I have to agree, that BFL announcement seems to be a tad too optimistic. Unless they got 30+ million USD venture funding, which seems to be rather improbable.

I really can't imagine a scenario or fix where miners with more resources don't have more advantage over "the people". Just kinda how these things work. People with access to dozens of GPUs are going to dominate miners with a dual-core CPU.  Eventually difficulty will increase and payouts decrease that only a handful of people will be able to mine successfully even WITHOUT ASIC coming into being.


Also, there's something funny about people arguing that bitcoin should be changed to keep some people out for the sake of "the people".  

And that said, BFL does look like a whole lotta vapor ware to me anyways.

Wrong.

Those who run the full client but do not mine have just as much say in which BIPs are adopted and which aren't. If miners alter the protocol in anyway that isn't backwards compatible everyone else will reject their blocks and the chain will get forked.

I suggest you learn how the protocol works before you make baseless and false comments.

The monopoly is good, the business practices are not.

I meant the things like broken promises about performance and shipping times. But yes, selling to the public instead of keeping it to themselves is only logical, since it ought to make more in the long run.

I don't think that praising them for making sound business decisions leads to the conclusion that they are good instead of evil. Hoarding the chips just doesn't make sense because even though you would get all the bitcoins you'd cause a serious trust erosion which would lead to at least a crash of the value of bitcoins, possibly even total failure of the whole concept.

The money needed to fund these sorts of things doesn't come from thin air, the investors behind it are making sound business decisions. If they were "evil" they would most likely not get the backing or if they did, then there would be something wrong. With Bitcoin a mining monopoly is not just a bad thing, it's potentially catastrophic. Most Bitcoin users and most likely the biggest holders of bitcoins love this currency for what it is and a single entity having the power to shut down the network at any time is not part of that.

So I would rephrase that selling and distributing those chips is them not being total idiots, it has nothing to do with them being good or bad. Although obviously they are more good than bad and gain respect by doing this. Simply because they do have the power to make different choices but they choose wisely.

I also agree with this. With the invention of the Internet and p2p networks and now finally Bitcoin, a free market works more and more efficiently. The future is of the free markets because information moves freely and efficiently and now money moves freely and efficiently as well. Also the barriers of entry to new markets that use these technologies are so small that it also helps and keeps the markets competitive.

+1. Bitcoin as a concept is unstable until we get to current technological edge (which is ASICs); ie, until no further effort requiring only a few $million can meaningfully influence hashing power. Once there are a bunch of big ASIC farms, we'll be at that point. Before then, some malevolent entity *can* theoretically build a 51% attack for sub-$10M (via ASICs). Having ASIC mining actually distributed, even if just a dozen big farms or so, will be a good thing.

The real point at which the bitcoin community can breathe a little easier is when hashing power is sufficiently large so that a government can't launch a 51% attack. Though that'll be a while - a few $B buys a lot of hashing...

The only problem with this line of thinking is that when you do have a problem, it will be too late.    I am looking for more formal guidance from BFL and maybe some added information on what there intentions are long-term.  They have to understand politics do play apart in this because so many peoples hard work and investment is tied to Bitcoin so they have a RESPONSIBILITY to understand the fortunate position and power they weld.   

If they disagree or anyone on here responds with, "they can do whatever they want", in my opinion, don't really believe in Bitcoin for its important place in history and are really just in it to profiteer.   In any case, thats what we already have in the world around us, but here we "could" actually try and work together to change things so we help not only the big players grow, but the small one too so we have a robust network and people we have a pleasure to work with.   Maybe it is idealistic, but I don't think this bar is set too high.

I want to build something that will be here after I am not and is in a better shape than I left it

.02 BTC
Dalkore

Don't worry if there is one thing BFL is good at it is not delivery enough product to make a difference.   I am still waiting on my single from over two months ago.