
Bitcoin Network Doubles to 2 PH/s in Four Weeks; the First 1 PH/s Took 4.7 Years - CrunchyJams
http://thegenesisblock.com/bitcoin-network-doubles-2-phs-four-weeks-first-1-phs-took-4-7-years/
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geetee
When this lunacy ends and people are left with racks of useless miners, is
there anything they can be repurposed for?

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qnr
Why lunacy? You need a huge amount of computing power to make a distributed
currency resilient against attacks by the likes of NSA, hostile foreign
states, etc.

And to answer your question, no, the chips cannot be repurposed for anything
else.

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mikeash
This is a good point that's easy to forget. Mining is not a zero-sum game, but
rather increased mining activity increases the security of the network as a
whole. Whether it's worth throwing all these resources into Bitcoin in the
first place is another question, but at least it's not the case that nothing
changes when everybody doubles their hashing power.

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gabemart
I'm curious if the development of ASICs generally increases or decreases the
security of the network.

It seems to me that the resilience of the network to attack doesn't depend on
the total computing power of the network, but on the dollar cost of the total
computing power of the network.

If ASIC deployment increases the computing power of the network 10x, but the
availability of ASICs reduces the cost per unit of computing power by 11x, I
would think it makes the network as a whole less secure.

In other words, the existence of ASICs increases the computing power of the
network, but the existence of ASICs also makes it cheaper for an adversary to
buy boatloads of targeted computing power to attack the network.

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mikeash
It would depend on your supposed adversary.

If you're defending against "random wealthy person wants to subvert the
network" then I think you're right. You make it cheaper for them at the same
time it's cheaper for you. Your defense is adding more people (or at least
more money for legitimate mining), not technology.

On the other hand, if you're defending against e.g. the NSA, then they already
have the ability to make their own hardware like this, so you're not helping
them any further.

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jasonlingx
I think most people are missing the bigger picture implication here: if 1 or 2
companies can double the bitcoin network in 4 weeks, then the network is not
and probably never will be safe from attacks by the likes of the NSA and such.

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modeless
I think you're missing the implication here. Until now, an attacker could go
after Bitcoin by using superior technology to compute hashes faster than
everyone else. But now, these new companies are using the best technology
available. There is no superior technology that would allow the NSA or any
other single attacker to compete with 28nm ASICs produced in commercial
volumes.

Once 28nm bitcoin ASICs are widely distributed, the bitcoin network will be
safe from a 51% attack even from governments.

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jasonlingx
> There is no superior technology

I think you need to assert that there _never will be_ any superior
technology...

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modeless
All I need to assert is there will never be any radically superior technology
that is accessible to the NSA long before it is accessible to commercial
bitcoin miners, and I think that's plausible. The NSA doesn't innovate in
semiconductor fabrication, Intel and TSMC do. The only way the NSA could
plausibly gain a significant hash rate advantage over commercial bitcoin
miners is by breaking SHA-256, which has nothing to do with hardware.

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deletes
cache:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fthegenesisblock.com%2Fbitcoin-
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taariqlewis
My question would be: How will the blockchain stop attacks when all the
bitcoins have been mined, but computing power continues to increase
thereafter, even at a slowing rate?

Couldn't someone develop better ASICs, long after mining has ended, to launch
a 51% attack? Granted it would be expensive, wouldn't that expense decrease
continuously?

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Groxx
I suspect you're missing one critical bit: miners get the transaction fees of
whatever transactions they include in the block. They're mining _blocks of
transactions_ , not _coins_ , approximately once every 10 minutes. Coins are
just blocks that the mob of users claims are valuable.

This is true even after the last "coin" has been mined. Coins are incentive to
jump-start the economy when there isn't much activity, the end-game is all in
mining blocks _to get transaction fees_ , at which point it pretty much self-
balances. Miners continue mining as long as it's profitable, and transaction
fees maintain a level which keeps it that way (but not too profitable, or
there would be more miners competing for them).

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Synaesthesia
And 3PH is just around the corner!
[http://bitcoin.sipa.be](http://bitcoin.sipa.be)

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TomGullen
Am I correct in saying this is good news for BTC, as it makes a 50% network
attack more and more expensive to execute?

Going into the future, when difficulty is high enough or all Bitcoins are
mined, would some of this computing power shut down?

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jafaku
You are correct.

No, because the payer can decide the fee to pay, and the miner can decide the
minimum he will accept. So the free market will take care of the fees for the
miners.

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WayneS
Ahh that is kinda how "exponential growth" works. But clearly the exponential
part is recent because if you project backwards at doubling every 4 weeks you
find the hash rate started at one hash every 28 days. ;-)

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nullc
It actually had as-high/higher rates of growth in 2011:
[http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-ever.png](http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-ever.png)

