Post
Topic
Board Altcoin Discussion
Topic OP
The simple question that answers the future of alternative cryptocurrencies
by
aarqa
on 09/03/2014, 08:36:04 UTC
ASICs will come.  They might not be that powerful, but they will come because people will buy them.  People will buy them because they remember or read what they did for bitcoin and will hope for the same thing with scrypt coins.

By the same token, gpu miners who don't want to pay for ASICs will remember what bitcoin did to gpu mining.  Even if they are not that powerful, many people will panic.

So the question is this: What will gpu miners do when ASICs get here?  If they think ASICs are peeing in their pool, what do you think they will do?  Do you think they will just give up, sell their mining equipment and say they had a good run?  Or do you think they will find something more resistant to ASICs, such as Nscrypt?

Your answer to that question should guide your future strategy.

Consider this, also: you can say that ASICs manufacturers will just design newer ASICs to mine Nscrypt.  And you may be right.  But new algorithms can be written and distributed faster than new ASICs can be designed, tested and distributed.  New algorithms can be written and distributed much, much faster.  ASICs cannot keep up.  A very possible scenario is that ASICs will get here, people will leave regular scrypt coins, and ASICs designers will start to see that they can't keep up.  And at that point new ASICs design will sputter and die.

You may come up with different answers to how people will react to scrypt ASICs.  Let your answer guide you in the future.