The Effects of ASICs 5 Years Out

So we are almost there, 5 years of ASICs being in crypto , but more specifically in bitcoin, so I want to discuss how they have changed the power structure and community as a whole. Before ASICs, mining was very simply, you had a period of time where CPUs were used, then a period of time where GPUs were used. Satoshi said “one CPU, one vote” originally and I think that ultimately people changed perspective.

When ASICs were coming on the scene, many people were against them, ultimately claiming they would hurt decentralization and companies would run the mining scene. However, the devs at the time thought the investment would provide a sort of intrinsic value and industry behind bitcoin as a whole. Looking back now, in my personal opinion I wish ASICs would have been hard forked away from to an algorithm that might have forced companies to not bother investing in them.

ASICs can be made with any type of algorithm, but there are some algorithms that make it harder for them to be created and more importantly the idea they wont be accepted if created might push off the investment. At the time I was in the middle, but I do believe we truly have seen the worst case scenario when it comes to mining companies and ASIC manufacturers having a much bigger pull than they should have. They are almost all located in China, know eachother and are able to collude to get what they want.

This collusion is exactly what the one cpu/gpu one vote was meant to protect against. Not many people other than companies actually own bitcoin miners that really matter anymore. The companies have such a large amount of ASICs and are creating new improved ones much faster than they will ship them, that it doesn’t make sense to even mine. Its unfortunate, but in my opinion miners should be a utility and not stalling protocol changes because it doesn’t align with their views.

After 5 years of ASICs I personally think that they have made the bitcoin protocol more open to attacks and actually made the network less secure. They might bring more hashpower, but that means nothing if the companies that control that hashpower can be easily manipulated. With the China exchange closures, it seems like Chinese companies are willing to work with their government, without question and that is really not good. We are now at a weird point where ASICs probably pose a threat if they continue to be run en masse by Chinese companies. The hope is that when they get to the best and most efficient nanometer of chip technology available, upgrades wont be so often and a better distribution will occur, but that has yet to be seen.

Thanks to @Elyaque for the badges