[2013-11-21] Alpha Technologies Announces ASIC Miners for Litecoin are Coming

[wtfvanity]

BFL is "shipping in two weeks."  

Tell me when they're available to pre-order

ass. BFL's finally catching up: https://forums.butterflylabs.com/blogs

Catching up?

Thursday, November 21, 2013 Shipping Update
by BFL_Jody  , 11-21-2013 at 09:48 PM
Jalapenos 5 gh/s: May 28, 2013

Little Singles 25 gh/s and 30 Upgrades: June 24, 2013

Single 50 gh/s and 60 Upgrades: June 6, 2013 pay date

They are only six months behind. I guess that is catching up after being 12 months behind. You're right. Thanks for pointing that out.

lol wtf...

[LiteCoinGuy]

And thats worthless. Litecoin has far the best devs and community after bitcoin.
When time goes by, both currencys will have even greater variations. Its also a backup for bitcoin. If these devs do something terrible wrong, you can go with litecoin which is far more community based in my opinion.

And its always the same:

Example: You have samsung. Why apple, sony, motorola etc?

People want to have options. And they think: dont put all eggs In one basket.

In all your arguments you assume that Litecoin and Bitcoin are/will be different. Yet, this is here is a news post about the start of ASIC development for Litecoin. The claim that Litecoin could not be run on ASICs is the one property that sets it apart from Bitcoin. Once those ASICs are running, Litecoin is pretty much Bitcoin just with a different blockchain.

And as you point out yourself, a direct copy is worthless.

of course its already different today and will be even more in the future. i also mentioned some other reasons for a second crypto, and Litecoin is the best choice!

[MaxSan]

Emailed these lot twice about meeting them and putting a face to the name for a number of people. Got zero reply. Not exactly someone I want to trust my money with considering not as much as a hello.

[eternaluniverse]

so Litecoin is now bitcoin but younger, I wonder how long before people realize this. Probably the same time, and ive been saying this over and over again, they realize they can buy 0.05 of a btc!!

[daemonfox]

Here's another thought. Imagine someone set up a Litecoin2 and called it Copper. I'm pretty sure you would think that to be nonsense.

Someone already did. They called it feathercoin.

And thats worthless. Litecoin has far the best devs and community after bitcoin.
When time goes by, both currencys will have even greater variations. Its also a backup for bitcoin. If these devs do something terrible wrong, you can go with litecoin which is far more community based in my opinion.

And its always the same:

Example: You have samsung. Why apple, sony, motorola etc?

People want to have options. And they think: dont put all eggs In one basket.

Try Megacoin... LTC should keep a close eye out... MEC is coming for its spot.

[rogue13]

I don't care what people say, no crypto-currency is safe from ASIC chips. When a cryptocurrency becomes valuable enough, ASIC chips will be made. They may take longer to design, or cost more per gh, but they can always be made.

[smadbrith]

I don't care what people say, no crypto-currency is safe from ASIC chips. When a cryptocurrency becomes valuable enough, ASIC chips will be made.

I can't agree more. Although Litecoin was designed to be resistant to ASIC design, Scrypt (as best I understand) was a cryptographic tool designed specifically to be expensive to design and build ASIC devices to target it. The inventors of scrypt never claimed it to be ASIC-proof, they claimed it to be ASIC-cost-resistant. The designers of Litecoin were probably more aware of that than anyone. there's great technical explanation of scrypt as a crypto-tool with regards to ASIC design cost here[1].

In my opinion, it is still serving the same purpose even if scrypt-ASIC devices are coming to market. These devices are going to be more expensive to design and manufacture, and are yet to be seen to have the exponential performance increases over GPU miners that SHA256 ASIC's have shown. Even if they do increase performance by orders of magnitude, they will do so at the cost of a boat-load of RAM and memory throughput, which is neither easy or cheap. This will slow the flow of ASIC's in comparison to the btc counterparts, and things would stay decentralized longer.

If people can make money with a raw computing process, people will build computers to do it faster.

The other differences between litecoin and bitcoin are pretty solid: transactions should happen faster, and there should be more total available to mine (The recent price spike seems to tell me that pretty clearly.)

When BTC touched the price of an oz. of gold, the need for a "silver" along side got a whole lot more tangible. lol, forgot to mention that ltc is worth more than silver right now, I didn't realize until this very moment.

[1] -http://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt/scrypt-slides.pdf

[||bit]

Wasn't that the thing that made Litecoin different from Bitcoin?

Of course.  Now the  litecoiners will have one less lame argument to make.  Pretty much all that is left is "Please buy my ltc so I can buy btc. Please?"

I agree there are some lame arguments made - some really lame arguments. But I don't agree with those that think bitcoin is in a exclusive position of utility.

Litecoin will likely succeed. Okpay just started accepting them. They can be traded on other exchanges. And MtGox will set off the chain reaction when they - not too far out from now - include them (and perhaps some other alts) with their new trading engine. Coinbase will accept litecoin in particular right after that. By the way, the developer of litecoin is employed at Coinbase.

Some basic reasoning and admittedly my gut too tell me litecoin, from now, will blow bitcoins growth away by a factor of five to ten times in the long term.

