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Because not everyone can afford ASIC's, which puts the mining power solely in the hands of those who can afford the hardware.

This once again reduces the playing field to a small, powerful group of players and essentially no one else can participate. Doesn't this defeat the purpose of a decentralised currency based on not having "trusted nodes"?

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But they're pushing the cost of graphics cards up in such a way that does the same thing, no?

Realistically the cost of entry is more like $2,000 which is not a small, powerful group of players.

It's not, though. You have the R&D costs of the ASIC, which you don't have to sell to the public, or can run them on your own schedule before releasing them for sale.

Yeah I've totes got $2k spare to use on just getting an ASIC, which likely won't have any resale value, and is only valuable for a very finite time

Comparatively, I do have a nice graphics card (which I can use for gaming and stuff), and I can rent from cloud providers at price points I can afford if I wanted more access to cards.

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