What's best - SHA256 or Scrypt?

[Etlase2]

The mechanics of SHA-3 offer little different from SHA-2. Scrypt, on the other hand, is a fundamentally different beast. The way forward is almost entirely likely to be with scrypt unless something that is similar-but-better to scrypt comes along. Continually wasting money and resources on completely useless pieces of machinery (ASICs) is not good for decentralization or sanity.

[Vivisector999]

The problem isn't based on people being afraid or not willing/ready to buy an ASIC.  I myself am in the process of purchasing an ASIC, I am just watching the BFL backorder log to dissipate.  And I'm not buying it to make money, as I know for a fact it will be losing money very shortly.  Just watch the Bitcoin difficulty jump by millions every week more ASIC's are slowly being shipped out.  Merged mining a coin that is worth $0.00001 won't make them turn into money making beasts, it's more "Woohoo I just earned an extra $1 this month merge mining Vlad's coin    

Our advice to you was based on what would be the safest alternative for a new coin coming onto the market.  SHA256 does not mean the coin will be worth more.  Not even having 1 million miners on your coin make it worth more (Just more secure).  And small GPU miners can mine SHA256 just as easily as they can mine scrypt.  It makes no difference to them what they mine.  Aside from the fact they will want to invest their time/electricity/cooling costs into a currency that they think is stable, and not be killed at any time.

The problem is you don't understand even the basics of what your getting into.  You believe your coin which will be worth less than a cent in the beginning will be embraced by Bitcoin miners, and that people will go out of their way to do all the programming to get your essentially free coin merge mined with all the big players.  And you believe your coin will easily survive a 51% attack on it, because you believe in it.  

First off, your coin will be worth nothing at all, no matter if you choose scrypt or SHA256.  The reason coins start becoming worth something is not because people start mining it.  It's because people start believing your coin is secure, and they start putting their money into it to make it worth something.  You also need to have services willing to take your coin as an actual currency.  No one is going to be sitting there with a 50 BTC buy offer the moment your coin hits Cryptsy (if it even manages to get there with your attitude of who cares if my coin is 51% attacked) when you are treating it like a playground.  You have said it multiple times in your many posts, it isn't costing you much, and your the only one that will end up losing your money and time if the coin is crushed.  That attitude will drive away any investor you're hoping to get, which will leave you sitting on a coin still worth $0.0001, which will stop being mined because people lose faith in your currency.

To put it in perspective, I will give you a real world analogy for what you're doing.   Its like you are building a new bank.  You don't have the money for insurance, you are asking people if you should build it in a safer neighbourhood, or in a neighbourhood where banks get robbed on a daily basis.  And to make matters worse, you announce you're not having any guards on staff and you can't afford the lock on the vault.  But you want people to store their millions in your bank, and if everything does get robbed and your bank gets burnt down, you don't care because the building only cost you $500 because of the neighbourhood you choose.  And to make matters worse, you want to charge the people that are storing their money 1%, because you are sticking out your time and $500 to build the bank in the first place.

A successfull 51% attack could cause everyone's assets "Money they put into your currency" to be cashed out by the attacker.  He makes a fortune, or nothing becuase he just wanted to see if he could destroy a smaller one to hone his skills on a larger target.  After a coin is 51% attacked, it is almost always dead after that.  I can only think of 1-2 exceptions where I believe the coin still exists.  In cases like Powercoin, which was 51% attacked recently, the attacker took around 2 million Powercoins.  No exchange would touch it after that, since the guy could cash in those coins at any time after.        

If you truly want to become rich in the Cryptocurrency game.  I will tell you the EASY way to do it.  DON'T become a coin developer.  Find an established coin that is trading for about $0.00001.  Put $10,000 into it, and start buying.  This alone will drive the price upwards.  Next put your "marketing skills" to work, and get an economy going in that coin.  You don't need a developer's ok to build an economy for them.  And I am sure they would readily do whatever they could to promote you in your venture.  Get that $0.0001 coin to have a value of about $1.  Congrats you're now a multi-millionaire.  Sell it off slowly, so you don't crash your market, and lose your value.

