Considering a bitcoin mining hardware purchase? Make a more informed decision with our Bitcoin Mining Dashboard. In early 2013 bitcoin mining saw the start of the application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) revolution. ASICs are customized components that perform the calculations necessary for bitcoin mining significantly faster than any hardware that came before it. To anyone following the exponential growth that has occurred over the last six months it is clear that this story is nowhere near finished. The Current ASIC Environment There are two factors driving ASIC adoption: ASIC chip design, which is limited by technical expertise, and production capacity, which …
Read More →
By now, bitcoin enthusiasts and professionals alike are aware of the tremendous growth of the bitcoin network so far this year. As millions of dollars (and bitcoin) are invested in increasingly powerful mining equipment, the cumulative hash rate of the network has continually blown by the periodic difficulty adjustments. Earlier this year we explained the long-term implications of this, but the near term effects are being felt as well. Since that piece was published, the network has continued to grow, as has the growth rate, creating profound near-term effects. In particular, the average time between blocks has fallen to approximately …
Read More →
Aug 13, 2013
Posted
Bitcoin 201, Economics, Featured, Mining, News, Security
Tagged attack, block, chain, transaction
Bitcoin price volatility has declined considerably since early July and recently reached lows not seen since early January. Trading volume on exchanges has similarly declined over the same period. The stability may be attributable to a number of factors, ranging from uncertainty around the withdrawal delays from Mt. Gox to quiet summer trading typical of many financial markets. What may be more interesting are the recent events that have not affected stability. In particular, bitcoin prices have withstood recent news about significant impacts to confidence in the security of Tor – the only way to access the infamous Silk Road …
Read More →
My favorite day of the year is coming up on Thursday. It would be tough not to like July 4th – it’s a day of bbqs, beer, friends, and a celebration of the day when a group of idealists chose to stand together against to the most powerful empire in the world in the name of liberty. As I write this from a plane on my way to the Bitcoin London conference, it first seemed ironic that we’re going to be in the land of the oppressor from whom we’re celebrating our freedom. Upon deeper consideration, it’s actually rather fitting: …
Read More →
Jun 30, 2013
Posted
Bitcoin 201, Featured
Tagged American Revolution, ASIC, attack, Guerrilla Tactics, legal, United States
Considering a bitcoin mining hardware purchase? Make a more informed decision with our Bitcoin Mining Dashboard. Starting late in the day on June 8th, and then again on June 10th, Feathercoin succumbed to 51% attacks. While this does not directly affect bitcoin, there are several lessons that the bitcoin community can learn from this experience. There is a case to be made that alt-coins have a diversification advantage, as silver does to gold, but they also provide an interesting testing ground for both new technologies and human behavior. Feathercoin is part of a group of crypto-currencies commonly called alt-coins. These currencies …
Read More →
Jun 11, 2013
Posted
Featured, Mining, News
Tagged 51% attack, attack, Bitcoin, block, chain, feathercoin
Considering a bitcoin mining hardware purchase? Make a more informed decision with our Bitcoin Mining Dashboard. “I placed an order for an [ASIC mining unit] and have been researching how to set it up so I’m ready when it gets here. I noticed a lot of people join bitcoin mining pools instead of simply mining on their own. If the number of hashes of my unit relative to the network define my payout probability, why pay the administrative cost of a pool?” – Jeremy H. We regularly receive variations of the above inquiry about bitcoin mining pools and decided a detailed …
Read More →
So it turns out traditional markets aren’t as stable as everyone thought. The S&P 500 – an index of the 500 largest companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange – dropped 13 points in a matter of seconds earlier today as a result of a hacked AP twitter account. The tweet in question described an explosion that allegedly injured the president. The flash crash was the equivalent of over $100 billion in market cap disappearing almost instantly. For all of the concerns with bitcoin’s price instability, this would have evaporated 100x the bitcoin market cap due to a vulnerability …
Read More →
Mt. Gox fell victim to another DDoS attack yesterday. Anyone who’s been involved with Bitcoin for more than a week knows this is a relatively common occurrence. That said, there was something very different about this attack that if repeated consistently should lead to a reduction in frequency of DDoS downtime: your reaction. The most commonly assumed incentive to DDoS a bitcoin exchange is to profit from the ensuing chaos. Remove the chaos and you remove the incentive to attack. That’s exactly what happened yesterday. Why DDoS an exchange? In a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, Malicious traders use botnets to …
Read More →