These larger and more efficient operations will be motivated by profits, but will likely be more interested in maintaining the network security to ensure bitcoin profits in other endeavors rather than directly from mining itself. I would not be surprised at all if the BitCoin world of 2030 is almost 100% institutional (finanacial houses/banks) mining, with partnering agreements on planned hash levels to help reduce costs, and a big warehouse full of standby gear that can be powered on if a rouge does appear on the network.
You had me up till the concept of miners hevily invested in hardware continuing to mine so that bitcoin continues.... I don't see that happening at all. Just like poeple will sell their GPUs when it's not profitable to mine, those who bought into ASIC expecting profits will shut down when there are none also.
I agree. Heck, look at the situation even now = unless it's profitable, 99.99% Bitcoiner won't do it, regardless of negative impacts.
took you off ignore because this was a good comment.
You point out "now" as the timeframe, I'm talking about 2-5 years out when we have much bigger fish swimming in the bitcoin pond.
You always have to take the whole business model into account. Google should be broke based on this logic, but they are not because the monetize the hell out of advertising and other advantages they can make out of their data and search capabilities. Amazon Kindle is another great example. All it will take is one large company that "needs to have x% no matter the cost" as part of a plan and we will see them going towards mining at a loss.
Of course now that I think about it, the loss might just be for Enterprises if they don't build efficient farms, so the solar powered mining rig might be a gift that just keeps on giving and giving.