On Mining
That was a great write-up.  I've avoided BTC from the start because I always figured someone would commit the algos to silicon and crush everyone else.  That said I'm doubtful there is such thing as a ASIC resistance system in anything that has a direct economic value to highly-repeated calculation ratio.  Many years ago people would say of graphics systems "You'll never get X poly's/second" etc.  But then gaming came along and all those hungry 3d gamers kept buying more and more powerful GPU's.  Then data sciences came along and said "wow we can use these GPU's" and onward marches the power of the GPU.  I have lived to see so many things over the years go from "impossible" to "common place" in technology.<p>Another thought that came to mind several times over the years is that China or USA could spool up enough hardware to swamp the BTC networks and crash them.  If you think about advancements in these ASIC's and how cheap power can be to large governmental organizations all that is missing is the incentive to attack BTC.  I take the recent slow but steady recognition of BTC by various governments with a certain cynical grain of salt.  I think others see these things as proof that BTC is getting more generally accepted, but I see them as very large and powerful entities thinking, "If you can't beat them join 'em".  It's entirely possible that these steps are more about staying closer to the enemy then being friends with BTC.<p>When I read this article making claims about heat and electricity being major blockers to centralization I started to think about how google and facebook have been solving these problems with amazing success in the last couple of years.  Imagine an "BTC Factory" in a nice cold climate where power is cheap and labor to maintain the facility is cheap.  If BTC continues to grow and become predictably tradable for other currencies then these farms could be built with great ease.  All we're lacking here is a VC who sees 15% as a reasonable return and a handful of nerds who don't mind building the worlds most powerful mining environment in a 505,000 sq ft facility in North Carolina.  Of course this would be a massive investment and could signal an amazing time for BTC or it could signify the centralization of a decentralized process that destroys the original dreams of BTC and yet again puts the people with the most power (literally) in control.<p>The only thing that stands between today and that potential future are forward thinking people trying to keep the BTC concept alive and continuing to improve what is today's state of art to stay ahead of tomorrow's state of art.  I'm still on the sidelines watching but am enjoying the show!