What Else Could You do With Mining Hardware?

[MRVN]

Hypothetically speaking, lets say mining becomes pointless and way to difficult to do due to it getting harder and harder, and/or bitcoin peaks its mining limits.

What will become of the purpose built mining hardware? At the end of the day most hardware (KnC for example) cost well over $5,000, and their new one nearing $13,000, thats a lot of money whichever way you look at it, so my question is, what else could purpose built mining hardware be used for, other then mining of course?

It's just a question thats been on my mind, thats all.

[nate008]

Hypothetically speaking, lets say mining becomes pointless and way to difficult to do due to it getting harder and harder, and/or bitcoin peaks its mining limits.

What will become of the purpose built mining hardware? At the end of the day most hardware (KnC for example) cost well over $5,000, and their new one nearing $13,000, thats a lot of money whichever way you look at it, so my question is, what else could purpose built mining hardware be used for, other then mining of course?

It's just a question thats been on my mind, thats all.

Bitcoin mining can't become pointless.
Once nobody is mining , bitcoin is dead because no transactions are being relayed anymore.

Asics designed for SHA256 can be only used for this purpose. Just how any ASIC is used only for what it has been built.

[MRVN]

OK, thanks!

Could you use purpose built miners that mine bitcoin, to mine other coins like Litecoin?

[nate008]

OK, thanks!

Could you use purpose built miners that mine bitcoin, to mine other coins like Litecoin?

No ,an  Asic designed for bitcoin can mine only sha265 coins.
Lite coin is using the scrypt algorithm.

[Kiwicon]

This is a very interesting question, lets suppose that the KnC becomes obsolete for mining purposes.
What will happen to all these rigs? They will probably follow the Beta-Max to the scrapheap unless some other ingenious use is invented for them.
That being said, with Moore's Law still holding true I see them going to the scrap heap.
(Quantum computing is indeed a reality)

[nate008]

This is a very interesting question, lets suppose that the KnC becomes obsolete for mining purposes.
What will happen to all these rigs? They will probably follow the Beta-Max to the scrapheap unless some other ingenious use is invented for them.
That being said, with Moore's Law still holding true I see them going to the scrap heap.
(Quantum computing is indeed a reality)

You can still mine some alt coins that are designed with sha256.
Also, the difficulty would have to insanely high so that running one of those would be higher that the reward.
A difficulty 60x times bigger based on the numbers from http://mining.thegenesisblock.com , and BTC still at the same price.

[Fonexn]

u always can sell hardware for any price..

[bubacat]

..or you can mine any other coin with sha256 encryption...

[Slavboy]

Or donate to yours local museum after decade.

[vadoff]

Nothing, all you could do is break Sha-256 encryption, of which mining is the only profitable thing.

[-ck]

Nothing, all you could do is break Sha-256 encryption, of which mining is the only profitable thing.

Can't even do that for mining is a specific sized message that is doubly sha256 hashed and the asics only return a specific return value when changing part of the message and a return hash is below X.

There are only 4 well recognised alternative uses for asics used for bitcoin mining: Doorstop, bookend, paperweight and boat anchor.

[frank754]

According to Coinwarz, there are several other SHA-256 coins out there, like E-Mark & Terracoin. Right now though, it would take longer to mine an equivalent value in BTC with the same hash rate (for example at 30GHs would take you over 70 days to mine enough to be equivalent to one BTC). But if the bitcoin difficulty became high enough, could these just as easily be mined using ASIC's enough for a better ROI?

[drb0n3z]

According to Coinwarz, there are several other SHA-256 coins out there, like E-Mark & Terracoin. Right now though, it would take longer to mine an equivalent value in BTC with the same hash rate (for example at 30GHs would take you over 70 days to mine enough to be equivalent to one BTC). But if the bitcoin difficulty became high enough, could these just as easily be mined using ASIC's enough for a better ROI?

Right now, with btc being so difficult to mine, I imagine the best thing overall is to mine something else. Yes, it takes 70 days but at 70 days you are spending roughly 2 months worth of electricity to make, currently 750ish bucks, which overall IS an increase as compared to not even mining that amount or possibly .02 of that amount with btc.

Am I wrong in how I am thinking on this?