I think most people are missing the bigger picture implication here: if 1 or 2 companies can double the bitcoin network in 4 weeks, then the network is not and probably never will be safe from attacks by the likes of the NSA and such.
No. What you are missing is that there was a one-time window of opportunity for attackers due to the ASIC tech not having been deployed on the Bitcoin network 10 months ago. But now that the network is rapidly adopting ASICs, the network speed has been doubling every month for the last 10 months, so this window is quickly closing...
For example, if an attacker wanted to attack Bitcoin, they would have to get funding today, develop or acquire an ASIC design, build and develop a ~150 meggawatt datacenter, all within the next 6 months, to have a chance to attack the network.
Details: at 2.2 Phash/s today, 6 months from now we should be around 2.2 * 2^6 = ~150 Phash/s. The best ASICs, 28nm KncMiner, are approximately 100 ~Ghash/s and 100 Watt each. So the attacker would have to build 150 Phash/s of these to clearly outperform the network: that is 1.5 million chips at 150 meggawatt total. And to plan for a potential delay of 30 days, the attacker would have to build not 150 Phash/s but 300 Phash/s of ASICs to attack the network. 3 million chips. 300 meggawatt datacenter. For comparison, Facebook spent $210 million on their 28 meggawatt Prinevill datacenter. So a 300 meggawatt datacenter would probably cost $2 billion. Therefore I doubt such an attack against Bitcoin would be even within NSA's capabilities. They can't even get their Utah datacenter to run correctly and it has been delayed by more than 1 year: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2052960/nsa-data-center-suffe...
I think you're missing the implication here. Until now, an attacker could go after Bitcoin by using superior technology to compute hashes faster than everyone else. But now, these new companies are using the best technology available. There is no superior technology that would allow the NSA or any other single attacker to compete with 28nm ASICs produced in commercial volumes.
Once 28nm bitcoin ASICs are widely distributed, the bitcoin network will be safe from a 51% attack even from governments.
All I need to assert is there will never be any radically superior technology that is accessible to the NSA long before it is accessible to commercial bitcoin miners, and I think that's plausible. The NSA doesn't innovate in semiconductor fabrication, Intel and TSMC do. The only way the NSA could plausibly gain a significant hash rate advantage over commercial bitcoin miners is by breaking SHA-256, which has nothing to do with hardware.
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I think most people are missing the bigger picture implication here: if 1 or 2 companies can double the bitcoin network in 4 weeks, then the network is not and probably never will be safe from attacks by the likes of the NSA and such.
No. What you are missing is that there was a one-time window of opportunity for attackers due to the ASIC tech not having been deployed on the Bitcoin network 10 months ago. But now that the network is rapidly adopting ASICs, the network speed has been doubling every month for the last 10 months, so this window is quickly closing...
For example, if an attacker wanted to attack Bitcoin, they would have to get funding today, develop or acquire an ASIC design, build and develop a ~150 meggawatt datacenter, all within the next 6 months, to have a chance to attack the network.
Details: at 2.2 Phash/s today, 6 months from now we should be around 2.2 * 2^6 = ~150 Phash/s. The best ASICs, 28nm KncMiner, are approximately 100 ~Ghash/s and 100 Watt each. So the attacker would have to build 150 Phash/s of these to clearly outperform the network: that is 1.5 million chips at 150 meggawatt total. And to plan for a potential delay of 30 days, the attacker would have to build not 150 Phash/s but 300 Phash/s of ASICs to attack the network. 3 million chips. 300 meggawatt datacenter. For comparison, Facebook spent $210 million on their 28 meggawatt Prinevill datacenter. So a 300 meggawatt datacenter would probably cost $2 billion. Therefore I doubt such an attack against Bitcoin would be even within NSA's capabilities. They can't even get their Utah datacenter to run correctly and it has been delayed by more than 1 year: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2052960/nsa-data-center-suffe...
I think you're missing the implication here. Until now, an attacker could go after Bitcoin by using superior technology to compute hashes faster than everyone else. But now, these new companies are using the best technology available. There is no superior technology that would allow the NSA or any other single attacker to compete with 28nm ASICs produced in commercial volumes.
Once 28nm bitcoin ASICs are widely distributed, the bitcoin network will be safe from a 51% attack even from governments.
I think you need to assert that there never will be any superior technology...
All I need to assert is there will never be any radically superior technology that is accessible to the NSA long before it is accessible to commercial bitcoin miners, and I think that's plausible. The NSA doesn't innovate in semiconductor fabrication, Intel and TSMC do. The only way the NSA could plausibly gain a significant hash rate advantage over commercial bitcoin miners is by breaking SHA-256, which has nothing to do with hardware.