Another possible reason is that if a small number of companies start using ASICs, and they're the only ones that use ASICs without selling them to "regular" use

Another possible reason is that if a small number of companies start using ASICs, and they're the only ones that use ASICs without selling them to "regular" users too, they'll quickly gain a large percentage of the hashing power. If a company like ButterflyLabs controls a significant chunk of the total hashing power, it'll enable them to do 51% attack [1] on the network, which'll lower the trust users have in the currency, leading to decreased value. Its a bit paradoxical - people will want as much hashing power as they can get, yet if they get too much of it they risk destroying the currency value, leaving them with nothing. [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses#Attacker_has_a_lot_of_computing_power https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses#Attacker_has_a_lot_of_...