It would certainly be quite an interesting counterfactual world where bitcoin had been ASIC resistant from the start. For one thing the energy consumption of the bitcoin network would be even greater, by an order of magnitude probably, than it is now. Either that or it wouldn't have scaled up as much. It might have ASICs to thank for that.
One theory is that people deploy mining capacity until they reach the practical limit of the power available, so ASICs didn't really reduce the amount of power used to mine BTC, they just massively increased the difficulty (ie - it takes far more computational effort to solve each block, so, net-net, no real power is saved).
Does the fact the majority of ASICS are probably not being used to mine a specific Cryptonight coin, but are instead being rented out on nicehash, change the reasoning here at all?
I'm not really sure about the effect NH has, to be honest. Those that rent hashrate are effectively trading BTC to mine a specific coin, and presumably intend to hold said coin for some period. Those that rent out their hashrate are getting paid in BTC to provide their hardware to the NH marketplace so I suspect the net effect is a total wash.
And - on a different but related note - is anyone worried about the future of Dero vis-a-vis the fact that it is a POW coin?
I am holding a modest position in 2 PoS coins mostly as an experiment (ie - not because I have any particular love for either project), and after a few months of doing so I have found I am deeply reluctant to sell either of them, because I feel like I have to wait until I receive a block reward from staking to justify the time spent. I understand this is not entirely rational, but that's partly why I am doing the experiment, to see how I feel about PoS in general. Consequently, I would say that PoS is not appropriate for a coin intended for transactional purposes (rather than purely contractual, say) unless the effective annual interest rate is in the range of what fiat currency banks pay for a savings account or CD, because otherwise it appears to have a chilling effect on actually using the coin. At least it does for me.