This seems stupid, might just be me, but whoever is first will get most orders right? There are tons of people holding out for ASICs to ship, so whoever shipped first would get those orders? amirite?
Most of these are pretty stupid yes. Whoever ships first, proves that 1) Asics are real and 2) they can deliver a mature product. Both of which incentivize people to make orders (with them, since they are the only ones getting orders out). Unless all the companies are the same person, or the other companies pay the first one to market to hold orders back, there is no reason not to ship ASAP.
ASICs are a ploy by the govt to end bitcoin through a series of overly complicated manuevers? As has been said for at least year (probably more), it would make more sense to spend the 2 or 3 million in development costs, to create a supply of ASICs and annihilate the blockchain, essentially ending bitcoin once and for all, rather than feed into its' development. The anonymous nature of BTC would provide the perfect alibi such that no one could ever prove who did it.
In fact, ASICs help secure the block chain from precisely this type of attack, as it drives up the cost to overwhelm the network (which is the point of the bitcoin).
To destroy bitcoin is easy, to maintain it is hard. If bitcoin ever really steps on anyones toes in a big way, it will have a real hard time; the main power right now is its small-timeness.