[Zas]

*cough* That doesn't help the rest of us Vivi... i.e the people who can't mine with GPU.

The only think I disagree with primarily and that is that someone has to treat it as a commercial venture. They don't. The more attention, care, time that is paid to a coin will make it successful not how much money you can throw at it, because that is a pump and dump scheme. It's very much like taking a bag full of coppers into a penny arcade. You went into it to have fun...not to be a high stakes gambler and if you play your coins right you could end up walking out with a copper more than you went in.

Rome wasn't built in a night and neither was Bitcoin.

[Vivisector999]

Sorry you misunderstood what I was going with there.  Vlad has self admitted he has no programming skills/experience what-so ever.  What he wants people to bank on is even though he would never even be able to tell if an attack was happening on his coin, that he wants us to bank on his skills as a really good marketer, and for him treating his coin as a commercial venture.

I didn't say building an entire economy on a Crypto is an overnight thing.  It would probably take years.  And I didn't say it was the best idea to rush that either.  But he seems more preoccupied on making a ton of money more than taking the time to even read enough to understand the basics.

But I will disagree with you somewhat.  Attention, care and time won't make a coin financially successful.  The only thing that will make a coin worth alot of money (truely) is to have alot of people using it as an actual traded currency, and for people to put money into it.  What you are talking about is speculated value, which is when the price rises because investors believe that eventually the coin will take off.  Pump and dump is when you push up the speculated value and then dump it when it's not actually "worth" anything.  It is not a pump and dump when you create a functioning economy, which raises the price, then you sell yourself out of it.  Here is an example of the difference.  I make a company, Tell everyone that I have a product that will put Intel out of business because my product is 1000X faster for 1/3 of the price.  The stock value in the company (That doesn't actually make anything yet) rises to astronomical amounts.  Then I sell my shares, make millions, and everyone is left holding shares to a company that doesn't actually make anything.  What I am telling him to do is essentially Buy a company worth $10,000.  Actually create the processors that put Intel out of business.  The company is now worth billions, because of actual sales, and products being released.  Then he sells his shares off.  He still leaves as a multimillionare, but the stock holders aren't left with a steaming dump, but with an actual money making company.  This is NOT pump and dump.

BTW which part of what I said doesn't apply to those that can't mine with a GPU?  CPU miners can infact also mine SHA256 or Scrypt.  It makes no difference.  Bitcoin was originally only able to be mined with CPU's.  What you might be thinking is CPU mining Bitcoins (Not SHA256), at the current difficulty level.  Which is a totally different ballgame.   If Vlad did release his coin as an SHA256 coin, the ASIC miners would not be interested in using their expensive new miners for mining a coin worth nothing.  So the difficulty would start low, just like if he released a Scrypt based coin.  The only way it would jump to super high levels would be if he himself started mining with his 60 GHash/s ASIC, when he finally receives it.  In which case he would probably end up pushing all the miners out, and the currency would have a single point of failure, and losing the interest of all the people he needs for the coin to take off.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Um there is nothing that prevents Scrypt based coins from being merged mined.   Then again they are all copy and paste pump and dumps so nobody spent the time and effort to write the code.  When merged mining was added to namecoin nobody did it to make a fortune they did it to "save" namecoin.

[Zas]

Point taken Vivi 

Though I'm not actually interested in trading the currency for another currency... I'm more interested in trading the currency for items that are useful to me. That's the difference here. You could pump in as many dollars as you want, but what matters here is the trust that fair value is being transferred efficiently and not how much it is worth compared to a dollar. That's just financial garbage. If I can trade 5 xCoins for a kilo of cheese, that makes the coin valuable to me... instead of having to bring the farmer those eggs that haven't been laid yet.

[markm]

It looks to me like a big part of the confusion or problem is fast-buck syndrome.

