Not so sure that I wish to wade into the toxic soup, but...
Someone please correct me if I misunderstood how far ArtForz was able to take this, BUT, to the best of my understanding:
ArtForz, a German person, successfully ordered and implemented his(?) own ASIC design. It set him back ~$60,000, and for his pains, he was mining about a 20-25% of all the bitcoin production, somewhere around May or June of this year.
The 60,000 might have been euros. The 20-25% might (and probably was) some other specific quantity.
Was this bunk, or did it happen? I read this somewhere out on the interwebs, but so what?
I'm pretty sure it happened.
18:38 molecular ArtForz: how long roughly until you have 100 asics up and running?
18:38 ArtForz I'll get em mid feb, probably late feb/early mar
There's a lot more talk about the specifics after that, if anyone's interested.