Besides the fact that centralization due to ASIC is one of the most important hurdles we need to take care of along with pools which both happened to be concentrated in China and under almost unlimited authority of Xi JinPing, I have realized up to now that we need a complete package, dealing with ASIC problem being a part of it.
I have done a lot of work on pooling pressure problem and some scaling issues not exactly related to this topic but once enough support is provided it won't be an impossible mission to have a better bitcoin in terms of decentralization and performance it is how people would really accept bitcoin as something provably safe and secure.
Sorry to interrupt, but I have something to speak:
The problem here is, nobody is interested in keeping their BTC as they are mostly viewing it as another money-making opportunity (here: get rich quick scheme) and so, it's not possible for anyone here to impose the actual mentality on them that what is Bitcoin all about. About this centralization thing, it isn't limited but a cycle that cannot be broken now (considering that everyone is looking for "regulations" to take effect as they believe that putting everything in the hands of "Central Authorities" will get their Bitcoins' value to sky high levels, which is somehow true as well).
How is it a centralization cycle?Keep it to ASICs or even CPU/GPU mining or even take it back to those times when USBs were used to mine BTC, everything can be controlled by big firms when they've got the money and power both to buy the equipment (or if they already have them) and keep it in their hands - fully controlled. It's not just limited to the machines that are eating hell lots of electricity to generate these coins, but it also takes in the PoS (unless there's a mechanism installed to stop the misuse of the system, which can not happen as if you'll stop them from getting their complete share, they'll not let it rise in terms of value).
Well, how PoS?Simple, just as they can buy the equipment, they can easily buy the pre-mined coins either in ICO by buying a big share or by buying in small parts through weaker hands (this is also considered centralization). This way, they can eat a very big share they'll get through the stakes and control the whole market, though people will stop looking into that "investment" anymore which also stops the further development of that coin as devs see that there's no more interest remaining and they continue with the current version seeing no need of upgrades. The way US and Russia are playing with public's sentiments and trying to get their hands fully on BTC (just like China did, as you mentioned) shows that each country is looking more into making bucks rather than the technical aspects of the technology underlying. This statement supports the quote from your comment I'm putting below:
It is a shame, advocates for shitty ideas like PoS or Universal computer are now much more successful in agitating people and giving them some sort of a purpose. The conservatism and hesitations from keeping system in its promised state of decentralization, has turned us bitcoiners to kinda old fashioned people who are polluting the environment just for a maximum of 3-4 txns/sec throughput with no future of serious improvement.
It truly makes me sad. PoS is the most worthless idea in cryptocurrency and still it looks more promising than PoW. A smart contract that is written in a Turing complete machine/language supported by blockchain is an absolutely stupid idea with almost no future and is advertised as a genius disruptive achievement ... it is bad days for bitcoiners we need fresh air and we need to show what really bitcoin is instead of preserving an experimental/alpha version of the idea and avoiding to adopt and improve.
It is why bitcoin adoption is delayed, we are playing very bad!
I am highly suspicious that with current state of the system we would ever experience true bitcoin and its potentials as one of the most important events in human history.
It's next to impossible for Bitcoins to ever be used as proposed (the main purpose of it was to be used as a "DIGITAL CURRENCY - A GLOBAL CURRENCY) and what we're doing currently - trading it as an asset playing in the markets with those ups and downs, speculating every now and then about "when the next pump will begin". There's nothing actually that could prevent Bitcoins (or any alt or tokens) from centralization as everyone here wants it, stopping the Governments is not possible for us, but for them to stop us is like eating a piece of cake so easy for them.