[flynn]

Maybe the Litecoin dev team should made a statement that the cryto function would be modified should an Asic arise for scrypt.

just my 0.02 Ltc

[justusranvier]

I can't agree more. Although Litecoin was designed to be resistant to ASIC design, Scrypt (as best I understand) was a cryptographic tool designed specifically to be expensive to design and build ASIC devices to target it. The inventors of scrypt never claimed it to be ASIC-proof, they claimed it to be ASIC-cost-resistant. The designers of Litecoin were probably more aware of that than anyone. there's great technical explanation of scrypt as a crypto-tool with regards to ASIC design cost here[1].

Bullshit.

Litecoin was designed to be resistant to GPU mining.

When that didn't work out, they just quietly pretended to have never made those claims in the hope nobody would notice.

Anyway, this thread should be in alternate cryptocurrencies. The story does not meet Wikipedia's Notability guidelines with respect to Bitcoin.

[TraderTimm]

Bullshit.

Litecoin was designed to be resistant to GPU mining.

When that didn't work out, they just quietly pretended to have never made those claims in the hope nobody would notice.

Anyway, this thread should be in alternate cryptocurrencies. The story does not meet Wikipedia's Notability guidelines with respect to Bitcoin.

You're absolutely correct. These knob-slobbers made a point to say that the lowest common denominator was the driving force behind their farce-coin.

And now, its trading like a penny stock, because nobody takes it, and the only "value" is some idiot called "fontas" organizing pump-and-dumps for it, on a clockwork basis.

Who is involved with this coin is beyond me, other than the hopelessly optimistic.

[CoinHoarder]

I am still trying to figure out if these guys are a scam or not. I think there are at least 2 legit Scrypt FGPA companies, but I haven't found a legit Scrypt ASIC company. I'm reserving my judgement on these guys until they provide more proof.

[X68N]

2 Things will happen.

1.Scryptbased Coins will gain or loose value against BTC
2. GPU Prices on ebay will drop like a hot potatoe!

[smadbrith]

EDIT: link format

Bullshit.

Litecoin was designed to be resistant to GPU mining.

When that didn't work out, they just quietly pretended to have never made those claims in the hope nobody would notice.

I'm the newb here, so I appreciate the education. having read coblee's annoucement of the project here(0), and his direct response to questions about ASIC's here(1), I'm a bit confused. I thought litecoin was sold as an improvement over btc for a few reasons, one of which is that scrypt is an improvement over sha-256 for resilience against specified hardware attack. I'm happy to hear about it if I'm wrong.

Granted, that reddit comment above has been edited, and it's only a month old. Still, I haven't seen anything from early writing about ltc's motivation to use scrypt as a proof-of-work that says they ever claimed it to be resistant to GPUs.

Anyway, this thread should be in alternate cryptocurrencies. The story does not meet Wikipedia's Notability guidelines with respect to Bitcoin.

Isn't it? I see it in Bitcointalk > Other > Alternate cryptocurrencies

(0) - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47417.0
(1) - http://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin/comments/1o3fdz/we_are_the_litecoin_dev_team_ama/ccr1b86

[peer2peer360]

If  litecoin asic are  gonna be expensive is it not wise to start forming a group buy & having the
Funds in a reputable escrow service until the technology is  completed??

Knowing when asic came aboard for bitcoin many people knew it was going to
Start making bitcoin solo mining some what obsolete for the little guy 

Imagine when asic come aboard for scrypt mining you came almost sense
Its gonna be the same pattern...

Solo mining could potentially be obsolete for the little guy as well..

Asic scrypt mining will mine many times faster than what your currently mining with.

So you can either chose to make-it-happen or be the one whos-wondering-whats -happening

Which one you wanna be its your choice

[flynn]

LTC has been designed to be asic resistant.

If a competitive ASIC shows up, it would mean LTC has failed its purpose, and personnally I would just leave that train.

[repairguy]

I think the bitcoin gold litecoin silver argument is pretty much a waste.  A silver to bitcoins gold is not necessary.  Bitcoin is divisible to .00000001.  Last I checked it would be difficult to purchase .00000001 ounces of gold.  Silver helps to fill the gold divisibility problem.  Bitcoin doesn't have that issue.


Litecoin was intended to be asic resistant, as has been mentioned before.  An asic for litecoin could be made, however it is unlikely because it would be a very intricate asic.  Also meaning very expensive.  The main advantage of the asic is efficiency and cost.  Amd can manufacture graphics cards and sell them at a reasonable price because they sell millions of them.  Imagine a company making something as intricate as a gpu processor, except they wont sell nearly as many units as amd does and has to rely on preorder for most of there financing.  Low quantity means higher cost.  Higher design cost, higher manufacturing cost and higher cost to the customer.  The only advantage the asic has left is efficiency.  Would you pay 3-4 times as much for the same hashing power if the unit used less electricity?  I cant see it being a successful venture.

[flynn]

Maybe. But Litecoin let me profit from my GPU, not bitcoin anymore.

[Vigil]

Litecoin just doesn't see the magnitude of benefit from ASICs, it isn't that it is resistant or "not supposed to be mined with ASICs" or whatever. Its the memory-intensive nature of scrypt mining that doesn't allow the advantages of ASIC use in Bitcoin. mining.

[repairguy]

Its the memory-intensive nature of scrypt mining that doesn't allow the advantages of ASIC use in Bitcoin. mining.

So the memory intensive nature of scrypt mining makes it difficult or increasingly expensive to make a litecoin asic?  Litecoin was designed to be memory intensive?  But it wasn't made asic resistant?