did ASIC ruin bitcoin ?

[zekesonxx]

ASIC has made Bitcoin much more secure. This means that to perform a double-spend attack on the network would require more mining power than the majority of other miners combined, which would be very hard and insanely expensive.

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[teknohog]

When we get EEPROM ASICs that can switch coins and crypto algos, deep into the micron chip limit, then we will have saved our project from those that would see it fail.
Whosoever can get there first, gets a hero medal from yours truly.

You mean programmable logic, like FPGAs? I think the idea actually grew out of memory chips - you can implement basic logic by having memory addresses as the input, and memory contents as the output.

It's a nice technology to have, as long as someone can actually program the requisite logic - we still don't have a Scrypt miner on an FPGA. Also, good luck developing a Scrypt ASIC without first prototyping it on an FPGA.

OTOH, if you had the ASIC tech for several different hashes, you could in theory have all of them on one chip, but why would you switch between them, instead of running them all at once?

[Goldmember]

If you are commodity trading you could not care less, ASIC did not change anything to first order. However I think ASICs are bad for the currency functions.

With CPU and GPU mining anybody with an hour to read up on the topic could participate, and by word of mouth pull other users in. Let's face it, nobody is going to make the required investment in a new miner without a reasonable ROI prospect, so new miners are those that already have the hardware.

In a sense it is similar to real gold; to make a profit you need to be a large company, but this makes gold not easily accessible to consumers and thus impractical as a currency, while it is still fully functional as a commodity. Due to the lack of industrial applications of BTC (as opposed to gold) in the long run it must succeed as a currency. With small scale hobby miners quitting there is less talk about BTC, leading to less PR, which could drive BTC price down, and thereby also affect traders. To save the situation we would need much improved capabilities to pay using BTC in our everyday lives.

[Mooshire]

They were only profitable when they first came out

[NewLiberty]

When we get EEPROM ASICs that can switch coins and crypto algos, deep into the micron chip limit, then we will have saved our project from those that would see it fail.
Whosoever can get there first, gets a hero medal from yours truly.

You mean programmable logic, like FPGAs? I think the idea actually grew out of memory chips - you can implement basic logic by having memory addresses as the input, and memory contents as the output.

It's a nice technology to have, as long as someone can actually program the requisite logic - we still don't have a Scrypt miner on an FPGA. Also, good luck developing a Scrypt ASIC without first prototyping it on an FPGA.

OTOH, if you had the ASIC tech for several different hashes, you could in theory have all of them on one chip, but why would you switch between them, instead of running them all at once?

Yes, FPGA are the EEPROMs for this.  Add the coin switching to follow the most profitable mining of the moment, optimize, and away we go!  Doing this on ASIC doesn't provide the flexibility for dynamic changing so you don't also get the monetary optimization which requires external market input. What you gain in speed and heat efficiency, you may lose in flexibility.
Though with FPGAs advanced to a sufficient optimization for better ASIC development, that may not be so important. 

[Carlton Banks]

Some well thought out replies. I would add that the rest of technological progress will likely be pretty dynamic in the coming few decades: if we're only just at the stage where open source firearms are being developed, what happens when electronic devices start becoming homemade? The potential for someone to print their own mining rig suddenly throws up limits around the physical resources needed and the availability of the design knowledge or availability of designs. I realise we're nowhere close to printing chips right now, but I think anyone who follows the semiconductor manufacturing industry will know: they're running out of road, and on the timescales I'm talking about, too. Who will innovate the next processor fabrication technology: Intel, TSMC, or some Kazakh carbon-substrate 3D printing enthusiast, living far away from prying eyes? You can't put that particular brand of toothpaste back in the tube...

Well put,  that's exactly why I stick around.  I believe this ecosystem is actually top dog in the open source multiverse (had to use it ). Hell I would even say we have preppers beat. 

Locking down all raw commodities is where the control system logically moves next, I'm pretty sure of this. Electricity, glue, wood, water, metals, seeds, plastics (well, they got the crude oil pretty well wrapped up already, in fairness). How much good is digital hard money and 3D printers when price controls on materials force us into 21st century Dickensian pauper-dom? I might be overstating the extent to which all commodities could be controlled, but there are signs they've already started (ETF's for copper and no doubt other surprising ETF's, Blythe Masters on her "World Tour" since 2008...)

[TitanBTC]

Technology accelerates change.  It seems like, of all communities, the bitcoin community should OK with that.