Re: 8th Alt coin thread. Or what to do now that asics are all over the place.

while smaller coins/algos are being taken over by fpgas,lux forked in attempt to fight them off but it seems to be useles.Latest bitstream is for 0x token,currently they are doing about x10-x15 higher speed then 1 1080ti on way lower power ofc

Yeah, but that FPGA costs $4000 (correction - might cost $6000 now, as Xilinx is no dummy about repricing in the face of a sudden increase in demand).

So, about 5x (to 9x) the price for 10x-15x the speed. Not nearly as impressive when put into context.

And if an asic is built it further damages that coin price.

Right now no tech for oddball coins has much promise.

all pow is based on converting electrical power into coins.

If gpus are going to be wiped out only cheap power works to make profit.

Gpus had lots going for them ie they have other uses and true resale.

asic and fpga will not have this.

gpus were available from real sellers world wide with real warranties.

ASics and FPGA don't do this

I still see hope for gpus I see a rendering rental- combined with a render pow coin as a possibility .

I agree with everything except for FPGAs not having any other use or resale value. If the proper software/bitstreams either exists or can be made, then you can use FPGAs for all sorts of useful things. The resale market is going to be much smaller, but they will still be of interest to people doing specialized work.

As for GPUs, I really hope either rendering or some type of protein folding research becomes a worthy option for GPUs since they're really good at it (at least the high end models).

If there is no mining, the FPGA will be flooded into the market. Compared to mining, specific FPGA has smaller usage.

I see this pretty much as the problem with FPGA's the price has risen from 4k to 6k which is like the S9 jumping up in price from 900 Jan 2017 to 1500 Sept 2017 to 3000 in dec 2017 and then down to 440 with a coupon today.

FPGA production has never been like GPU production. 1 fpga for 100's of gpu's maybe for 1000's

At the moment

raven with x16r
BTG with ebwf and 144,5 algo
BIS

are all asic free in theory so they would be good for FPGA but there are not a lot of coins without asic interest.

Which means FPGA can be attacked by asics very easily.

Hopefully render rental / render pow takes off for gpus as it is far more promising for gpus to do this.

The issue with the FPGAs are that the ones discussed are expensive development kits that are designed for giant companies to use for development and evaluation. They aren't mass produced and meant for general public consumption, and are priced accordingly. Mining is not driving them up in price. Also anything that is meant to go into data center is going to be much more expensive than consumer products. I might end up eating my words but personally I think anyone buying a VCU1525 for mining is going to be in for a rude awakening and a lighter wallet.

As far as render rental, it will be interesting to see how this ends up, but ultimately I don't think it will be that profitable. Kind of like SIA, its a day late and a dollar short; AWS, Google Compute, and Azure already offer this service. It will be a race to the bottom to offer lower prices then them.