Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by gus_massa 4547 days ago
Why there is not a bcrypt option for Proof of Work Algorithm? (Technical question: There are a lot of AltCoins out there. Why no one proposed a AltCoin where the Proof of Work Algorithm is based in bcrypt?)
3 comments

Because as far as I know no altcoin has implemented that so OP couldn't easily copy that. (Also why would another altcoin implement it as scrypt has the advantage of being memory hard.)
There is a proposal to switch litecoin to another proof-of-work that would be asic resistant since scrypt asic is going to ship in 90 days or so.
a lot of them use scrypt, so you can't use asic mining. in my opinion that is the single biggest flaw in bitcoin. I bet a whole bunch of people are laughing their asses off. something we will probably see in the next couple of years
One of the main advantages of ASICs is that they prevent botnets from mining your coin. Also, specialized hardware prevents attackers from using general purpose hardware (e.g., by just renting a "few" EC2 instances). Only disadvantage in regard to ASICs is that the ride from GPU mining to ASICs is a little bit bumpy, but Bitcoin mostly already finished that ride.
Miners will go where profit is, and Satoshi knew this. Satoshi also predicted ASICs, so none of this is a surprise. You are just repeating the same nonsense as every copycoin holder.
can you explain the disadvantages of allowing asic mining?
Not everybody has ASICs, so it limits the number of people who can compete. In theory, this could create a centralisation effect. In practice, that seems to happen anyway due to mining pools.
You can always use P2Pool (http://whatisp2pool.com). Decentralised mining.