Don't be naive
Just because you don't see massive spikes, does not mean it's not a botnet. He can easily have so many infected throughout the country that it won't fluctuate as much.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25653664so wouldn't the 'botnet' hashrate have a diurnal flux when people in the country went to sleep and shut off their many, infected computers?
Not as others wake up. We're talking about 500mhash.
If he is doing a very low intensity as to not draw attention to UI lag, lets assume 10-15khash per machine...you can see how many machines were talking about spread over the country.
most of the country does go to sleep when the sun goes down. it happens in, well all countries, really. most people who don't know they're mining don't keep their computer on 24 hours a day. they live normal lives and turn off their electronics at night.
I'm sorry but this is just a much more likely scenario, that is already proving to happen, versus a company testing new secret half million $ asic mining farms on a public pool.
secret?
the asics were announced at a beijing conference on december 8th. someone 5 pages ago posted links to show the powerpoint presentation and a link to a discussion on production and the parameters of the chip.
there's absolutely nothing secret about this. it just happened to be written in Chinese.
