Quote from: toz on February 21, 2013, 07:29:00 AM

You might argue that it makes an attack cost more, and that is true, but if it raises the value of Bitcoins, it also increases the value of an attack. So again, it would cancel out.

An attack would ruin the value of bitcoins, so you cannot count on fraudulent coins to offset the cost of the attack.

Quote from: Cubic Earth on February 21, 2013, 07:24:34 AM

The point you are missing though, is that ASIC's technology has been around since before bitcoin got going, and it has been know from the early days of mining that ASIC's would be the final word on efficiency (in both watts and $$ per GH/s). If an strong adversary, lets just call him 'Uncle Sam', had decided to attack the network previous to ASIC development and adoption, they would only need to invest in their own ASIC research and manufacture. A few thousands of chips later, they would own the network.

This doesn't change that. They just also buy half the ASICs on the commercial market. You might argue that it makes an attack cost more, and that is true, but if it raises the value of Bitcoins, it also increases the value of an attack. So again, it would cancel out.

Quote from: Cubic Earth on February 21, 2013, 07:24:34 AM

One could equally well argue that Bitcoins are more of a threat now than ever and an attacker might see the deployment of ASICs as closing their attack window and therefore, now would be the time for them to buy up ASICs to attack.

Yes, that is my point. I shouldn't have spoken as if bitcoin is out of the woods yet. ASICs are in their infancy and the network is much more vulnerable now that it will be in a month or two, if it has not been attacked by then. But the concept of the attack window closing, that was my original point about why the network is more secure with ASICs than before, and why the price of bitcoins will rise along with the increased resistance to attack.