This is a flawed logic. Mining is not a charity. It is a business, same as trading is. Same as ASIC development is. Same as mining with AISICs or GPUs is. No matter on what beautiful ideas it is built on. Miners and devs were business partners. And now one of the sides criss-crosses the other side and states it is done for the sake of a higher cause. For the business even greater than the old partnership.
You are getting a little biased. Business isnât about nobility, but anyone that bought and built miners has a âstakeâ . It doesnât matter that they canât switch to something else with an ASIC. ASICâs can also be sold and they are cheaper so I donât think there is much difference in the staking aspect. I did purchase a couple of Z9âs, but it is mostly to try to protect my initial investment rather than staking in any one coin. The only way a coin is going to get loyalty is by shared sacrifice and having a tight knit community. Those will mostly be gone once the ASICâs drop.
I have one on the way.
As a small time miner with 1 rig, @4000sols, I have less invested than most, however with the z9 release you are faced with a dilemma.
If zcash doesnât fork, you need to move your rig. Monero maybe? Not to much of an issue, but if you want to continue with zcash you will need an asic.
So all the rig and buy an asic? Maybe, but if it does fork, your new asic is worthless, or hopefully there is another coin you can mine with it, but if you want to stay on zcash youre done.
Is the lack of a statement from the Devâs that is the real problem. A quick decision one way or the other would sort it out for everyone.
I understand lots of people have invested a lot in gpu rigs, but all this talk against bitmain is a bit much.
Until now Nvidia had the monopoly - a single company selling the best hardware that you had to buy to be competitive - have you tried to buy a 1080ti recently? They can set the price and control supply - nevermind the mining community pushing up the gpu prices for regular gamers - they have to now pay double to be able to play thier games because gpu miners buy up all of the stock. But thatâs OK right?
Sounds a lot like all the arguments against bitmain - before there was 1 company to buy hardware from, soon maybe there will still be 1, just a different one.
Compared to an asic, a gpu is a very inefficient way to mine - the global energy wasted on âminingâ, essentially solving puzzles that donât need to be solved and produce no valuable end result - surley thatâs a stupid idea?
If everyone cut thier gpus by 90%, and the difficulty dropped by 90% the electricity used would drop by 90% and the network would run just the same.
Try explaining to soneone who knows nothing about mining the process involved and the power used - and whyâŚ
The price of an asic is also stated as a problem⌠Itâs far cheaper to buy an asic than a gpu rig of 1080tisâŚ
And monopolies - they already exist. Why is it bad to have a farm of asics as a monopoly but fine to have a farm of gpuâs?
Huge farms of gpus exist already that monopolise the network.
The people having a go at the trader that posted on here - where do you think the liquidity comes from at the exchanges? Who do you think you are selling your zcash too?
There is a much bigger issue here that is about the general crypto currency culture - your zcash or any other coin is essentially worthless unless someone is willing to buy it from you.
Until a coin is generally usable by the average person its nothing more than a speculative gambling tool.
I would rather the decs focus on that - get it integrated into payment solutions, apple pay etc. Concentrate on faster payments, devise a way that I can pay for my restaurant meal with zcash with a 'zcash card '. The first coin to crack that will see its value skyrocket.
Back to the asic argument ; I think people are somewhat in denial over what bitmain and others have been up to.
They have most Likley been mining for a while with thier âsecretâ asics, so all the problems with difficulty increasing etc are already there - your gpu rigs are already fighting against asics, just you didnât know about it.
At least now you can mine on a more level paying field.
And who else is doing it? Pascal project?
If zcash does fork, I suspect bitmain will adjust thier asic, but next time just keep it secret. Then all the gpus rigs will be up against bitmain and have no chance of competing. Your investments will slowly dwindle unless you switch coins.
They will probably do this with every other coin that forks.
So would you rather have a chance to buy the same hardware, or continue to buy overpriced gpus whilst bitmain and others make a fortune mining silently the coins you think you are supporting?
