ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[punin]

It is a shame that the shares are not actively trading so we could see the price jump upward on this news.

True, this devalues it for everyone.

This does absolutely nothing to devalue these shares. If you want to quickly sell yours, I'm willing to buy them.

[Jutarul]

Update

The samples passed all functionality tests. The power consumption is also within the expected range. And as our overclocking tests had shown, they still have a lot of potentials compared to our original spec. This means that the biggest risk of our project is gone and our NRE is a fruitful spend.

The first production batch of chips will be out of the packaging service tomorrow. Our deploying is on its way.

Well done! You're eternal now. Be sure to put a few of these babies into plastic for donating them to a museum, as this will be the first official ASIC touching the bitcoin network!

Except friedcat was just going to run his own just for asicminer.

Briefly yes. But the new platform is not owned by us. We have more control to it than other third-party platforms. It's also more secure and easier to audit/monitor than others. We couldn't give an exact timeline but also as said before it will be before our first dividend payment, which is in the very near future since the first mining farm using self-designed ICs in the world is about to be born.

This will be a heck of a re-IPO. Make sure to give people enough lead time to get their BTC onto the exchange. Otherwise I see the price overshoot due to liquidity issues. The sky is the limit.

[lophie]

Well, GZ guys.
At the same time, I must admit, IMO bitcoin developers (Gavin and CO) should have forced a hard fork with a new alg, not allowing ASIC taking over BTC. Right now, it seems, 51% of hashing power will be in short time in the hands of few individuals which will mine for themselves. I bet this wasn't the original idea behind BTC..

Well since it is possible some people would eventually do it for any alog. IMO this is the best scenario for it to actually happen. Several groups working on their own designs and a community willing to buy such hardware to decentralize as much as possible and secure the network.

The first horse advantage? Now how would you prevent that in any scenario? Just be glad the first horse is not planning on shitting all over us! 

[beekeeper]

Well, GZ guys.
At the same time, I must admit, IMO bitcoin developers (Gavin and CO) should have forced a hard fork with a new alg, not allowing ASIC taking over BTC. Right now, it seems, 51% of hashing power will be in short time in the hands of few individuals which will mine for themselves. I bet this wasn't the original idea behind BTC..

Well since it is possible some people would eventually do it for any alog. IMO this is the best scenario for it to actually happen. Several groups working on their own designs and a community willing to buy such hardware to decentralize as much as possible and secure the network.

The first horse advantage? Now how would you prevent that in any scenario? Just be glad the first horse is not planning on shitting all over us! 

Algorithm change and fork. As I said, it seems to me, BTC creator thought it as a decentralized currency to be hashed on peoples around the world computers. We are now in worst case scenario, with one very small group able to control more than 51% of hashing power.
Ofc, nothing can be done now and we should congrats the guys which put so much effort and won this race. But again, I cant stop noticing where BTC started and where it ended today..

[BlackBison]

Algorithm change and fork. As I said, it seems to me, BTC creator thought it as a decentralized currency to be hashed on peoples around the world computers. We are now in worst case scenario, with one very small group able to control more than 51% of hashing power.
Ofc, nothing can be done now and we should congrats the guys which put so much effort and won this race. But again, I cant stop noticing where BTC started and where it ended today..

There is no need to fork anything. There already exists an ASIC resilient altchain that is almost identical to Bitcoin except for the algorithm: Litecoin.

It is a difficult choice: decentralised mining that is 'more in the original spirit' of what Satoshi intended (according to some) or a more professional but centralised mining system that has a much higher efficiency and hashrate (hopefully).

Let us see what the free market chooses... personally I don't see why it wouldn't choose both as redundancy is always useful if nothing else!

[Jutarul]

Well, GZ guys.
At the same time, I must admit, IMO bitcoin developers (Gavin and CO) should have forced a hard fork with a new alg, not allowing ASIC taking over BTC. Right now, it seems, 51% of hashing power will be in short time in the hands of few individuals which will mine for themselves. I bet this wasn't the original idea behind BTC..

Well since it is possible some people would eventually do it for any alog. IMO this is the best scenario for it to actually happen. Several groups working on their own designs and a community willing to buy such hardware to decentralize as much as possible and secure the network.

The first horse advantage? Now how would you prevent that in any scenario? Just be glad the first horse is not planning on shitting all over us!  

