Sorry my mistake. I thought you were implying it was being used in attacks. My misunderstanding.
A manufactuer makes ASICs to sell… Lets say they do spend 50 million on hardware, 16,000 units by your math. They can do what Bitmain does. pre-orders 3+ months before they ship out. Mine with the machines while they wait for a certain amount of orders to be filled. Once a threshold of orders have been met, use the machines to attack some coins to make EXTRA money before you ship them out.
Step 1. Create hardware they were going to sell anyway…
Step 2. Mine with hardware with 3+ month pre order and wait for orders to be filled.
Step 3. Use hardware to make extra money by attacking coins completely anonymous.
Step 4. Ship hardware that was sold 3 months ago. Coin prices have crashed to zero from attacks.
Step 5. Profit?
Mine/Attack/Resell…Win/Win/Win
Where is the risk? Why do you think Bitmain had a 3 month wait on them. Im sure they mine the coins too, this way if they get coins from attacks they can cash them out as if they were mined, a way to launder the stolen money. ZKsnarks doing its job, can never prove that a coin came from an attack.
If you are making the units and selling them, the risk reduces greatly. If you are profiting off them already, you dont need to make 50 million to have incentive.