If cryptocurrencies’ greatest common asset is their decentralized nature—the inability of any one person, corporation, or united group to control a coin’s future—then there’s no existential threat quite like the rise of crypto-mining ASICs.
Application-specific integrated circuits are chips specially designed to perform the kinds of computations needed to mine a chosen currency more efficiently than general-purpose hardware can. That miners can use ASICs to gain an advantage probably wouldn’t represent such a threat if one company, the Chinese firm Bitmain, hadn’t come to dominate the market.
Read More Here: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611153/specialized-chips-are-threatening-to-take-over-cryptocurrencies-and-they-look-unstoppable/
