Will Scrypt currencies survive the invasion of ASIC?

[nlsupernova]

I was wondering if i should be investing in the asics that are comming out now, or if i would be better off sticking with my GPU farm.
on the surface it might look like a no brainer, the same performance or better with masive reductions in power consumption compared to gpu mining.

But it seems to me there is a much bigger issue that nobody seems to talk about.

Why would anybody even care about Scrypt currencies once asics take over?

as far as i can tell, the bulk of the community that supports the scrypt coins are the miners themselves. the only coin that has a little exposure to the general public is doge, even more so then ltc i think.
and since most miners are just using their gaming rig to min, and the actuall big guys with dedicated rigs are small in numbers in comparison, what will be left of the community once asics hit with full force?

there are allready multiple new algos for dedicated gpu mining, and probably more on the way. so when profitabilaty isn`t there anymore to mine scrypt with gaming rigs, these people will just jump on the new dominant gpu algo, leaving scrypt behind and never look back. you can exchange these new coins straight to btc.
the ones left supporting the community by then will be the few that have big scrypt farms in datacenters. mining coins nobody is interested in.

Is there really room for 3 major players in the crypto scene at this time? i doubt it. and GPU mining wont go away anytime soon.

the only reason for existance scrypt had to this point was gpu mining. for people who didn`t want to go all in on the bitcoin asics. there is not much to support it once that advantage goes. Before asics hit the bitcoin scene, interest in litecoin was minimal. and once it loses its GPU edge it will become minimal again.
LTC has no investment advantages over bitcoin, no real world uses, and most importantly no exposure to the world.

when most people start to move over to the next gpu algo, the scrypt userbase will slowly die away.

with the transition to ASIC, scrypt will become a competitor to bitcoin again, rather then an alternative.
And i dont think the scrypt community is strong enough to compete with bitcoin directly. especially with new algos becomming more popular fast.

the `alternative`title will be passed on to the next big algo, leaving scrypt behind fighting an impossible fight with the almighty bitcoin.

if i decide to stick with my gpus, i will probably  loose interest in scrypt coins, maybe trade some on cryptsy, but thats it. and i guess most people will do the same.

so that leaves me wondering, what will keep scrypt alive?
i cant really answer that. and my guess is, it wont....

[markm]

If all that keeps GPU-mined coins alive is the miners, it should not matter which algorithm they are using, they are still just a bunch of miners manufacturing coins that no one other than the miners themselves want...

So it kind of looks like any coin whose supporters are not willing to manufacture and deploy ASICs to secure it is a very poor investment.

Better to invest in something whose supporters are confident enough in and determined enough to secure that they are willing and able to deploy cutting edge special purpose technology to secure it?

-MarkM-

[hostmaster]

There is reusage potential of GPUs. So i think it'll not be at least this year.

[toddburme]

The whole system seems a bit iffy.

[nlsupernova]

The whole system seems a bit iffy.

iffy might be the wrong word, i just think there is room for 1 big asic driven currency, and 1 big gpu driven one. and i doubt scrypt will be either one of them in the future, it will live in the shadows of bitcoin. the new myspace

[nlsupernova]

If all that keeps GPU-mined coins alive is the miners, it should not matter which algorithm they are using, they are still just a bunch of miners manufacturing coins that no one other than the miners themselves want...

So it kind of looks like any coin whose supporters are not willing to manufacture and deploy ASICs to secure it is a very poor investment.

Better to invest in something whose supporters are confident enough in and determined enough to secure that they are willing and able to deploy cutting edge special purpose technology to secure it?

-MarkM-

i`m not saying the miners are the only ones, but they are a big chunk of it, and once they leave and move over to a new algo, will what is left be strong enough to fight for market acceptance at two fronts?

[markm]

Pure Scrypt ASICs are useless for anything other than scrypt so presumably people who have them will merged mine all the scrypt coins that they can and if there enough such ASICs out there all those merged coins should be able to attain a decent hashrate...

-MarkM-

[eCoinomist]

The new trend is mining altcoins with specialised GPU algos. So yes, ASIC Scrypt mining investment just doesn't make sense to me, because it's too much risks and it's not much better than building a GPU miner, in terms of hashing rate (at least for now).

With GPU mining you get all of these benefits:
a) big community support (even from the old bitcoin community who still have GPU rigs/farms)
b) adaptable to mine new generation altcoins that are still popping out every day, with slight changes that only require modded CGMiner (with an ASIC Scrypt miner, you will probably be stuck mining certain existing coins)
c) if anything goes wrong, Bitcoins crashes, etc. you still can recoup the investment by selling back the computer parts on eBay.

For strategic investment point of view, the saving in power consumption from ASIC scrypt miner just isn't worth it's risk and limited potential, tbh.

[sadface]

they will survive

[illodin]

Better to invest in something whose supporters are confident enough in and determined enough to secure that they are willing and able to deploy cutting edge special purpose technology to secure it?

I don't think they are that confident. They just happen to have a lot of money to invest and can afford to take the gamble to invest in ASIC just in case that would make them even more money.

