The Bitcoin Mining Game Has Transformed
ASCI or application-specific integrated circuit machines have arrived in the Bitcoin mining marketplace. The first machine arrived at a miner's home in late January and ever since reports have been trickling in of shipped ASCI machines locating their way.
They can be at what they are designed to do tremendously effective machines since ASCI machines are made especially for the task of mining Bitcoin. High end ASCI machines have a per second hash rate of over 1 million. A normal CPU running Bitcoin mining applications has a per second hash rate of 1.5.
Needless to say the shipment of ASCI machines happen to be a game changer in the Bitcoin world. Bitcoin mining applications no longer even supports cPUs because a CPU running 24 hours a day would probably not see a Bitcoin for several years, even if it was mining in a pool.
This tendency favors those thinking about mining who also happen to have thousands of dollars lying around to be used on high-priced hardware, along with the early adopters of Bitcoin mining who probably have made a significant profit from their early mining attempts. Those early gains could be rolled into rig set up and the greatest and latest hardware to continue creating Bitcoins well into the future.
Those miner who are running relatively powerful GPUs are being hit at the worst by the ASCI development. The difficulty in mining a block of Bitcoin has improved to some degree which will make the cost of electricity outweigh the payout a GPU miner will see in Bitcoin from year to year.
All this speculation is tied greatly to the stability of the price of Bitcoin going. If Bitcoin stays around the current 30 usd amount then innovation will continue to progress. ASCI in part has contributed to the rally that Bitcoin has seen over the last 2 months. The USD exchange rate for Bitcoin has soared from 10 usd to 30 usd. It is difficult to find an investment with that type of return everywhere on the earth, therefore it is natural for Bitcoin to be attracting attention in recent days. But will this focus last? And if so will it bring more scrutiny and unpredictability than stability on the digital currency that is young? In the long term stability that is comparative is the one trait that Bitcoin must create if it is to achieve the first goal of being a competitive and feasible currency on a world scale. Get a lot more details about Airbit Club
So will Bitcoin transcend the current label of tool that is high risk? The answer lies in a tangled web of variables offering the broad spectrum of mankind: politics, psychology, finance, fear, independence, privacy, security... etc. No matter the outcome it's certain to be a show that is fascinating.