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Though there is some benefit to cryptocurrencies that rely on ASICs for mining: it means that someone with a significant amount of CPUs/GPUs under their control
by AgentME 9y ago
Though there is some benefit to cryptocurrencies that rely on ASICs for mining: it means that someone with a significant amount of CPUs/GPUs under their control (such as botnet operators, or government groups like the NSA) can't waltz in and trivially 51% attack the blockchain with their existing general-purpose hardware, and then go back to using it for other things. An attacker would have to commit to buying/building specialized mining hardware for the attack, and then that hardware can't be repurposed for anything else after the attack other than mining.
- dingo_bat 9y agoASICs are supposed to be orders of magnitude more efficient at their job than GPUs. So NSA can make a 0.01x the investment and "waltz in and trivially 51% attack the blockchain", all while not touching their existing equipment.
- Armisael16 9y agoOnly if they've developed an ASIC that is orders of magnitude more efficient than what anyone else has - which seems unlikely given the enormous economic incentive to find more efficient hardware.
- mseebach 9y agoThe only reason to invoke NSA in this context is for their ability to make a 10000x investment, with no concern for this being (directly) economically viable. The question then is, what will they do with control of the blockchain?
- akvadrako 9y agoIdea: prevent North Korea from spending their coins?
- AgentME 9y agoI'm not sure if you understood my post right. Bitcoin mining relies on ASICs. If the NSA wanted to do a 51% attack, then they'd have to spend a bunch of money building ASICs that are then worthless to them once they're done with their attack. If Bitcoin mining relied on GPU or CPU computation, then the NSA could just redirect some of their existing GPU/CPU hardware to do a 51% attack, and then go back to using it for something else when they were done. It would be cheaper and easier for them to do.
- dpiers 9y agoUnrelated - did you used to frequent a Halo tricking forum called HIH?
- AgentME 9y agoYeah, that's me. I stuck around its game-modding subforums a lot back then.
- dpiers 9y agoI did, too - not sure if you’d remember me, but I used to go by Zanzang. I went from modding games to programming them, then from the game industry to startups. Funny how 10 (plus?) years later we’d run into each other on a different site.