[RyanZAG]

As far as I know, the guys making custom ASICs for mining are selling them to miners for real dollars. I don't think that helps your point much.

[jbrechtel]

Why do you think that?

The top sellers of mining hardware that I could find on Google (Butterfly Labs, Advanced Miners, Cointerra) all accept Bitcoin for payment.

Are you referring to some group upstream of the hardware sellers? I'm curious where you're getting this information from...

[awj]

Do they "accept bitcoin" in the way that many big services do, where they get their payment out of bitcoin and into cash as soon as possible?

[jbrechtel]

Maybe, what's your point?