It used to be pretty normal for a business to lose money its first few years.

People made fortunes from BBQcoin precisely because there was no profit at all during a year or so of CPU-mining it at really low difficulty; that happened because the fast-buck people were not interested in making a fortune in a year or so, they saw they would be spending pennies now without getting pennies back now so weren't interested. So the people who did spend a year putting in pennies were able to take a huge profit a year down the line.

Right now you can merged mine GRouPcoin, I0Coin, CoiLedCoin, and GeistGeld at low difficulty because there is no well-known and web-based way of cashing them in for pennies each day as you mine them. Just like happened with BBQcoin you are looking at spending pennies for hopefully even several years since the more years you get to rake them in at low difficulty the more you will have of them come the day they come out into the limelight, if they ever do, like BBQcoin did. Small miners can get their small trickle of bitcoins still to pay all or part of their electricity bill, and still get to rake in any or all of these "sleeper" coins all day every day. The more days they get left in peace to do that the better for them in the long run.

Sure some script-kiddie might come get some laughs pretending to "kill" a coin, so what? CoiLedCoin was "killed" how long ago now? For a few days someone took all the blocks, not building on other people's blocks or something like that. The coin was declared "dead", and just like happened with BBQcoin the masses spent a year or more believing it was dead while anyone who chose to do so picked up as many as they wanted for almost nothing.

The fast buck people aren't willing to risk a few pennies to make a bunch of dollars, if they don't get more than a penny today for a penny they spend today they are off chasing whatever they think will give them more than a penny today for a penny they spend on it today. That is why BBQcoin miners made such fortunes, and it might well turn out to be how merged miners of the merged mined coins that most pools are not including in their merged mining mix end up making similar fortunes.

-MarkM-

[Zas]

*nod nod* Almost completely agreed. Some of us here aren't actually to make a profit as it were but simply to get involved and play around a bit. (Maybe it's just me  ). So I'm not fussed about spending time or electricity so long as I've enjoyed myself >.<;

[Vlad2Vlad]

I voted Justin Bieber, because its just true .

{although that whole MJ thing she's doing is getting a little creepy}

Ahahahaaaaa.  That's totally off-topic.  Wait, it's not.  Lol.

[Vlad2Vlad]

It looks to me like a big part of the confusion or problem is fast-buck syndrome.

It used to be pretty normal for a business to lose money its first few years.

People made fortunes from BBQcoin precisely because there was no profit at all during a year or so of CPU-mining it at really low difficulty; that happened because the fast-buck people were not interested in making a fortune in a year or so, they saw they would be spending pennies now without getting pennies back now so weren't interested. So the people who did spend a year putting in pennies were able to take a huge profit a year down the line.

Right now you can merged mine GRouPcoin, I0Coin, CoiLedCoin, and GeistGeld at low difficulty because there is no well-known and web-based way of cashing them in for pennies each day as you mine them. Just like happened with BBQcoin you are looking at spending pennies for hopefully even several years since the more years you get to rake them in at low difficulty the more you will have of them come the day they come out into the limelight, if they ever do, like BBQcoin did. Small miners can get their small trickle of bitcoins still to pay all or part of their electricity bill, and still get to rake in any or all of these "sleeper" coins all day every day. The more days they get left in peace to do that the better for them in the long run.

Sure some script-kiddie might come get some laughs pretending to "kill" a coin, so what? CoiLedCoin was "killed" how long ago now? For a few days someone took all the blocks, not building on other people's blocks or something like that. The coin was declared "dead", and just like happened with BBQcoin the masses spent a year or more believing it was dead while anyone who chose to do so picked up as many as they wanted for almost nothing.

The fast buck people aren't willing to risk a few pennies to make a bunch of dollars, if they don't get more than a penny today for a penny they spend today they are off chasing whatever they think will give them more than a penny today for a penny they spend on it today. That is why BBQcoin miners made such fortunes, and it might well turn out to be how merged miners of the merged mined coins that most pools are not including in their merged mining mix end up making similar fortunes.

