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If you can buy one.

The problem with ASICs is that, once they get under the profit curve, they have no other usage. I can very reliably expect a 7970 to be useful for a few years at least. An Avalon, if I manage to get it, may or may not pay for itself before difficulty makes it unprofitable to run. And then it's completely useless.

Lots of hypothesis and conjectures.



Could you repurpose them for password cracking?


Nope.

FPGAs yes, ASICs no.

They are just machines or iteratively calculating sha-256( sha-256( something ) ) and they are hard-wired to that.




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