[Sir_Substance]

The entire point of cryptocurrencies is to be decentralized, that's the key innovation. As long as I trust the overall system, I need not trust any one individual. If you're using a cryptocurrency that's centrally controlled you might as well use a fiat currency, at least those are in theory regulated.

When it comes to ASICs, it's very difficult for you or me to buy them outside the US or China. Someone wanting to set up a mining farm with 500 of them can probably arrange something, but if I want to buy just one here in Iceland, I'm screwed. No one ships single ASICs to Iceland for a sane shipping fee. Most won't ship them outside the US at all.

As a result, almost all the hashpower in bitcoin is coming from the US or China, and from the rest of the worlds perspective that's not good. It is /definitely/ within the Chinese governments power to seize all of bitmains strategic reserve of chips and use them to perform a 51% attack on bitcoin.

The benefit of ASIC resistance is that it forces everyone down to graphics cards or at least FPGA boards, and both of those can be bought over the counter in any western country, so it spreads the hashing out geographically, which is desirable from a resilience standpoint. If ASICs were widely available it would be a different matter, but since they aren't, it's overall better to force them out of the game for now.