[cryptohunter]

hopefully kills off mining profit totally.... we need most people to sell their rigs and put the money into buying trading the coins.... tell their pals about 100% profits per day....attract more buyers/traders than miners. Miners are saturated.... too many around not enough buyers. This is a self regulating system really.

Only the hardcore and wealthy will be upgrading to ever more powerful asics.

If you're half decent at trading you can make far more than from mining ...even jumping in on an instamine is getting less likely now kgw is becoming standard (which is a good thing)

Soon miners will be leaving in droves. I will keep a couple of rigs on for fun until they are totally and utterly useless for minging altogether, but get rid of the rest and just trade the coins.

Add to this the next gen of coins really seems to have little use for pow....

Ebay is going to be crammed with 7950s soon.

[stealth923]

I agree with the OP - I think that once ASIC's hit most of the GPU miners will move to the newer scrypt algos with n-factor which will render the ASICs useless. GPU miners have such a big community and that's where the value gets injected into a coin.

The important point is the reason why a coin has value is that there are a lot of people mining / investing and trading and a large percentage of these people are the GPU miners. If all of them move to the ASIC resistant coins, the normal scrypt coins will only be propped up in value by the very small number of ASIC miners....Tell me how the small number of ASIC miners will have enough money to keep a coin alive...they can mine 10 billion scrypt coins in a day but if the majority of the community is investing and trading in ASIC resistant coins, then what use is the ASIC???

Look at DarkCoin, VertCoin, MicroCoin and even Ethereum are heading toward ASIC resistance because the goal is to distribute and decentralize....not keep the wealth in the big fat cats who are such a minority.

[markm]

Better to invest in something whose supporters are confident enough in and determined enough to secure that they are willing and able to deploy cutting edge special purpose technology to secure it?

I don't think they are that confident. They just happen to have a lot of money to invest and can afford to take the gamble to invest in ASIC just in case that would make them even more money.

I was really thinking more of the bitcoin family of merged mined coins than any scrypt coins. Ever since DOGE showed how easily the scrypt field could be blown away overnight by a meme I have been dubious about scrypt, but maybe once scrypt ASICs are commonplace the masses of garbage scrypt crap will be blown away and either litecoin or DOGE will emerge as the clear winner or maybe even better will merge as part of the swcrypt family of merged mined coins...

-MarkM-

[markm]

I agree with the OP - I think that once ASIC's hit most of the GPU miners will move to the newer scrypt algos with n-factor which will render the ASICs useless. GPU miners have such a big community and that's where the value gets injected into a coin.

The important point is the reason why a coin has value is that there are a lot of people mining / investing and trading and a large percentage of these people are the GPU miners. If all of them move to the ASIC resistant coins, the normal scrypt coins will only be propped up in value by the very small number of ASIC miners....Tell me how the small number of ASIC miners will have enough money to keep a coin alive...they can mine 10 billion scrypt coins in a day but if the majority of the community is investing and trading in ASIC resistant coins, then what use is the ASIC???

Look at DarkCoin, VertCoin, MicroCoin and even Ethereum are heading toward ASIC resistance because the goal is to distribute and decentralize....not keep the wealth in the big fat cats who are such a minority.

So called ASIC resistance simply makes it less likely that small ASIC-designers will get around to making ASICs for the "resistant" coin, thus in the long run such coins will probably end up more centralised rather than less centralised as only the largest/richest ASIC companies will have ASIC farms mining them...

-MarkM-

[wasamata]

That's why POS is the way to go especially those coins with short to zero POW time frame so as to decentralize the balances. After short time the coin is pointless to mine therefore becomes ASIC, GPU and CPU resistant yet continues to inflate inside peoples wallets simply by holding on.

[64dimensions]

You should be more worried about being run down by a stampede of unicorns rather than Scrypt Asics killing your interest in mining.


~BCX~

Why are you sticking your head in the sand? There are Scrypt ASICs IN PEOPLE'S HANDS right the fuck now.

Can you please post some stats so we can all get a good laugh at the $$$ to khs ratio.


~BCX~

Fair enough, it does suck right now. But you know as well as I do that ASICs don't get worse, they get better. And usually pretty goddamned fast.

This is much different from SHA Asics as memory isn't an issue.

Do the math on the required memory and get back to me about efficiency.


~BCX~

Are you telling me technology doesn't advance?

Wolfie, there are many subtleties:

1) The custom chip production ecology. As another poster mentioned about mining ASICS, they are at the bottom of the priority ladder when it comes to access to state of the semiconductor fabs and processes. There are about 10 other chip applications in line probably starting with anything mobile (like mobile microprocessors).

2) Mining ASICS are already at 28nm.

3) The most interesting recent result is the GTX 750 Ti GPU: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2014/02/20/nvidia-is-about-to-steal-the-cryptocurrency-mining-crown-from-amd/ which basically cuts the power consumption and price as compared to the comparable AMD GPU.
4) Potential wild: One area that has mystified me with all the money on the table is the software side. Is there any benefit to custom AMD drivers or a custom CGminer hot rodded for GPU mining?