{"id":29015,"date":"2014-03-14T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-14T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci027dc0cff0002489"},"modified":"2014-03-14T04:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-03-14T04:00:00","slug":"asics-litecoin-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/business\/asics-litecoin-come","title":{"rendered":"ASICS for Litecoin. Here They Come."},"content":{"rendered":"
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An ASIC is an Application Specific Integrated Circuit. They are specially designed pieces of hardware for performing the Litecoin hashing algorithms<\/a> necessary to mine a specific coin and verify hashed transactions. These pieces of hardware are designed and manufactured to perform necessary hashing and nothing else.<\/p>\n

With the increasing valuation of Bitcoin, in fiat terms, the economic viability of ASICs begun to make sense some time ago. The development of ASICs to do SHA256 became a reality. There were issues along the way<\/a> with bringing them to market, but ASICs have arrived.<\/p>\n

With the increasing valuation of any coin the same is true: ASICs become a viable option. It is difficult and some would say impossible to avoid ASIC development in the face of viable economic incentives.<\/p>\n

ASICs are considered undesirable for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that they concentrate mining power too heavily and diverge from the original \u2018one cpu one vote\u2019 intention of Satoshi.<\/p>\n