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Bitcoin ASIC Miner from BFL, finally

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Re: Bitcoin ASIC Miner from BFL, finally

#91

Post by XorNot »

maxerickson wrote: post #87
XorNot wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean that 2-4% range with the Fed is legally mandated to keep it in, and has been wildly successful in doing so for the past 40 years?

How are you fitting the 1970s into that statement?

By observing that the USD did not "collapse" despite it?

Plenty of BitCoin people seem adamant the USD is definitely going to collapse, but can't explain why it hasn't already, or where the instability causing it too would come from, or why smaller, less wide-spread currencies don't do the same barring exceptional circumstances (i.e. Zimbabwe).

Re: Bitcoin ASIC Miner from BFL, finally

#92

Post by ValentineC »

jpdoctor wrote: post #44
w-ll wrote: post #2

I ordered the 60gh/s SC Single the night preorderes opened like a year ago. I think there are maybe ~7 orders before me. I hope I get it soon. I paid 220 btc@5.45 usd for it, let's see if its worth it.

> 220 btc Holy moly: $27K.

If he paid with Bitcoin, it was probably handled through BitPay, which might have in turn converted it to USD before paying it out to the company. I'm not sure the company could have foreseen the spike in BTC and held off the USD for that long.

I wonder who reaped the most out of this.

Re: Bitcoin ASIC Miner from BFL, finally

#93

Post by anigbrowl »

fleitz wrote: post #61
anigbrowl wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold fell out of widespread use as a currency after the mining became industrialized. Nobody wants to play in a rigged game.

Tell me more about how gold fell out of use as currency because mining became industrialized. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 I'm not a gold bug and I see many problems with using gold as a currency, namely that the amount of currency in circulation should depend on how much stuff we can dig out of the ground. (In the case of BTC something about how…

I don't think the Bretton woods system counts. That's between countries, I'm talking about everyday preference for gold by individuals. I suppose I should have said specie instead.

Re: Bitcoin ASIC Miner from BFL, finally

#94

Post by maxerickson »

XorNot wrote: post #91
maxerickson wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you fitting the 1970s into that statement?

By observing that the USD did not "collapse" despite it? Plenty of BitCoin people seem adamant the USD is definitely going to collapse, but can't explain why it hasn't already, or where the instability causing it too would come from, or why smaller, less wide-spread currencies don't do the same barring exceptional circumstances (i.e. Zimbabwe).

I more meant the 2-4% range part. If you had said 30 years, fine. But inflation was (well) over 4% for much of the 10 years prior to 1983.

Re: Bitcoin ASIC Miner from BFL, finally

#96

Post by illuminate »

daniel-cussen wrote: post #14
sjtgraham wrote: post #3

I doubted that these ASIC rigs would ship any time soon. Wouldn't it be more profitable for the vendors to simply to delay/cancel orders and run the rigs 24/7 themselves?

Part of the value of Bitcoin (if any) is that it's decentralized. It should be more profitable to sell the miners out than to hoard them because if they're distributed the cryptographic safety of Bitcoin is greater.

"It should be more profitable to sell the miners out than to hoard them because if they're distributed the cryptographic safety of Bitcoin is greater"

Can you explain this in more detail? I don't understand what decentralization has to do with miners' profit.

Re: Bitcoin ASIC Miner from BFL, finally

#98

Post by conanbatt »

XorNot wrote: post #82
conanbatt wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

rampant inflation.

You mean that 2-4% range with the Fed is legally mandated to keep it in, and has been wildly successful in doing so for the past 40 years?

I didnt say there was inflation, its just one of those things that can make people drop the US if it happened.

US debt cannot increase indefinitely without consequence, and in a time of desperate need (such as the 2008 bailouts) it has to print lots of money and hence cause inflation. If the US dollar suffered 10% inflation 2 years in a row, it could originate some drastic changes, as dollar holders might want to get rid of the coin. Figure china selling out its entire dollar reservers in one year, US goes to the tank.

Im not being alarmist, its just a possibility. Comparing Bitcoin to USD makes no sense at this stage in many ways, starting with volume.

Re: Bitcoin ASIC Miner from BFL, finally

#99

Post by XorNot »

dualogy wrote: post #86
XorNot wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea the USD is going to collapse is farcical. It would be a global catastrophe of a scale not yet seen, but also not threatened. Meanwhile, BTC gains and loses 50 - 80% of its value in a single day. I wonder which is more stable .

> It would be a global catastrophe of a scale not yet seen, but also not threatened It would have been in the 70s -- which is why USD support has remained despite the Nixon shock for a few more decades. By now, most central banks and governments are increasingly, dare I say "prepared" or slowly preparing for the possibility without it impacting their economies or trade too badly. Nobody wants to see the USD fail or d…

"One day". It will be a gradual process - it has to be - because anyone stupid enough to try and cash-out mass USD in bulk will not get there money's worth back in it.

But more importantly, is there any real sign that that time is soon? Global financial crisis...and the world's investors are literally paying the US to take their money with the current returns on US treasuries.

But it's hardly the USD "collapsing" - it's a gradual process over time, which crucially doesn't effect the buying power of individuals over meaningful timespans to them (decades, not days - unlike BTC).

And, probably more importantly, whatever replacement reserve currency comes to the fore (and what would it be, exactly?), it won't be something like BTC.

Re: Bitcoin ASIC Miner from BFL, finally

#100

Post by vl »

sachingulaya wrote: post #40
ihsw wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This waxing and waning of mining devices is certainly going to become the norm. * Buy up $10K worth of devices * Make your money while flooding the market with fast and easy BTC * Sell off all your hardware after the profit margins have cratered * Wait for new hardware and rinse and repeat Personally I will be extremely glad when the first wave hits as the hoarders will start feeling the pinch of inflation.

The evolution was CPU -> GPU -> FPGA -> ASIC. Now that we're at the ASIC stage growth is going to slow considerably. There's no longer order of magnitude gains to be made.

>at the ASIC stage growth is going to slow considerably

Yes, buy these are 110nm v1 designes, it looks like they will be able to squeeze something like 10x per watt by moving to better process and iterating on design. And probably additional 10x in cost by ordering more than current quantities that are in the ballpark of the smallest possible order.

Right now entire network runs at speed equal to all hardware in first two Avalon batches (300 and 600 units). When batch 2 and 3 and BFLs hit in the future, everything else is going to be wiped out. But then it will be wiped out again by the next iteration.

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