

The story so far - alphydan
http://www.avalon-asics.com/

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mullingitover
If I were manufacturing what are essentially money printing machines, I think
I'd put some serious efforts into security.

On second thought, if I were able to produce machines which can create more
currency than I'm selling the machines for, I'd probably think twice about
selling them at all.

~~~
M4v3R
Creating these required huge amount of initial investment. That's why all
these companies were taking preorders - to cover up initial expenses. It would
of course be ideal for them just to manufacture the machines only for
themselves, but if they had money needed for that I doubt they would be
interested in some Bitcoin thing in the first place.

Now, I'm pretty sure that they left a considerable amount of chips to
theirselves and are mining with them for quite some time.

~~~
jamesaguilar
To be fair, it's also possible that enthusiasm for bitcoins would be much
lower if the Joe Randoms of the internet didn't feel like they could get in on
the gold rush. I suspect that is a big part of why people are interested in
it. From that perspective, it seems like a good idea to sell some of the
ASICs, even if that is a loss under the constant-demand assumption.

------
glitch003
I don't understand why knowing who the team members are IRL is such a huge
"security threat". Can someone please explain that to me?

~~~
robflynn
Mostly for the reasons specified in the story - people started showing up at
other people's houses.

If some sketchy folks know how to get ahold of someone who produces powerful
mining machines, why not kidnap the person and hold them for ransom in
exchange for large amounts of bitcoins / large amounts of machines for mining
coins.

It's more a security threat to the persons involved than it is to the business
as a whole.

That was my understanding of it, at least.

~~~
glitch003
Yeah but why is that unique to bitcoin? How is this different than if people
started showing up at Google employee's houses because they know they're well
paid? How is this different than people showing up at any wealthy person's
house to kidnap them?

My point is that keeping their address secret isn't how wealthy people protect
themselves, so why is this so different for the avalon team?

~~~
john_b
The difference here is that they aren't perceived to be wealthy now, but
perceived to have the means to generate significant wealth quickly in the
future.

