Just a note on ASIC algo change, Tom has said previously its in VOTs interest to have all the vots issued, for a coin like votecoin to realise its potential its better to have as much issued into the market as possible, this will find the real value of the coin and marketing will do a lot more because he doesnt want to do the eventual marketing push as a mineable coin, that should be an afterthought, he wants the final stage to be marketing and exchanges based on what the coin can do, he does share the frustrations of having limited exchanges but he is really anti hype, he wont announce things till its done.
VOT used to trade at 550 Satoshis when Bitcoin was $18000. Bitcoin is now $9000 and has lost 50% of its value. VOT is now 7 Satoshis so it has lost over 98% of its value. So obviously Ton is a genius coder and terrible business person. The ASICs have nearly destroyed this unique project since they only mine-n-dump to pay off their stupid bricks which will never even pay themselves off. GPU miners tend to be more cool and techie and hold and speculate.
The ASIC issue is more of an EMERGENCY matter at this time. It needs his attention the most.