Algorithm change and fork. As I said, it seems to me, BTC creator thought it as a decentralized currency to be hashed on peoples around the world computers. We are now in worst case scenario, with one very small group able to control more than 51% of hashing power.
Ofc, nothing can be done now and we should congrats the guys which put so much effort and won this race. But again, I cant stop noticing where BTC started and where it ended today..

If you're crying for an algorithmic change, you didn't really understand the technology underlying bitcoin mining. There's no escaping from ASICs in the long run. The only thing you will gain from algorithmic changes is to destabilize the mining industry and make the POW system vulnerable.

With respect to litecoin... same story - but nobody would seriously spent the NRE cost on that blockchain, that's why there are no ASICs for LTC - yet (and I doubt there ever will be any).

[beekeeper]

If you're crying for an algorithmic change, you didn't really understand the technology underlying bitcoin mining. There's no escaping from ASICs in the long run. The only thing you will gain from algorithmic changes is to destabilize the mining industry and make the POW system vulnerable.

With respect to litecoin... same story - but nobody would seriously spent the NRE cost on that blockchain, that's why there are no ASICs for LTC - yet (and I doubt there ever will be any).

I am not crying about anything. And ASIC could be avoided if it developers wouldn't try so hard to stay in their comfort zone.
I am just noticing that today status is 180 degrees of what Satoshi probably had in his mind. And no worries, LTC ASICs are way more harder to be built than BTC.

[Jutarul]

I am not crying about anything. And ASIC could be avoided if it developers wouldn't try so hard to stay in their comfort zone.
I am just noticing that today status is 180 degrees of what Satoshi probably had in his mind. And no worries, LTC ASICs are way more harder to be built than BTC.

What did he have in mind? Please post a reference.

[beekeeper]

I am not crying about anything. And ASIC could be avoided if it developers wouldn't try so hard to stay in their comfort zone.
I am just noticing that today status is 180 degrees of what Satoshi probably had in his mind. And no worries, LTC ASICs are way more harder to be built than BTC.

What did he have in mind? Please post a reference.

Decentralized currency, p2p, transactions signed by anonymous people around the world, definitely not 1 guy in China with 51% hash power, at least this I understand from his paper.
Again, I'm not saying its a bad project, I congratulate friedcat and his friends, well done guys.

[Luke-Jr]

Well, GZ guys.
At the same time, I must admit, IMO bitcoin developers (Gavin and CO) should have forced a hard fork with a new alg, not allowing ASIC taking over BTC. Right now, it seems, 51% of hashing power will be in short time in the hands of few individuals which will mine for themselves. I bet this wasn't the original idea behind BTC..

Well since it is possible some people would eventually do it for any alog. IMO this is the best scenario for it to actually happen. Several groups working on their own designs and a community willing to buy such hardware to decentralize as much as possible and secure the network.

The first horse advantage? Now how would you prevent that in any scenario? Just be glad the first horse is not planning on shitting all over us! 

Algorithm change and fork. As I said, it seems to me, BTC creator thought it as a decentralized currency to be hashed on peoples around the world computers. We are now in worst case scenario, with one very small group able to control more than 51% of hashing power.
Ofc, nothing can be done now and we should congrats the guys which put so much effort and won this race. But again, I cant stop noticing where BTC started and where it ended today..

With consumer-available ASICs literally right around the corner, hopefully this concern will go away as quick as Deepbit's majority did. Changing the algorithm would only make sense IMO if it was a long-term risk.

There is no need to fork anything. There already exists an ASIC resilient altchain that is almost identical to Bitcoin except for the algorithm: Litecoin.

While there might be real (short-term) concerns posed by this, it's no excuse to scam. Litecoin is not ASIC-resilient. The only reason scrypt ASICs don't exist is because there's no value in it. If Litecoin were to ever become of significant value, it would be just as simple to make a scrypt ASIC - and unlike with Bitcoin's SHA256d, a scrypt-based PoW would be taken over completely by it.

[niko]

Decentralized currency, p2p, transactions signed by anonymous people around the world, definitely not 1 guy in China with 51% hash power, at least this I understand from his paper.
Again, I'm not saying its a bad project, I congratulate friedcat and his friends, well done guys.

