LOL. The circle of life. Go ask Simba if you do not believe me.

don't you think that if Vladimir is preparing his ASIC assault that Artforz, BitcoinExpress, etc. are fast on his coat tails if not ahead of him in planning their own operations?  Vladimir does not operate in a vacuum.

the fact that Vladimir is moving forward on this makes me want to buy more Bitcoin.  His operation will work to ensure the safety of them.

I have no problem with this either. I wish Vladimir good luck. It's good for Bitcoin that mining businesses become more prominent, their incentives go hand in hand with keeping Bitcoin secure and reliable. In fact this is likely to significantly increase Bitcoin security.

My only problem was with some of you that claim it's profitable to attempt 51% control and thus 100% control. People who still think that should go take a brainscan and check if they actually have any braincells.

Vladimir explained it very well in his own post, there are a multitude of reasons why it makes absolutely no sense to attempt taking control of the network. Profits from doing that can't be calculated in a linear fashion (more hash, more blocks, more money) because it would significantly erode trust in Bitcoin and thus likely crash Bitcoin's price. Vlad also had a good point about the fact that increasing his hash power becomes questionable at some point because he's increasing the difficulty of mining (and the bigger his percentage of the network is, the more significant the effect from that is to his entire operation).

The only thing we really have to worry about are hostile ASIC-farms which would in theory be built by either a government, the banks or other companies that provide competing payment systems. Friendly mining businesses are actually a very good way to fight this and make it so much more difficult and expensive to try to attack Bitcoin. So in conclusion this adds confidence in Bitcoin overall.

This is somewhat offtopic, but this proves my point indirectly. I hope mods will forgive me this little sin.


Selling only for BTC.

Have large amount of used hardware in excellent condition for sale, most boxed "almost as new" with all the original kit.

5870's XFX-587X-ZN (lots of those)
various 5970's (many)
various 6990's (many)
various 1200W PSU's (best in class)
proper mining motherboard/cpu/memory bundles (work with many GPU;s)
low cost custom compact open air mining cases (up to 8 GPU's) of my own design and made by yours truly
pcie extenders (hundreds), fans, etc..

if you can pick it up in UK have heavy 4U mining cases ready to go with GPU's and everything in it already, just add your USB stick.

skype: vladimir.marchenko.co.uk (text/audio/video)

Do not expect me to be very responsive on the forum and PM's.
Use skype, tell me what you want and how much you are prepared to pay.
Bitcoin payment upfront, this is not negotiable, will ship worldwide, will ship within 2 biz days.
Large orders will be given preference.

Someone come and take all the stuff I have left off my hands retail or wholesale. I have some offers already, but I want a better price.

Serious troll is serious.

Teh internet is srs bsns.

For anyone equating ASICs with 51% mining, I wouldn't worry too much. ASICs become financially viable if you plan to sell them in consumer products in high volume (millions), or for dedicated tasks at high cost where a higher power and larger FPGA just won't cut it (say, a pacemaker).

If vlad's plan is the first, this will lead to a high volume product that's good at mining. Much less chance of anyone getting 51% in a market like this with cheap commoditised hardware available, whether he sells them, allows his subcontractor to sell them after a lockout, or his subcontractor owns the design (in which case he needs a pretty good reason for the investor to invest in him rather than the sub), and also the sub will sell the design to as many people as possible = more miners

If it's the second, you can still achieve his hash rate with gpus or fpgas. You'll just need to buy more hardware and spend more on electricity and cooling than he will. But nowhere near the amount he spent on designing the chip ($2-$5m depending on complexity and whether you cock it up or not). He's got a lot of money to make back. So perhaps he'll rent out his new ASIC hashing power from a central location. But then you're back to more distinct miners in the market = less chance of anyone hitting 51%.

Oh, and for the record, GPUs are ASICs themselves... (the GPU guys had to design the first GPU, right?). Just not ones that are particularly dedicated towards SHA hashing. Oh, and the GPU designers will have tried the design out first on an FPGA. Crystal ?

As far as I understood it there is a risk for Asic owners. Asics are highly specialized chips and therefore not very adaptable. Much less adaptable to different ways of computing hashes than GPUs or FPGAs. Besides, it was already discussed in the forum that if quantum computing becomes ever a reality the protocol might need to be changed in order to protect bitcoin's security. I don't see why that couldn't happen if a single entity gains more than 50% for an extended amount of time (who or whatever). Though I'm against changing the core protocols of Bitcoin for every problem that occurs Bitcoin as we see it today is not carved in stone and there are many actors with an interest for it to survive. I don't think people will just say oh fuck it, nevermind, didn't work. Let's move on.

As a reply to some monopoly whatever concerns.

Vlad has no chance at having a future monopoly on efficient sha256 hardware.

Some 3 letters agencies... more likely.

Ok, but as a reason for this leading to more miners, Vlad is entrepreneurial, has created a unique position at this point, and there's a long term and elastic source of reward money. why would he stop there ?

Let's say you invested in inventing a new spade that you could use to dig up $100 of precious metals. There's plenty of precious metals around, but no-one else's spade is any good. Do you make more money by :
A) making a spade and digging
B) selling spades for $99 each ?