midnightmagic: The price of food will not necessarily go up.

midnightmagic: And BFL is NOT run by "fraudsters". One guy may be a fraudster.

midnightmagic: And the other 21 people?

midnightmagic: And have they not delivered in a creative way on promises that a good number of people said were impossible in the past?

midnightmagic: Even with the fewer MH/s, the numbers were still considered impossible. It remained a mystery until ngzhang reversed it at the hardware level.

midnightmagic: .. no, he reattached the fuse on the BFL single and identified the chip they were using.

midnightmagic: Yes.

midnightmagic: Yes, of course I do.

midnightmagic: ngzhang, regardless of whether he's "copying" someone's business plan, has delivered more reliably, and more openly I might add, than anyone building mining hardware put together.

midnightmagic: Who says this?

midnightmagic: And did you pull this out of thin air? How do you know this?

midnightmagic: Did either one of them design the logic itself?

midnightmagic: How do you know this is what ngzhang is doing?

midnightmagic: I don't see where ngzhang said he's using SMIC IP.

midnightmagic: You're speculating aren't you?

midnightmagic: You're speculating. Are you also speculating for ASICMINER or do you know something more than was posted in their totally unhelpful "yes we're going to use our customers own money to compete against them" thread?

midnightmagic: "And we're even going to try to do it secretly."

midnightmagic: ...

midnightmagic: Say he did "copy" even the design of the asicminer, as you are implying. Why wouldn't I prefer to put my money with ngzhang when asicminer is going to mine against their own device customers, with the money their customers use to buy their devices?

midnightmagic: Also, I'm not trolling you. Either you know something you aren't telling, or you don't. Either way it doesn't change what I'm going to do: all it changes is you're pretending to know something that's impossible to verify (show me da unicorn) or not.

midnightmagic: The conflict appears to be arising because you seem to have backed an anticompetitive horse and I think they're going to get stomped by the bitcoin devs.

midnightmagic: I'd also like to point out that I'm one of the very few people who doesn't think you tried to do something naughty with usagi and that nefario freezing your shares was a dick move.

midnightmagic: No, they're contemplating mining past that and growing their personal mining farm to 50TH. Or, at the very least, they're not going to suddenly stop mining with their 12TH, which reduces the value of the asic devices they sell.

midnightmagic: That's competing with their own customers, using the profits from customers buying their devices to power their devices, and likely grow their personal mining farm totally in secret.

midnightmagic: They don't even see what's wrong with that.

midnightmagic: friedcat appears to be totally oblivious.

midnightmagic: I'm failing to see how that is a counter-example to my point.

midnightmagic: I am not acknowledging its correctness, I'm saying it's irrelevant whether that is true or not.

midnightmagic: The devices they are selling are for customer use. If they are mining, the devices are worth less.

midnightmagic: Yes, exactly.

midnightmagic: No, it means asicminer's non-device-selling activities are destroying the maximum potential value of their own devices, AND they're in a conflict of interest because they're competing directly with them for a slice of the available btc pie.

midnightmagic: *using* their own customers money against then thereby.

midnightmagic: And friedcat owns.. what percentage?

midnightmagic: And it's irrelevant that the shareholders are the ones financing the practice, that doesn't change a thing.

midnightmagic: Are they going to sell any devices?

midnightmagic: Or are you trying to tell me it's really just a glorified mining contract?

midnightmagic: mircea_popescu: .. there's only so many bitcoins released every 10 minutes.

midnightmagic: mircea_popescu: The owners owning cars is a false analogy.

midnightmagic: mircea_popescu: Look at it from the customers' perspective. Why the hell would I buy a mining tool from the same company who's already staked the choicest claim and mined it for all it's worth?

midnightmagic: It is ENTIRELY a party to this discussion, because that's the genesis of my objection!

midnightmagic: Diablo-D3: Why would I support a business which intends to compete directly against other miners?

midnightmagic: Diablo-D3: It's in their business plan.

midnightmagic: mircea_popescu: AS A SHAREHOLDER. Not as a customer buying their devices. In other words, they're cannibalizing their future earnings selling devices by doing the dick move of mining for themselves.

midnightmagic: Neither of you know what you're talking about.

midnightmagic: Why would I? I'll send my money to people who don't cannibalize their customers' potential profit.

midnightmagic: And show absolutely zero ability to grasp even the notion of what that means.

midnightmagic: No.

midnightmagic: That's totally, totally irrelevant.

midnightmagic: What goes on lsewhere is irrelevant.

midnightmagic: You make a device, if you didn't mine 12TH and then 50TH, it would have made x more profit. If you DO mine, with your customers' own money (which is in their business plan) you are reducing the value of those devices.

midnightmagic: It's really quite simple.

midnightmagic: No, because it is in the customers' best interest to buy OTHER PEOPLES' asics.

midnightmagic: to starve them out as much as possible so they aren't able to mine as effectively.

midnightmagic: But they'll mine less if nobody ever buys their devices.

midnightmagic: In other words, customers *should* if they were smart, be forcing them into a purely self-mining contract.

midnightmagic: And at that point, doing their best to ensure tha the bitcoin devs stomp them.

midnightmagic: Which given that most people don't grasp the nature of how anticompetitive what they're planning on doing is, is far more likely to happen.

midnightmagic: No, WRONG.

midnightmagic: And wrong again.

midnightmagic: You're thinking in terms of miners.

midnightmagic: Whose software do you think the users are going to use?

midnightmagic: The asicminer conglomerates?

midnightmagic: Keep dreaming.