-MarkM-

Thank you mark.  This is what I was trying to say.  Merged mining is a gold mine becsuee you're still getting your target coin but also a bunch of other coins that can pay off down the line.

According to the other guy on here you can also merge mine scrypt coins and I didn't know that so that's a big plus.

So mark, you're a programmer so let me ask you 2 questions:

1) If you would launch your own coin, a new coin would it be SHA256 or scrypt and why.

And

2) What special feature do you feel a new coin should have which doesn't really exist right now.  Something hopefully useful and new in some way. 

Thanks a lot.

[Vlad2Vlad]

Um there is nothing that prevents Scrypt based coins from being merged mined.   Then again they are all copy and paste pump and dumps so nobody spent the time and effort to write the code.  When merged mining was added to namecoin nobody did it to make a fortune they did it to "save" namecoin.

Thank you, I didn't know that.  I just haven't seen any merge mining pools for scrypt like I have for Sha256.  Maybe it's due to the much higher demand for Bitcoins.

So can they make one coin, a MergeCoin that people can then mine and essentially mine 3 or 30 various coins?   Cause as difficulty skyrockets the only way for most people to make money at that point would be via merged mining.  Like mark said, you get say a few bitcoins to pay for the elctricity and then make money from the other smaller merged mined coins and once in a while one of those coins, like BBQ coin, will take off and that would be a huge break for those who merge mined.

And with the coming bitcoin ETF, I think we'll see a lot of Alt coins take off.  Just like namecoin and LTC took off in April for enrmous returns all cause bitcoin ran to $266. Only this time there's gonna be way more coins on the market, way more people speculating on alt coins (including investors) so more coins doing what namecoin and litecoin did.

[markm]

So mark, you're a programmer so let me ask you 2 questions:

1) If you would launch your own coin, a new coin would it be SHA256 or scrypt and why.

And

2) What special feature do you feel a new coin should have which doesn't really exist right now.  Something hopefully useful and new in some way.  

Thanks a lot.

You still don't get it, do you?

We already launched new coins, well over a year ago. Since we still have not enough hashing power hashing those coins, it is stupid pointless premature wasteful and so on to keep churning out more and more "new" coins.

First lets get all the coins we already put out there a year or two ago all up to secure levels of hashing before worrying about adding yet more coins.

We are getting ahead of ourselves. We haven't even updated the existing merged mined coins to latest bitcoin code yet. We haven't got even one public pool yet that merged mines all of them. We don't even have software yet that can divvy up all of them to pool miners giving each miner the appropriate amount of each of the coins. We don't even have free open source apps all coins need such as exchanges, payment processors and so on, heck we don't even have thin clients yet for most of them nor even any plugins for browsers that would allow actually-secure webwallets to be built.

Spewing out more and more coins each of which still needs all these things we have not yet built isn't helping. Lets build all these things first, and get all the existing merged coins all up to comparable levels of hashing.

Its like inability to focus or concentrate syndrome or whatever they call it, long before even those apps that have been built for bitcoin have even been standardised in free open source form so that a second third etc coin can off the shelf open up all those same apps for public use already people are making more coins and more coins. We cannot even keep up to date codewise the few merged coins we already have. Lets prove we can do that before spawning even more coins that will only increase the support/update burden. We cannot keep up with the few coins already existing, we need to catch up on all that backlog of work still needing to be done, not create more and more and more work that will need to be done while we cannot even keep up with all the work already needing to be done.

-MarkM-

[Zas]

ADHD....Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is the one you're looking for.

...looks like I'm just going to be excluded from the game after all. Oh well. 

[Buffer Overflow]

New kid on the block. You should add PRIME to your poll.

[Zas]

Prime isn't an encryption algorithm

[Etlase2]

Neither is SHA

[Zas]

Beg to differ. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-2

[markm]

ADHD....Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is the one you're looking for.

