Only to the extent that you can afford to spend $1 million+ and a year every time you change your algorithm. For bitcoin mining or encryption or decoding popul

Only to the extent that you can afford to spend $1 million+ and a year every time you change your algorithm. For bitcoin mining or encryption or decoding popular video formats then yes, ASICs are absolutely the way to go. But there are many cases where the algorithms you're using aren't so fixed or where you're not willing to put up with such large lead times.