I for one, look forward to all the cheap 6990s that are about to hit eBay.
Latest Shipment of Avalon ASICs Could Increase Network Hashrate By 500%
31–40 of 47 posts
Re: Latest Shipment of Avalon ASICs Could Increase Network Hashrate By 500%
#32The 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.
There isn't really a "flood" of newly minted BTC.
The system performs closed loop control keeping the supply relatively constant.
Re: Latest Shipment of Avalon ASICs Could Increase Network Hashrate By 500%
#33The 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.
There isn't really a "flood" of newly minted BTC. The system performs closed loop control keeping the supply relatively constant.
Supply as a whole is constant, but supply between exchanges and people isn't constant.
Re: Latest Shipment of Avalon ASICs Could Increase Network Hashrate By 500%
#34The 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.
The creation rate of BTC is fixed every 10 minutes. More ASIC power does not equal more BTC.
Creation is indeed fixed and constant, but the supply of BTC within the exchanges isn't. The new owners of these ASIC boxes will find themselves in an excess of supply and they'll quite happily flood the market with this increased supply, or they'll spend the coins at merchants.
Contrastingly other miners with inferior machines will find themselves behind the curve with a smaller source of income.
Re: Latest Shipment of Avalon ASICs Could Increase Network Hashrate By 500%
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
There isn't really a "flood" of newly minted BTC. The system performs closed loop control keeping the supply relatively constant.
Supply as a whole is constant, but supply between exchanges and people isn't constant.
Absolutely, but what makes you think that the people with increased hash power will have less tight handed behavior than the others? Why not the opposite?
Re: Latest Shipment of Avalon ASICs Could Increase Network Hashrate By 500%
#36ASICs 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 coul…
I think the tech has gone CPU > GPU > FPGA > ASIC. Makes me wonder what will come next.
There is no next step. ASIC is the end-all be-all.
(Not even quantum computing can help - there is no known algorithm to help find SHA256 preimages, which is what would be necessary for a Bitcoin mining breakthrough.)
Re: Latest Shipment of Avalon ASICs Could Increase Network Hashrate By 500%
#37And 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.
Re: Latest Shipment of Avalon ASICs Could Increase Network Hashrate By 500%
#38Will these things be good for anything else once faster/better miners are introduced?
password hash cracking, perhaps? If they're using the same SHA hash.
Re: Latest Shipment of Avalon ASICs Could Increase Network Hashrate By 500%
#39Doesn'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.
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.
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 ;)
Re: Latest Shipment of Avalon ASICs Could Increase Network Hashrate By 500%
#40And 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.
Would you ship them if you could make money by simply using them yourself? I'm a bit skeptical of this whole situation.