

Latest Shipment of Avalon ASICs Could Increase Network Hashrate By 500% - cgi_man
http://thegenesisblock.com/latest-shipment-of-avalon-asics-could-increase-network-hashrate-by-500/

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ambiate
ASICs are going to rid a large amount of pools. GPU mining and FPGA mining
will fade out, because the value returned will be so minimal compared to these
monsters. There is a finite amount of bitcoins released for a set amount of
time. The power consumed/bitcoin return ratio on GPUs/FPGAs as the difficulty
rises due to the ASICs will just leave people frustrated.

GPU mining had one benefit. Once you gave up, you could at least resell the
video card or play games. ASICs are basically trash. The FPGAs can be recycled
on ebay.

For those uninitiated: Assume I am on an i7 2600k and you are on a Pentium 2
clocked at a fine 200mhz. If we are mining in the same pool (just us), I will
probably do 99.99% of the processing, and receive that return. You probably
spent more power than me with your outdated technology, and only received
0.000001% of the payout.

~~~
enraged_camel
I think the tech has gone CPU > GPU > FPGA > ASIC.

Makes me wonder what will come next.

~~~
zanny
You do realize the whole premise of an application-specific-integrated-circuit
is to do one thing the best. If properly architected, an ASIC that does the
most SHA hashing with the least transistors will be the best miner, inherent
to the technology.

~~~
aristidb
That doesn't mean the designs cannot be improved... And once somebody releases
an improved design, the older ASICs become far less useful.

~~~
ohazi
At this point, an "improved" design would have to mean algorithmic
improvements to a hardware SHA algorithm (i.e. not likely).

Improvements that you can actually count on would be die shrinks, but these
will provide returns in accordance with the tail end of Moore's law. Compared
to the multiple-order-of-magnitude improvements from the CPU -> GPU/FPGA ->
ASIC jumps, these improvements likely won't even be worth writing home about.

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swang
Will these things be good for anything else once faster/better miners are
introduced?

~~~
clarkmoody
Miners of this type can be pointed to other cryptocurrencies that use the same
proof-of-work function.

~~~
bcoates
You would expect anyone else in the world to avoid compatible proof-of-work
functions for exactly that reason.

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justanother
I for one, look forward to all the cheap 6990s that are about to hit eBay.

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qwertzlcoatl
And Butterfly Labs still hasn't shipped their orders from Day 1. There will be
an awful lot of people who will never see a return on their investment from
this venture.

~~~
Aqua_Geek
It looks like they're shipping orders up to Oct 2012 now:
[https://forums.butterflylabs.com/blogs/bfl_jody/](https://forums.butterflylabs.com/blogs/bfl_jody/)

Or am I reading that wrong?

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trothoun
Doesn't the reliability of bitcoin stem from it being very difficult for any
one entity to control over 50% of the computing power in the network? News
like this makes it seem like a state sponsored actor could do it without too
much trouble.

~~~
wmf
It's easy to get over 50% of the hashing power: just buy it. Bitcoin is
especially vulnerable during technology transitions; e.g. in July 2010 a
single Radeon GPU was more powerful than the entire Bitcoin network so you
could have performed a 51% attack for $300 plus some epic hacking.

~~~
xyzzy123
Right, but of course Satoshi's argument is that it would be far more valuable
for you to have just used that Radeon to mine ;)

~~~
dragonwriter
> Right, but of course Satoshi's argument is that it would be far more
> valuable for you to have just used that Radeon to mine

Value depends on personal desire... Not all people want the same things.

~~~
xyzzy123
That's why we use money to exchange goods and services ;)

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ihsw
The flood of newly minted BTC will likely cause exchange rates to crater.
Hopefully the increase in available BTC will stabilize prices as
individuals/small groups will have to expend more capital to influence prices
in their favor.

The next six months are probably going to be a little crazy, hopefully it'll
drive BTC out of the hands of speculators and into the hands of actual users
of the currency.

~~~
cgi_man
The creation rate of BTC is fixed every 10 minutes. More ASIC power does not
equal more BTC.

~~~
jeffasinger
Not quite. The difficulty is set to average that a new block is found
approximately every 10minutes. However, if lots of capacity is added all at
once, the difficulty might not change for several days, and blocks will be
generated at a faster rate during that time, as it is only updated every 2016
blocks.

[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty)

~~~
cgi_man
Somewhat splitting hairs... it's adjusted to 10 minute blocks, and there's
also a huge variability in how frequently they are discovered. Even if the
average was 10 min, there are blocks found within the same minute, or with 30+
minute gaps.

~~~
sp332
Variability wouldn't matter if the average over time was alright. But it's not
just spitting hairs: BTC generation is significantly ahead of schedule.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5780861](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5780861)

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rheide
Would a quantum computer be able to solve these kind of problems instantly?

~~~
ambiate
The difficulty would rise to compensate for the advent of quantum computing.
The danger of quantum computing in bitcoin is holding the 51%+ computing power
and being able to forge transactions in the 'books'.

Source: [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/6062/what-
effects...](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/6062/what-effects-
would-a-scalable-quantum-computer-have-on-bitcoin)