midnightmagic: Every vendor was told, as Luke-Jr said, to put a small additional secret piece of logic into their asics.

midnightmagic: And keep it secret.

midnightmagic: Chaang-Noi: I will in a moment, I'm in pacific time.

midnightmagic: And if those vendors end up just being one giant self-mining masturbation circlejerk?

midnightmagic: bitcoin devs change the hashing algo.

midnightmagic: And every repsonsible asic device can now mine its own type of block.

midnightmagic: And everyone accepts them.

midnightmagic: And the naughty conglomerate that went overboard into a super fancy mining contract because they discovered nobody's willing to buy their device and fund competition against themselves? They go away and lots of paperweights mine on a scamcoin altchain.

midnightmagic: Hey don't hate the playa, hate the game.

midnightmagic: Diablo-D3: Then what's Luke saying in the asicminer thread?

midnightmagic: Yeah right. A hardfork later and every user who listens to Gavin when he says "Hey these guys can now attack the network, upgrade now to avoid it," makes the old fork die.

midnightmagic: Here I'll quote: "That is not necessarily true. ASIC vendors are advised to implement an alternative algorithm they can switch to in case of emergency like this. If the community felt it necessary to block out ASICMINER (or some other hostile ASIC hoarder), the other ASIC vendors would then publish their secret alternative algorithms, and Bitcoin could be made to support those."

midnightmagic: "That is not necessarily true. ASIC vendors are advised to implement an alternative algorithm they can switch to in case of emergency like this. If the community felt it necessary to block out ASICMINER (or some other hostile ASIC hoarder), the other ASIC vendors would then publish their secret alternative algorithms, and Bitcoin could be made to support those."

midnightmagic: err..

midnightmagic: "That is not necessarily true. ASIC vendors are advised to implement an alternative algorithm they can switch to in case of emergency like this. If the community felt it necessary to block out ASICMINER (or some other hostile ASIC hoarder), the other ASIC vendors would then publish their secret alternative algorithms, and Bitcoin could be made to support those."

midnightmagic: wtf!

midnightmagic: "Edit: There is no single "secret alternative algorithm" being issued/given to ASIC vendors. They are all expected to come up with their own and not share it outside the company except in an emergency."

midnightmagic: there

midnightmagic: What that means is simple: 5 ASIC vendors = 5 secret algos. asic vendor misbehaves? hash algo switches to support the other 4 (who are now building individually different blocks) and #5 == paperweight.

midnightmagic: Assuming what Luke says, is true.

midnightmagic: No, it works for anyone.

midnightmagic: And everyone who doesn't do it, gets screwed when they're discovered.

midnightmagic: No, because GPU + fpga + cpu + 5 asic vendors can all adapt.

midnightmagic: you haven't read the papers. yeah, the network can.

midnightmagic: in fact, yeah, it can. it doesn't even take very many listening posts to do it.

midnightmagic: esp. if someone runs a crawler or a dns seed.

midnightmagic: you're not listening. the entire network can be mapped out and all mining hashrate identified. neither of you have read the academic papers describing how to do this or you wouldn't be arguing with me.

midnightmagic: Still, it doesn't matter, all it takes is a suspicion, or an attempt to make use of the >50%.

midnightmagic: In fact, I'm pretty sure someone recently already has gotten >50%. But if they play nice and don't screw with the network trust, then it doesn't matter does it?

midnightmagic: And if they do? It changes, everybody adapts, and laugh when we discover all the special asic out there have become useless and the network contracts by X TH

midnightmagic: Luceo: You're missing my point. Right now, they only mine if they mine using the current hash algo.

midnightmagic: Luceo: If you've amassed all the different asic so you only take a 1/3 hit, your ability to attack is lessened.

midnightmagic: Diablo-D3: lol you know I'm right. We both know I'm right.

midnightmagic: Luceo: You're just talking about a normal 50% attack now.

midnightmagic: Diablo-D3: If you think you're right, give your head a shake. It's trivial to do. It takes about 3 months to upgrade 95%, and that's just for a non-impact lame-o ddos fix with no known sightings in the wild.

midnightmagic: Then you have just accomplished a 50% attack.

midnightmagic: Good for you.

midnightmagic: Have a gold star.

midnightmagic: But if one asic manufacturer is being antisocial?

midnightmagic: Stomp.

midnightmagic: If you're an end-customer, you pay most of the full retail price.

midnightmagic: That's a normal 50% attack.

midnightmagic: If you're an asic that just tok everyone's money publically to attack the network?

midnightmagic: Stomp.

midnightmagic: (Because a second run costs $2/chip or whatever it is?)

midnightmagic: Stompy-stomp.

midnightmagic: Do they sell to just one customer? If yes, detectably, stomp. If no, great, everyone benefits.

midnightmagic: Good for you, you just wasted a whole pile of money and did a 50% attack that requires an order of magnitude more money than the asic users spent.

midnightmagic: False analogy. I detect the beginning of the moebius strip. Bedtime for me, Diablo-D3 I wish you a good night, sincerely. Sell your asicminer shares, buy ngzhang hardware.

midnightmagic: Oh! Wait, then what do you care whether asicminer falls on its ass? lol

midnightmagic: In fact, if you mine, you should be hoping for that.

midnightmagic: My two main arguments are: 1) asicminer if they continue to mine after they start selling hardware, are cannibalizing their own devices' worth. 2) asic vendors can be stomped if Luke-Jr is correct.

midnightmagic: Those are both sound arguments. And it's really bedtime for me. Good night D3.