I just came across this news that 200,000 routers were secretly programmed for mining Monero (XMR) across Brazil. Everybody knows what Brazil is. But let's look into some economic stats. There are 211 million citizens in the country according to http://www.worldometers.info There is a GDP Per capita of $10,224 and they rank 65th in the world. It's ranked at 153 by https://www.heritage.org/ on economic freedom it's ranked 27th in the region when it comes to economic freedom. So it's safe to say that Brazil is kind of in the middle when it comes to human development

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It was possible due to a small microchip located inside the router that is similar to that of any hand-held device. This Microchip is not very strong but is still capable of doing more than just connecting a user to the web or enabling WiFi services. The result of this is that everything gets slow for those who are using these routers. It's not a huge problem. The privacy and data of the "victims" is no affected. But it's a clear violation of the individuals property rights which is 100% unacceptable and shouldn't be tolerated.

The Idea of CPU Mining

It's all about incentives and Monero even altered their mining algorithms when they figured out that ASICs were developed for their existing algorithms. Personally I think XMR community and devs are full of elitist who have no idea about the realities of the world. This isn't some random claim I'm making. i'll illustrate my reasons below.

The Sunk Cost

The coins that are mined using ASICs have a high sunk cost. An ASIC is only made to do just one thing. So drops of pifitability won't create an exodus of the mining power. BTC and BCH have a bit of a war for hashpower. But a coin like Dash keeps its hashrate through both good times and bad times.

On top of that the miners are actually incentivized to protect and promote the coin they are mining as they can't just switch for something else. An ASIC is almost a quasi-stake on the network.

No More Hacks

Recently it was discovered that an Android malware had been built for mining Monero on Amazon Fire TV stick. Known as ADB.miner the malware has been able to proliferate due to the presence of a developer feature in the Android OS called Android Debug Bridge that allows developers to communicate as well as execute commands remotely over the device without requiring authentication. Normally the debug feature is usually dormant as it is supposed to be turned off.

Devices that have been infected with the malware normally display an app known as ‘test’ which pops up interrupting the media streaming as the mining of the virtual currency starts. The presence of the malware first became public two months ago on the forum of Android developers. Not all Amazon Fire TV devices are vulnerable as the problem usually happens when sketchy apps are being sideloaded and in the process turning on Android Debug Bridge.

According to Kevin Beaumont, a cybersecurity researcher based in the United Kingdom, those Amazon TV sticks which have undergone modification in order to ship with open source media player, Kodi, are the worst hit. Once a device has been infected with the malicious code, the malware also attempts to spread to other Android devices and not just Fire TVs.

Source: https://www.fxempire.com/news/article/nearly-800000-monero-xmr-mined-using-malware-date-509815

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These things never happen with ASIC coins. Hacking someone's devices won't turn enough profit and therefor cybercriminals have no incentive to violate individual's property rights. ASICs is a good solution for this.

ASIC Resistance is Like Affirmative Action

It's doing something for its own sake. At face value on presented logic it seems to make a lot of sense. After all, ASICs does lead to centralization. But what some of these people never bother to mention is that centralized doesn't mean that it isn't distributed. World's best blockchain performance is achieved through DPoS and it is centralized to the point where most things are handled by top 20 witnesses. There is only a total of 100+ servers that is taking care of he network. Which is another way of saying that the whole thing is distributed over hundreds of locations where the operators have a large vested interest over maintaining their sweet source of income.

Resisting this means that your network depends on random tiny contributions. That's anoher way of saying nobody has much of vested interest and they are just their to gain some quick bucks.

Final Stats

Let'ask what's the achievement that indirectly cost the property rights of potentially millions of internet users?

Was it worth it? The Tx fee is som of the lowest it has been in months reaching $20 at its peak while only having done 10,914 Tx a day at best. Imagine if people simply wanted to buy porn with XMR. People wold be paying more in the form of a fee if things ever get popular. Fighting against ASICs has been like fighting against straws.

It sounds great at first. But the statistics paint a different picture. So don't try to empower CPUs for the sake of it. It could become a major annoyance for many people and might even accomplish a grand total of nothig.