...with the way the ASIC world is going, it is playing out. If the community doesn't step up and make the change, or at least have an open discussion on the issue, I see Bitcoin dead in less than a year.
Why? You think ASICs are centralizing bitcoin too much? Am I missing some other concern?
I have a block-erupter USB running on a Raspberry PI right next to me as I type this. I'm also thinking of ordering some Avalon chips. Various mining hardware suppliers are finally shipping. ASICs are being *widely* distributed, and spiking the total hashrate/security dramatically. Yes, we're absolutely going to see a handful of pools and operators with huge share, but we'll also see a very long-tail of distributed pretty-impressive hashrate.
With GPUs, you'd get that effect less in the long-run because of the reduced efficiency... Fewer people are willing to put a couple expensive graphic cards in their machines and spend the power and space on them versus sticking a tiny efficient USB device in their laptop.