By the same token, back in GPU days anyone could have invested a couple of millions of dollars and bought enough GPUs to have 51% of the network - for a while, anyway. Was there a problem? Now anyone could invest in and build FPGAs or ASICs to do the same - for a while, anyway. This topic has been regurgitated over and over again, plenty to read and think about. I'm not worried about it.

[nathanrees19]

Decentralized currency, p2p, transactions signed by anonymous people around the world, definitely not 1 guy in China with 51% hash power, at least this I understand from his paper.
Again, I'm not saying its a bad project, I congratulate friedcat and his friends, well done guys.

Do you really think that all the competing ASIC projects will fail?

[DutchBrat]

Decentralized currency, p2p, transactions signed by anonymous people around the world, definitely not 1 guy in China with 51% hash power, at least this I understand from his paper.
Again, I'm not saying its a bad project, I congratulate friedcat and his friends, well done guys.

Do you really think that all the competing ASIC projects will fail?

And it won't be tomorrow when they have 51%, if they ever get there. We are talking about 6TH - 12TH in January.... hardly 51% if you take into account today's network speed
Avalon might start delivering in January, even BFL can still make it before the end of the month. Nothing to worry about in my opinion...

[beekeeper]

I am thinking they will have a big window of opportunity at least ..

[kano]

I am thinking they will have a big window of opportunity at least ..

You don't get that there is no point to doing a 51% attack?
If they mine 51% normally - good for them.
If they stop others from producing blocks ... well oddly enough they will find very quickly that either:
1) BTC will shut down while a hard fork is made to stop them and suddenly they'll lose at least what extra they gained from the 51% attack if not more.
1a) and possibly the hard fork will extend that to making their ASIC worthless (yes it can be done)
or
2) The affect on BTC will be dramatic enough to make the price drop significantly and thus make them lose due to that also.

The risk of losing due to doing a 51% attack are certainly much greater than the chance of gaining from an attack vs mining normally at 51%

[SgtSpike]

I am thinking they will have a big window of opportunity at least ..

A big window of opportunity to do what, exactly?

[SebastianJu]

As far as i read about 51% and double spend attacks it looks to me they are more a theoretic problem than a real one because in practice the risks for the attacker are way higher than the potential gain.

@friedcat... Great news. Better than awaited. And regarding the wishes of shareholders here in the thread i would prefer to set all things like "Mails with number of shares", "adding shares to an exchange" and so on behind the work to make the asics run and mine. Im sure thats your preference too but here are so many voices asking to work on secondary interests.

[beekeeper]

I am thinking they will have a big window of opportunity at least ..

A big window of opportunity to do what, exactly?

Guys, you miss the point I raised, the problem is that, in my view, the control (at least at potential level - still, this wont change the fact) over network crunched after 4 years in hands of one entity, instead of keep dispersing among the many..

[SgtSpike]

As far as i read about 51% and double spend attacks it looks to me they are more a theoretic problem than a real one because in practice the risks for the attacker are way higher than the potential gain.

@friedcat... Great news. Better than awaited. And regarding the wishes of shareholders here in the thread i would prefer to set all things like "Mails with number of shares", "adding shares to an exchange" and so on behind the work to make the asics run and mine. Im sure thats your preference too but here are so many voices asking to work on secondary interests.

The only reason someone would want to stage a 51% attack is if they wanted to destroy Bitcoin.  Because that is exactly what it would accomplish.

I am thinking they will have a big window of opportunity at least ..

A big window of opportunity to do what, exactly?

Guys, you miss the point I raised, the problem is that, in my view, the control over network crunched after 4 years in hands of one entity, instead of keep dispersing among the many..

We all agree with you that it is not a good thing, but it IS something that will be resolved in the very near future (when the other ASIC vendors ship out), likely well before ASICMINER even gets close to 51%.

[DutchBrat]

Update

The samples passed all functionality tests. The power consumption is also within the expected range. And as our overclocking tests had shown, they still have a lot of potentials compared to our original spec. This means that the biggest risk of our project is gone and our NRE is a fruitful spend.

The first production batch of chips will be out of the packaging service tomorrow. Our deploying is on its way.

Thanks for all the hard work you guys did and kudos !!!

Will there be a website so we can see, in real time, our hash rate and how many BTC ASICMINER has mined.... or is that too much to ask