Quote from: PartyArty on July 18, 2020, 09:46:16 PM

Given the constant technological advances made in mining hardware, and the increase in price of new miners, what is the chance that one day mining becomes centralized to only a few industry giants with enough capital to justify purchasing such expensive hardware?

Price has nothing to do with centralization, as long as mining gears manufactures offer to sell the gears to everyone, we are good regadless of the price, as for now mining is already controlled by "giants with enough capital", they own at least 50-60% of the hasharate at worst case scenario, it has been this way for too long now, but those "whales" don't run under the same managmaget and not owned by the same person/s, they also treat each other as opponents so the chances of them cooperating to do something stupid are slim to nothing.

I wouldn't worry about large businesses taking control of mining because their goal is to make profit and that incentivizes them to play "clean" to a certain extend, also the monopoly of technology can be fought oneway or the other, a great example is the patent covert asicboost, if someone has exclusive access to it, they could easily take full control of the mining operations, but as long as they are after nothing but profit, I wouldn't really worry much, I would, however, worry about governments, a rich king/prince who would do it for other goals than profit.