Half size @ half price of 36-50BTC is fine, no need for second mortgage
agreed. I want to see ASIC devices start a mass-rollout though, as $4000 for 45GH is a tremendous deal for early buyers, but probably carries over a 50% profit margin for avalon.
Would rather see mass-produced 1-3GH/s devices for $300-500 a peice. It would end up with many more small investors and aid the distrobution of the BTC network far better then selling more hashing powerhouses that key players or big investors can only afford
This is a really important point -- low barriers to entry are key to competition. No competition = monopoly, and we all know a monopoly on hashing power = the end of BTC.
Consider a future where BTC grows legs and a large bank decides to become a "transaction processor" (transaction strengthener, if you will)... the kind of resources any of the big four could throw at this would utterly dwarf the network's throughput today. A good way to prevent this is for top tier efficiency hashing devices to be available as commodity goods, just as CPUs and GPUs are today.