Bitcoin Network Doubles to 2 PH/s in Four Weeks; the First 1 PH/s Took 4.7 Years

http://thegenesisblock.com/bitcoin-network-doubles-2-phs-four-weeks-first-1-phs-took-4-7-years/

by CrunchyJams • 13 years ago

66 92 13 years ago

WayneS• 13 years ago

Ahh that is kinda how "exponential growth" works. But clearly the exponential part is recent because if you project backwards at doubling every 4 weeks you find the hash rate started at one hash every 28 days. ;-)

nullc• 13 years ago

It actually had as-high/higher rates of growth in 2011: http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-ever.png

deletes• 13 years ago

cache:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...

geetee2• 13 years ago

When this lunacy ends and people are left with racks of useless miners, is there anything they can be repurposed for?

kiba• 13 years ago

Nope!

brianbreslin• 13 years ago

will they be able to repurpose them to mine other types of coins? like prime/lite coin? maybe turn them over to SETI @HOME style projects?

rnicholson• 13 years ago

If were talking about graphics card rigs, well I guess could attempt to re-sell them to gamers and the like to attempt to get some money back out of them (although, in the end probably still a loss unless you covered the purchase+power/cooling+maint costs in mining with them)

ASIC BTC mining hardware, I don't think can be re-purposed.

chx• 13 years ago

ASIC miners are, well, Application Specific Integrated Circuits -- they can't be used for anything else than their original purpose. However, I am not familiar with the original purpose -- Bitcoin mining means taking a random number, calculating the SHA256 hash twice and compare with another number. If the chips are just massively parallel SHA256 circuits then they can be reused for other SHA256 needs (if there's any on this scale...) but if their hardwired operations is the whole mining round as described then no they can't.

nwh• 13 years ago

They're generally not usable for anything SHA256 related. The input they take is a string, and a range of nonces to attempt. The only data they return is a positive if a particular nonce gives a low enough value. There's nothing useful there except for hashcat-like operations.

Karunamon3• 13 years ago

What's to say this "lunacy" will end? Seems to only have a bright future to me.

choult• 13 years ago

As I understand it, there are only a finite number of Bitcoins.

Hence there will be an end to mining.

vkou4• 13 years ago

A problem with mining bitcoins is that the activity itself produces no value (But does burn silicon, rare earth metals, and electricity). Mining it is an economically pointless endeavour - it is like basing a currency on the activity of digging ditches, and filling them.

calinet6• 13 years ago

Paperweights for the wads of cash resulting from their former jobs...

qnr• 13 years ago

Why lunacy? You need a huge amount of computing power to make a distributed currency resilient against attacks by the likes of NSA, hostile foreign states, etc.

And to answer your question, no, the chips cannot be repurposed for anything else.

mikeash2• 13 years ago

This is a good point that's easy to forget. Mining is not a zero-sum game, but rather increased mining activity increases the security of the network as a whole. Whether it's worth throwing all these resources into Bitcoin in the first place is another question, but at least it's not the case that nothing changes when everybody doubles their hashing power.

Mindless2112• 13 years ago

The necessity of computing power is only true if the distributed currency is based on proof-of-work. Consider PPCoin which is a hybrid proof-of-work/proof-of-stake currency -- even if you have most of the computing power, you shouldn't be able to double-spend without holding a large amount of the currency as well.

ChuckMcM4• 13 years ago

That is the trick, they are disposable (in theory). You use them to mine more than their net cost in bitcoins and then you throw them away, investing X$ in the miner getting out Y$ (where Y > X) $ in bitcoin. Return being (Y/X)/period

I doubt the ASICs can be retargeted. Although the cabinets and power supplies etc could (in theory) so you could turn around and re-populate it with SHA1 ASICs or something and start passwords or something with the boxes (would need new boards and programming though)

TylerE3• 13 years ago

But that can't work. It just _can't_. While the cost of producing bitcoins < value of bitcoins, more people will mine. More miners = higher difficulty = lower reward for mining.

tocomment3• 13 years ago

They can be used for other currencies. For example namecoin must be getting a huge boost from all the bitcoin mining.

