Quote from: Foxpup on October 24, 2012, 09:01:36 AM

Quote from: ajareselde on October 24, 2012, 08:26:20 AM

Would it be even remotely possible to force the change in sha256 bitcoin algorith to something else that asic and fpga devices couldnt compute?

No. For one thing, ASICs and FPGAs can be constructed for any computable function, ie, anything a CPU can do, an ASIC can be constructed to do it more efficiently. It's just a question of whether it's worth the development cost.

Quote from: ajareselde on October 24, 2012, 08:26:20 AM

We started off with a bitcoin that anyone could ~~use~~ attack and now ~~were~~ attackers are forced to buy stuff we they dont really want.

This is the second thing. The purpose of mining is not to allow "anyone" to create free money by burning spare CPU cycles all day. The purpose of mining is to secure the network from attack. Nothing more. One of the larget threats is posed by mining botnets, and such botnets will have access to a lot of powerful CPUs and some decent GPUs, but almost certainly no suitable FPGAs or ASICs. Litecoin and other "CPU-friendly" coins are ipso facto botnet-friendly, and there is a very real danger that an attacker with a reasonably sized botnet could pull off a 51% attack against Litecoin. On the other hand, by requiring specialised hardware to mine efficiently, Bitcoin also requires specialised hardware to attack efficiently, making it much more secure against attackers using conventional hardware.

It doesent change a bit on a 51% attack, now we dont need to fear botnets but people with decent pockets full of playmoney, just my thought.

What i find annoying is that its even possible to build specialized hardware that has such a difference in performance over the existing hardware. I like to compare that to the invention of automated mining equipment from mining with a shovel.

So this just leads to the thought it should have been a requirement right from the start to use specialized mining boards, this would have avoided botminers and a promt rise effectivity as now by asic vendors claimed. Am i wrong??

EDIT:
So my conclusion is, probably it was the wrong algo right from the start that allowed effective cpu/gpu mining.