ASICMiners latest update by representative Friedcat has created a bit of a stir in the bitcoin community, it seems that they will be releasing USB ASIC bitcoin miner devices sometime in the future.

Pictured to the right is the "not-yet-assembled" 300 MH/s mock-up that ASICMiner is proposing to start shipping to customers worldwide. As of yet there is no mention of how much they will actually cost or when they might be available.

ASICMiner was the second organisation to deliver ASIC power to the bitcoin network when they closely followed the first few Avalon ASIC bitcoin miners by a few days. Their monster bitcoin mining farm started work at BTC Guild on February 13 at 800 MH/s and quickly grew to their current 7 TH/s under the pseudonym user 67117.

The move according to Fiedcat is one that will hopefully promote network security by distributing the network hash power while still maintaining a good rate of return for ASICMiner shareholders. At present, ASICMiners chosen pool BTC Guild has had to resort to unusual measures to limit their own hash rate in order to keep from gaining more that 51% of bitcoin computational power (leading to the possibility of a 51% attack).

Meanwhile the competition Avalon ASIC are expected to open their "Batch 3" for orders sometime soon and Butterfly Labs are yet to ship anything.