As johnyj wrote above, a mid-range gear will mine about $50/month, if electricity cost is taken into account. That is not insignificant, but it can hardly be considered as making a living. Nice toy, though.
It is quite obvious that "small" miners (like CPU miners) will soon be squeezed out to leave the playground for super-duper, liquid nitrogen cooling system, large computers. This can be expected, if the demand for bitcoins grows. It is simpy a matter of the economy of scale - like in conventional mining for, say, copper.
That isn't quite compatible with the decentralization concept of the bitcoin itself.
It is quite obvious that "small" miners (like CPU miners) will soon be squeezed out to leave the playground for super-duper, liquid nitrogen cooling system, large computers. This can be expected, if the demand for bitcoins grows. It is simpy a matter of the economy of scale - like in conventional mining for, say, copper.
That isn't quite compatible with the decentralization concept of the bitcoin itself.
Demand would then drive supply so manufacturers will produce faster/more hashing hardware (be it in terms of GPU or specialised add on cards), economies of scale would mean these become more affordable. Since it's a lot easier for 10,000 individuals to run 1~3 units each than a single entity trying to house 30,000 units, the general distribution of hashing power should still remain relatively decentralized... unless everybody goes join the same mining pool or something
