IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 13
nEwS
lo and behold, people sent in their money
almost immediately," says Guo.
Relying on a less-expensive 120-nm process (cutting edge in 2002), Guo had the
first chips made and systems shipped within
five months. Garzik, who received one of
the first, reported that upon arrival, his
unit was computing 66 billion hashes per
second. That's more than twice the speed
of the best FPGA-based rigs on the market.
Within nine days of mining on the Avalon
rig, Garzik claimed that he had made back
the $1299 he had spent to buy it.
Quite suddenly, Guo has found himself
in a position of great influence and responsibility. Theoretically, the computational
power in the Bitcoin network must remain
well distributed in order to stave off malicious attacks. If one entity were ever to con-
trol more than 50 percent of the hashing
power, it would gain the ability to commit
a double-spending attack, a manipulation
of the ledger that uses the same bitcoin to
pay for two or more transactions.
Guo stresses that his first concern is the
health of the Bitcoin network. Had he gotten into the business for profit, he argues,
his crew would have just refunded people's
money, kept the rigs, and started mining on
their own. He claims that shipping the machines cost him $3 million in potential profits.
In return, he has a clear conscience, he says,
knowing that he is helping to spread hashing power evenly throughout the network.
"The whole reason why I wanted to make
ASICs was to decentralize," says Guo. "I sleep
really well knowing that I kind of keep the
network going right now. But at the same
time, I don't want to be in this vanguard
position. It's like being Batman."
The arms race is not over. This is just the
beginning of the ASIC era of Bitcoin. Three
hundred Avalon rigs have hit the market,
a second batch is on its way, and a third
batch is in the works. As more miners start
plugging them in, the hash rate will increase
and push the difficulty level ever higher,
spreading profits thinner.
And when it's once again time to feed the
need for higher hash rates, either Avalon or
one of its competitors will be there with faster
ASICs. "We're going to keep making smallernode-size chips for Bitcoin. And we're going
to repeat this process over and over until
we reach the pinnacle of ASIC technology,"
says Guo. What a bitcoin will be worth then
is anybody's guess. -by morgen e. peck
A World o
f Id
ea
s
Modeling/Simulation
for Power Conversion
Bounce10.1.6.F.indd 1
couleurs
noir 100
gris 50
orange 75
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum June, 2013
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - Cover1
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - Cover2
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 1
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 2
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 3
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 4
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IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 87
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - 88
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - Cover3
IEEE Spectrum June, 2013 - Cover4
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