...looks like I'm just going to be excluded from the game after all. Oh well.  

Excluded how?

Fire up p2pool, bitcoind and geistgeldd, merged mine geistgeld alongside bitcoin. Even with a GPU, the bitcoins will subsidise your electricity, and because geistgeld is incredibly low difficulty, you will rake in geistgeld.

Or do i0coin, or coiledcoin, or groupcoin, heck do them all if you have the RAM to run them all. I0Coin and GeistGeld use the most RAM so if you don't have tons of RAM just do bitcoin, coiledcoin and groupcoin.

(For the high difficulty ones like namecoin and ixcoin its roulette, if you actually want some of those you might as well use mmpool at bitparking).

Only you are excluding yourself. Heck you can CPU mine fairbrix and/or tenebrix, are you even doing that? Seems like you are determined to exclude yourself, unwilling even to pick up these virtual-freebies laying there for the taking...

Remember its all limited pies though, if six billion people all divvy up one pie it does nto matter whether they divvy it up with ASIC or FPGA or GPU or CPU, they'll still only get the same fraction of the pie... So the best money might be in picking pies no one else sees value in, until you have a big enough piece of it for it to start looking worthwhile to consider starting to help others see some value in it...

(IXCoin is so difficult it will be maybe years yet before i have enough of them for it to seem worth my while to start convincing others they are valuable, since most others already have many more than I do. I0Coin though got dropped by bitparking, so lately I get to pick up more I0Coin than I can get of IXCoin. Basically as a small miner I need coins that not a lot of miners are mining yet, so I can hope to get a nice enough chunk of one someday for promoting it to others to start to look more like increasing the value of my holding than like urging competitors to take more of the pie leaving less for me...)

-MarkM-

[Buffer Overflow]

ADHD....Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is the one you're looking for.

...looks like I'm just going to be excluded from the game after all. Oh well.  

Excluded how?

Fire up p2pool, bitcoind and geistgeldd, merged mine geistgeld alongside bitcoin. Even with a GPU, the bitcoins will subsidise your electricity, and because geistgeld is incredibly low difficulty, you will rake in geistgeld.

Or do i0coin, or coiledcoin, or groupcoin, heck do them all if you have the RAM to run them all. I0Coin and GeistGeld use the most RAM so if you don't have tons of RAM just do bitcoin, coiledcoin and groupcoin.

(For the high difficulty ones like namecoin and ixcoin its roulette, if you actually want some of those you might as well use mmpool at bitparking).

Only you are excluding yourself. Heck you can CPU mine fairbrix and/or tenebrix, are you even doing that? Seems like you are determined to exclude yourself, unwilling even to pick up these virtual-freebies laying there for the taking...

Remember its all limited pies though, if six billion people all divvy up one pie it does nto matter whether they divvy it up with ASIC or FPGA or GPU or CPU, they'll still only get the same fraction of the pie...

-MarkM-

Can PPCoin be merge mined with Bitcoin? I was of the understanding because of the POS it cannot.

[Zas]

Bearing in mind I'm stuck with CPU mining. Bitcoins are impossible, Litecoins are impossible, Primecoins too difficult along with a variety of others that I've tried that weren't obviously pump and dumps. Unless I start up my own fork of Bitcoin/Litecoin (of which my programming skills are lacking), there seems to apparently be no way for someone to just hook up and mine for a bit, perhaps get maybe one or two coins and then disappear for a day or two, come back... and so on. Effectively if you don't have a decent i7 processor or running two or three really high high GPU's... there's no way for you to even think about getting involved.

...fairbrix? O.o (It would help if these were actually listed in places where people go looking for cryptocurrencies). I'll take a look through the list and see which ones I can actually get fired up. Links?

I'm not purposely excluding myself (I don't make it easy apparently by a) running linux b) having a rather old computer) but with everyone jumping on GPU's it does leave mining to only those who have lots of money to spend...apparently.

I'd like to actually mine rather than collecting handouts if I can help it.