The graph of the dividend still goes to 0, it just takes longer.
IF the current difficulty trend continues (opinions vary, but i'm betting on it), between 5 and 7 month before the dividends of petamine dry out.
Trying not to reply to this but I can't help myself.
5 months out from now the estimated difficulty at 20% every 11 days will be 48.99Billion
That puts the network hashrate at approximately 360Petahashes to get another 20% on top of that we need to have 72Petahashes be brought online in the next 11 days.
Again, I bring up the question, how many foundries are stamping out asics for btc mining? How many companies are mass producing hardware?
I would never say that it is impossible that production has ramped that much by sept but its highly unlikely unless amd, nvidia or intel decide to start producing asics.
Lets assume that it keeps climbing at 20% for the rest of 2014. Unless the price goes through the roof, even large scale operations will be pushed out of business and the difficulty will eventually crash taking block times and the price with it.