ASIC devices it's more convenient. I have some running personally and our Bitcoin startup has some as well.

In fact our company is looking at investing a larger sum in ASIC's. Not just for direct profit, we actually want to support the network. We have a stake in Bitcoin overall so we want to do that. Not at a direct loss but we do want to support the network and make a small profit while doing that.

We'll also run everything ourselves. That's an important part of the decentralization. It can't be just one or two datacenters or we're absolutely screwed. It has to be at least hundreds all over the world.

[Keldel]

ASICs will increase the security of the network long term and will be the power of bitcoin in the future! There are just some bumps along the way.

[hazek]

OP, you don't understand how Bitcoin works. Owning hashing power does not mean you control the network. Miners do not control the network, full nodes do. Meaning nodes which maintain the blockchain and relay new blocks and new transactions.

The only reason why 3 is bad is because it lowers the bar for one of these companies to start a 51% attack if they desired to destroy Bitcoin and their investment with it.

[Mjbmonetarymetals]

Face it, the reason that Bitcoin took off the way it has so far was because everyone could participate, profitably, with a minimal investment.

Ummm .... no, sorry.  Profitability in mining is not "the reason that Bitcoin took off".

 Isn't the top quote stating profitability as one aspect the others being participation and minimal investment?............

Bitcoin needs to stand up and be counted against Litecoin, ripple etc. Maybe we all sing only from the song sheet born from our vested interest, however if it's now impossible to state anything negative towards btc without being branded an altcoin sympathiser then it's impossible to have a reasonable discussion.  

Early miner Enthusiastic nerd that nobody understood just doing it for the kicks? or lazy early adopter expecting something for nothing.

Modern miner Fat corporate cat in an ill fitting suit salivating with greed or valiant bitcoin soldier deffender of the blockchain?