«I see your point about ASICs raising the bar but wouldn't that put contributions out of reach of all but high-wealth or dedicated miners?» Not at all. ASICs d

«I see your point about ASICs raising the bar but wouldn't that put contributions out of reach of all but high-wealth or dedicated miners?» Not at all. ASICs don't increase the gap between the low-hashrate and high-hashrate miners any more so than GPUs. It's all proportional. If you have x% of the global hashrate, you get x% of the revenues. This is one of the biggest misconception in the mining world. You see journalists claiming that ASICS make mining tough for smaller miners. But this has absolutely nothing to do with ASICs. It all comes down to electrical costs: the large miners can afford to set up shop in area with cheap electricity while small miners have to make do with whatever rates they pay where they live/work. The difference between $0.03/kWh in Douglas County, WA (where many industrial miners are located) and $0.20-0.30/kWh in SoCal is huge. That's why large miners profit more. This would be exactly the same if the coin was GPU-mineable.