3 Likes
Overwinter and Sapling are top priorities, there is no reason the dev team thinks about an ASIC fork before these releases.
2 Likes
And what exactly do traders have to do with my local market? Traders might rule the brokerages but yes we would have a market. Maybe not as big but itâs still a market.
Very interesting. I would hope the developers/community would stand up against that. I know BTG recently made a statement and Iâve always liked that coin as general payment type.
What do you mean by your âlocal marketâ ?
Can always resell GPUs later to gamers for decent prices. ASICs arenât worth anything after a short while. High end Nvidia last yearâs
Yes thatâs true, you can resell your hardware later, which is one of the reasons I liked mining zcash with gpus.
However that is one of the reasons that some say with asic mining you have more of a stake in the coin, as you canât
pull out and sell your equipment quite as easily as with gpus. You are actually more invested in the whole project.
without traders youâd have a localized barter system nobody would ever hear about. being the case, your token would never become anything more than an esoteric collectible.
After deciphering the spelling issues and numbers to words conversion (if english is not your first language I completely understand the mistakes), Iâll concentrate on the quote aboveâŚ
What else is he going to mine with it, if he isnât mining Zcash. Even if Bitmain comes out with more efficient models, you can still mine with it, just at a different profit level.
This is the exact reason that ASICs can increase mining decentralization: because normal non-technical users can get involved with mining while learning about Zcash.
No ASIC for me - it will be junk in 60 days after the difficulty goes to the moon. Iâll mine BTG or BTCP and trade them for ZEC.
It will become the same as what took place with the Dash miners last year. It was too good to be true then and it still is now.
2 Likes
Firstly nice to start with an insult.
Secondly I have experienced exactly what you tall about with sia coin asics.
âit will keep more efficient miners for them selfâ
You mean like they have already been doing for the last few months? You are already mining inferior hardware (gpu) against asic farms.
You just donât know it.
If bitmain are doing it, I bet there are more.
Would you prefer they kept them all secret and so you could pretend you are mining on the best hardware?
When nvidia bring it thier new gpus later this year, are you going to ask for a fork to prevent thier use, as many people such as myself canât afford them?
Do you not think large mining farms go direct to nvidia and get a deal on 1000 cards? A deal youâll never get?
And a question is really like the answer to ; is nvidia brought out a zcash asic, would that be politically ok?
How about if thier next gpu runs 10000 sols and costs $2000,using 300w? Is that fine because its got a badge on it saying gpu?
Why is that any different to an asic?
I understand people have invested in gpus, but the equipment will always evolve and always get faster - whether that equipment is called a gpu or not doesnât really matter.
If you want to mine longterm, you have to take into account that every 12-18 months you will need to upgrade all of your equipment. If you donât get that, you sir are nieave!
3 Likes
If they donât make a statement, they can always claim itâs not feasible to fork laterâŚafter ASICs drive the majority of the original community out. Then you can look forward to the forums looking a lot like /r/btc. Because thatâs the world people seems to want to live in, one full of drama, flame wars, and chaos.
like we arent already there? 
I find very refreshing people there.
1 Like
r/btc is the only censorship-free Bitcoin forum. I donât see how that relates at all to the ASIC discussion. You seem to be following an anti-Bitmain sentiment that has been popular with those censored forums (because the people controlling them have an agenda).
1 Like
Iâm with you there. The initial profitability might look good⌠until the network is flooded with them. Then my one ASIC would be next to useless. I was planning on mining something else too and trading into ZEC. It makes it so ZEC is still obtainable for me and I can still in some way support it. I would like to continue mining ZEC but without a fork theres no way my few old AMD cards will be able to keep up haha (not that I âkeep upâ now anyway).
Yup, constant forking will just force companies to go further underground into secrecy than they already are. Itâs naive to think that there arenât companies mining with unreleased/custom ASICâs already.