...The difference is when GPUs came into the picture AMD didn't stop selling them to us they made and sold us more of them.
If ASICs get into the hands of the general public anytime soon - yes I know there are a few (expensive) Avalons around, and some FPGA units etc.. But the wait on pre-order BFL units has been over a year for early customers. There is a post on bitcointalk somewhere where someone has calculated that if BFL units, at current prices, are not received by something like November they will never return the investment - except for the lucky few who get theirs before everyone else. Note: I have ordered a unit - just for the fun of it, but don't expect it to ship anytime soon and as such will probably make little if anything on my investment.
The point I am trying to make is that at some point surely ASIC manufacturers will decide it is more profitable in the short term to use their technology to mine rather than pass the benefits around - I mean who wants to sell what is essentially a mint rather than use it themselves. It will be so hard for the average miner to compete with the super ASIC farms that they will move on to the harder (from an ASIC point of view) altcoins. This, I believe, will cause the community that has built BTC to cash out of it and move on because they can no longer really participate. When there are only a handful of super ASIC farms left - whats in it for the community to keep up network security, keep updating the code etc.
Hopefully I am wrong and it surely wont happen any time soon - but it is a valid concern I think.
I do believe altcoins have a role to play whatever ends up happening to bitcoin. Only time will tell I suppose.
Everyone wants an ASIC, no doubt about that and very few people have them at this time. Yes, it's all a bit of a mess, on one hand you have people like friedcat and his ASICMINER doing very, very well (as well as
block erupter otw). On the other hand, you have a company like BFL who have run into problem after problem. A lot of people are labeling them scammers but I think they just took on more than they could handle. I'm sure they will eventually get them out beyond a few samples to various people. In the middle you have Avalon who have been shipping to those who took the risk of an early pre-order.
The important thing to remember is that these issues are unrelated to Bitcoin itself. This is a people problem, not a Bitcoin problem. Contrary to popular belief, ASIC's are not a licence to print money (unless you are one of the very lucky few to have one atm). Eventually everyone will have them and it'll just be the next step up from GPU's and FPGA's. ASIC's also consume less power, less space and will continue to evolve.
The point you raised about ASIC manufacturers opting to mine bitcoins themselves has already occurred. ASICMINER did that and it's proven to be the most successful way of doing ASIC's to date. Instead of buying an ASIC from them, you purchased shares and get paid a dividend from what they mine.
All were high risk investments and the people who took on that risk early are now justly rewarded or lost out big (depending on who they went with). It's early days and that's how it works, it truly is the wild west.
Change is upon us but to suggest people will simply move to another coin implies they are only in it for the money. There is more to Bitcoin than just participating in mining.
In fact, most people (who are few in number) in altcoins are solely in it for the quick buck, this is why you continue to see a new one every few days which gets pumped and dumped yet Bitcoin continues on with development, investment, media coverage, adoption and a steady rise in demand.
Altcoins serve zero purpose. Proponents of Litecoin often cite faster confirmation times but they ignore the fact that A) 51% attack is not a realistic possibility, even less so with ASIC's coming online and there is no real financial incentive to do so B) Merchants can simply use a service such as Bitpay to get paid straight away. Every day type transactions are already happening and no-one is standing around waiting 20 minutes for 6 confirmations, 0 confirms are fine for most low value transactions.
Secondly, the network hashpower of Litecoin is quite low (even much, much lower for the other altcoins) which in actual fact makes it far more likely a target for such attacks. Altcoins also suffer from a complete and utter lack of support from not only the developers of the coin itself but from the majority of the crypto currency community itself.
You also have the issues of altcoin premining which is pretty much necessary to ensure some fly by night exchange will list it for a large sum of coins which they can use to trade for Bitcoin.
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