[HH] Bitcoin mining hardware

[Federico Lucifredi]

On Apr 18, 2013, at 5:33 PM, Greg London <email at greglondon.com> wrote:

> bitcoins are by design intended to be *manufactured*
> by the people who use them. That means the cost to
> manufacture them has a direct impact on how much they
> are worth.
> 
> If I can manufacture a bitcoin every second for
> the cost of a single FPGA, then I promise you,
> bitcoins won't be trading for $100 a pop.

I am not an expert, but my understanding is that BitCoin works by

1. "Minting" coins that are the solution to a complex cryptographic problem. 
2. Once you nab a coin (or a satoshi, I am not sure what the minimal fraction you can claim is), you do so by adding a cryptographic signature to a decentralized P2P log of transactions.  You need to be first, of course.

The hardness of the crypto problem increases as the simpler solutions are found. That balances for the progress of Moore's Law.

Interestingly, the number of solutions is known to be finite, so "printing" currency will stop at some point.

Best-F

_________________________________________
-- "'Problem' is a bleak word for challenge" - Richard Fish
(Federico L. Lucifredi) - flucifredi at acm.org - GnuPG 0x4A73884C