ASCI or application-specific integrated circuit machines have hit the Bitcoin mining market. The first machine arrived at a miner’s home in late January and reports have been pouring in of ASCI machines shipped making their way onto miners’ Bitcoin mining rigs ever since.

Since ASCI machines are specifically designed for the task of mining Bitcoin, they are highly effective machines at what they are designed to do. High-end ASCI machines have a hash rate per second of over 1 million. A typical CPU running Bitcoin mining software has a hash rate per second of 1.5.

It goes without saying that ASCI machine shipping has been a game changer in the Bitcoin world. CPUs are no longer even compatible with Bitcoin mining software because a 24-hour CPU is likely not to see a Bitcoin for several years, even if it was mining in a pool.

This trend favors those interested in mining who also have thousands of dollars available to use on expensive hardware, as well as early adopters of Bitcoin mining who have likely made huge profits from their early mining efforts. Those initial earnings could be incorporated into the latest and greatest hardware and platform setup to continue generating Bitcoins in the future.

Miners running relatively powerful GPUs are the most affected by ASCI development. The difficulty of successfully mining a block of Bitcoin has risen to a level that can cause the cost of electricity to exceed the payout that a GPU miner will see in Bitcoin from one year to the next.

All of this speculation is strongly tied to Bitcoin’s price stability going forward. If Bitcoin stays around the current $ 30 level, innovation will continue to progress. ASCI has in part contributed to the rally Bitcoin has seen in the past 2 months. The USD exchange rate for Bitcoin has skyrocketed from USD 10 to USD 30. It is difficult to find an investment with that type of return anywhere on the planet, so it is only natural that Bitcoin is attracting attention in recent days. But will this care last? And if so, will it bring more scrutiny and volatility than stability in the young digital currency? In the long term, relative stability is the only trait that Bitcoin must establish if it is to achieve the original goal of being a viable and competitive currency on a global scale.

So does Bitcoin transcend the current label of a speculative instrument? The answer lies in a tangle of variables that include the broad spectrum of humanity: politics, psychology, finance, fear, freedom, privacy, security … etc. Regardless of the outcome, it is sure to be a fascinating spectacle.