Why ASIC's Should Not Be The Future Of Crypto CurrenciesASIC's are not a natural technological generation leap like going from CPU to GPU was. ASIC's are simply specialized processing units made specifically for Bitcoin. Which i do not beleive is following the original intentions of Satoshi, for many reasons.
Moving from GPU to ASIC mining will not be the same as going from CPU to GPU mining. The reason here is because CPU's and GPU's have decentralized distribution. They are mass produced by huge companies giving you the option to buy their products in any city, no matter where you live! This allows us to be in control of when and where we get our mining hardware, and to a certain degree, at what cost. (Which helps the decentralization process).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DecentralizationWhile on the other hand, ASIC's are/will not be mass produced, supply is controlled, price is controlled, they are in limited quantity, can only be bought from a few companies/sources, that in reality nobody even knows for sure they can trust. So what will happen is all the miners in the world will be forced to rely on those few small companies for ASIC's, as well as the small quantities that they produce. And we will be subject to their pricing. They will also control the supply of the mining rigs, which can have an effect on the bitcoin economy that is similar to the effect that the U.S Federal Reserve and banks have on the money supply. I'm not talking about the amount of money/BTC, but when it is available/mineable to the miners. This allows ASIC manufacturers to be in control of when and where we get our mining hardware. (All this hurts the decentralization process)
People will have to rely on the small quantities that these companies produce, which causes people to have wait for their hardware, which in the end causes people to potentially lose money. This is exactly what is happening right now. Many people are waiting to see what happens with ASIC's, so that they can start buying mining hardware again. So, basically if ASIC didn't exist people would continue to buy video cards as i type this, which would have meant more profit for those people now and in the future, which would have meant more money in those peoples pockets. This is where the 'Federal Reserve effect' comes in, because now mining hardware companies can control when people buy/receive their hardware, plus control when people get more or less profit through controlling the mining hardware supply. Also, buying ASIC's from a few small companies means whenever those companies come out with a new model, this process will start all over again. More lost money, more time lost waiting for release/shipping.
Another downfall of ASIC, is the fact that ASIC's will make everyone have to 'restart from scratch' buying mining hardware all over again, when most people already have their mining hardware in the form of video cards, and it is already payed off. Now you will have to sell all your video cards, then have to buy $1000's of dollars of ASIC's just to be able to keep up with all the other players with the increasing difficulty. After that, you will have to wait all over again to get your return on your investment! Which could take half a year or more, once difficulty adjusts, which should just take about a month or so.
Once ASIC comes out, the difficulty will adjust accordingly. Which will just cause everyone to make the same amount of money as they were before ASIC's. So the question is, is it necessary for us to go through all of what i mentioned above, to just end up making the same amount of money as you were before with GPU's, just a month or so later, with ASIC's?
Because of the above mentioned costs, plus the added cost of ASIC'S, this can hinder the widespread global adoption of Bitcoin just because of the sheer expense. This is especially true for people in other smaller, less wealthy countries. It is much easier to obtain a used video card for those people. People that could be helping to build security and decentralization for Bitcoin!
ASIC's threaten to ruin any anonymity that Bitcoin has left. This is by potentially making it easier to track who is buying the mining rigs through the few small companies that sell the ASIC's. Which could potentially be bad if Bitcoin ever became illegal!
There are also many more smaller disadvantages of moving towards ASIC that are of less importance.
So now it comes to the advantages of ASIC. That's where everything boils down to in the end. The problem is there are not enough advantages to using ASIC, for them to outweigh the disadvantages it brings to the table! In my opinion, network security and lowered power consumption cannot make up for the potential problems that it brings. This is an economy. This is not about power consumption! It will all come down to economics in the end. And that is what I'm talking about. And that is the infostructure that Satoshi built Bitcoin on!
The Bitcoin developers, and the Crypto Community in general needs the recognize ASIC's as a threat, and we should all do something to stop this from happening. I do not think that Satoshi would think the way these ASIC's are to be distributed would be good for the Bitcoin economy in general. There are a few things we can do to combat this, like changing the algorithm to prevent the usage of ASIC's. Or, we could all switch to another crypto currency that that uses a different algorithm that is resistant to ASIC's, like Litecoin, so that we can save Bitcoin and our crypto-independence!
By Switching To Another Bitcoin Algorithm, Or By Using Litecoin We Can Save Our Crypto-Independence!The only options we have now is to change the Bitcoin algorithm, or for everyone to switch to another ASIC proof crypto currency. The ideal situation would be for the Bitcoin developers to change the algorithm, but that does not seem to be what they plan to do. So that's where Litecoin comes in. While Litecoin is not ASIC proof, it is ASIC resistant. It runs on an algorithm called scrypt that is highly memory intensive, which makes it much harder to produce an ASIC for Litecoin. Even if a company would find a way to produce an ASIC for it, it would take at least a year to design, produce and ship them. So it would be our 'safe heaven' from ASIC, saving us from the many disadvantages and negative effects that ASIC threatens to bring to Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency world. At the very least, it would be buying us more time to work on something to prevent mining hardware companies from taking over our crypto currencies. People will be able to continue to GPU mine, continue to profit, once again allowing us to be in control of when/where we buy our mining hardware, as well as, at what cost we buy it at. Allowing the control of the crypto world to stay in our hands, not the hands of greedy companies!
Jay1337 
