Quote from: vpitcher07 on August 01, 2014, 01:34:20 PM

1. Possibly. Many people saw Litecoin a better coin than bitcoin because it was "ASIC proof". However now that that has changed, I don't really see the benefit of LTC besides a faster block time. (I think a lot of people would agree)
2. It's hard to say if ASIC's effected the price at all. So much happened so quickly it would tough to prove if something had an affect on price more than the other.

Here's my opinion on mining. When people call bitcoin a scam I usually say they have no idea what they're talking about. However, mining on the other hand is almost always scam. If you're not looking to drop a significant amount of money on hardware then I can almost promise you, you won't make on ROI unless we see a significant price increase. If you want to mine just for the sake of doing it (for fun) then go for it! I was doing it for a while myself. But if you're looking to make money on it then really put your research into hardware and difficulty. Chances are if you're not dropping at least $10,000 on hardware you're not going to make money. It's a risky business. You have to bank on a price increase if you're going to be doing small time mining. But like I said, this is just my opinion and I could be very wrong. It's really all about chance and luck.

I agree and what you have said is quite similar to how stock market works.

Unfortunately this shifts bitcoin decentralized model towards a centralized one (pool)