The hashrate didn't grow from 1 petahash to 400 exahash becuase there was a $1000 pot to be earned a day.
Again, end scenario is that fees will be the only reward miners will get, you think you will have miners with the same hashing power on 600k a day tx playing each 20 cents?
Why must the number of miners constantly increase? Isn't it logical that at some point after reaching its highest level, it starts to decline?
It doesn't, the numbers are for keeping the hashrate stable.
But why do you have to maintain or increase hash power?
Hash power has increased, not to generate security, but because there is great competition among miners to obtain the block reward. With the gradual reduction in the reward value per block, this competition starts to make less sense. Because the cost increases for the block reward. I don't think it's logical to overload the network with fees to sustain this mining war.
The point is that 1T/H processes the same number of transactions and blocks as 600E/H. So this idea that this has to be always increasing doesn't make sense. In the next halving or two halvings from now, this mentality has to start changing, otherwise we will start to have absurd fees that will discourage new users from entering the network. Most people aren't going to have dozens of BTC to compensate for paying extremely high fees.
Why does this war for hash power have to be fueled? Why can't mining be made even more decentralized again, as long as more users have a processing machine? When mining is reduced to two or three pools (which is the path this is taking), won't this be more dangerous for the security of Bitcoin?