My mining pools just throws in namecoins for me. I guess they can check the same hash against both systems.

tocomment3• 13 years ago

They could also be used for other blockchain based technologies such as bitmessage, or future voting systems. (I think, correct me if I'm wrong)

VMG2• 13 years ago

Space heaters. Future mining rigs will just be that.

moocowduckquack• 13 years ago

Heh, I have been looking at that for heating already. Would be nice to have a bitcoin electric shower :)

Groxx3• 13 years ago

Except they keep getting more efficient in computing and less efficient in heating.

0xdeadbeefbabe• 13 years ago

Yeah I bet there are some surface mounted resistors you could desolder. Also, boat anchor?

Synaesthesia• 13 years ago

And 3PH is just around the corner! http://bitcoin.sipa.be

TomGullen• 13 years ago

Am I correct in saying this is good news for BTC, as it makes a 50% network attack more and more expensive to execute?

Going into the future, when difficulty is high enough or all Bitcoins are mined, would some of this computing power shut down?

jafaku3• 13 years ago

You are correct.

No, because the payer can decide the fee to pay, and the miner can decide the minimum he will accept. So the free market will take care of the fees for the miners.

jasonlingx2• 13 years ago

I think most people are missing the bigger picture implication here: if 1 or 2 companies can double the bitcoin network in 4 weeks, then the network is not and probably never will be safe from attacks by the likes of the NSA and such.

modeless2• 13 years ago

I think you're missing the implication here. Until now, an attacker could go after Bitcoin by using superior technology to compute hashes faster than everyone else. But now, these new companies are using the best technology available. There is no superior technology that would allow the NSA or any other single attacker to compete with 28nm ASICs produced in commercial volumes.

Once 28nm bitcoin ASICs are widely distributed, the bitcoin network will be safe from a 51% attack even from governments.

jasonlingx2• 13 years ago

There is no superior technology

I think you need to assert that there never will be any superior technology...

mrb3• 13 years ago

No. What you are missing is that there was a one-time window of opportunity for attackers due to the ASIC tech not having been deployed on the Bitcoin network 10 months ago. But now that the network is rapidly adopting ASICs, the network speed has been doubling every month for the last 10 months, so this window is quickly closing...

For example, if an attacker wanted to attack Bitcoin, they would have to get funding today, develop or acquire an ASIC design, build and develop a ~150 meggawatt datacenter, all within the next 6 months, to have a chance to attack the network.

Details: at 2.2 Phash/s today, 6 months from now we should be around 2.2 * 2^6 = ~150 Phash/s. The best ASICs, 28nm KncMiner, are approximately 100 ~Ghash/s and 100 Watt each. So the attacker would have to build 150 Phash/s of these to clearly outperform the network: that is 1.5 million chips at 150 meggawatt total. And to plan for a potential delay of 30 days, the attacker would have to build not 150 Phash/s but 300 Phash/s of ASICs to attack the network. 3 million chips. 300 meggawatt datacenter. For comparison, Facebook spent $210 million on their 28 meggawatt Prinevill datacenter. So a 300 meggawatt datacenter would probably cost $2 billion. Therefore I doubt such an attack against Bitcoin would be even within NSA's capabilities. They can't even get their Utah datacenter to run correctly and it has been delayed by more than 1 year: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2052960/nsa-data-center-suffe...

taariqlewis• 13 years ago

My question would be: How will the blockchain stop attacks when all the bitcoins have been mined, but computing power continues to increase thereafter, even at a slowing rate?

Couldn't someone develop better ASICs, long after mining has ended, to launch a 51% attack? Granted it would be expensive, wouldn't that expense decrease continuously?

Groxx3• 13 years ago

I suspect you're missing one critical bit: miners get the transaction fees of whatever transactions they include in the block. They're mining blocks of transactions, not coins, approximately once every 10 minutes. Coins are just blocks that the mob of users claims are valuable.

This is true even after the last "coin" has been mined. Coins are incentive to jump-start the economy when there isn't much activity, the end-game is all in mining blocks to get transaction fees, at which point it pretty much self-balances. Miners continue mining as long as it's profitable, and transaction fees maintain a level which keeps it that way (but not too profitable, or there would be more miners competing for them).

Bitcoin Network Doubles to 2 PH/s in Four Weeks; the First 1 PH/s Took 4.7 Years

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