KNC stopped shipping? Don't worry they will be shipping 2.5 PH/s+ pretty soon again.
Acknowledged.
Also you do understand that exponential growth forever is impossible right? Within a couple years Bitcoin mining would use more energy than used by the human race for all other purposes combined. Law of large numbers takes over. When network is 1 PH/s for the network to double in a month requires 1 PH/s more hash power today it would require >5 PH/s so even if for example ASIC companies shipped out constant volume the growth as a % would decline. For the growth % to remain constant they would need to manufacture and ship an exponential volume. Thousands of units per month this year, millions of units per month next year, billions of units per month the year after that, trillions of units per month the year after that, quadrillions of units per month the year after that ...
That's true of course. But one shall also consider the efficiency of new ASIC chips making the exponential growth last longer. If even asic companies sell at a constant rate, but their chips become faster and more efficient the effect is the same with lower energy consumption. As older mining rigs get replaced by new less power hungry miners the total network energy consumption may even decrease (very unlikely but hey, we are in the "speculation" subsection
).My point is that the hashrate will continue going up exponentially for an unexpectedly long amount of time.