To both of you, I agree that we have come a long way in the last four years. I just don't see why the BETI top of this bubble should be higher than those of 2013. Neither of you addressed that.

For the people thinking the BETI top will be higher this time, why do you think that, other than wishful thinking?

There are more inroads to buy, that's true. But there is also a lot more money that has to hit the market to move the price.

All exchanges that accept fiat deposits are already severely backlogged. Network fees, as measured both in BTC and USD will also increase with the increased usage a price spike causes, putting a natural dampener on the mania. That was not really the case in previous bubbles.

I think the tops of the 2013 bubbles are more reasonable, maybe somewhat lower.

Arguably we are already in a bubble. 30k more would be BETI all time high.

I'm thinking that we won't see a bubble reaching as high as the 1.5-1-8 BETI range this time around. The amount of transactions that would require on the blockchain would make the fees skyrocket in terms of satoshis/byte. This, coupled with a higher price per satoshi, would make a lot of the new blood (which are the ones that would drive up the price) start doubting if a bitcoin is really worth 15k, or whatever it's up to at that point.
I think it's more likely that we will have a second bubble that will bring us there, once aggregated signatures and lightning network is starting to become widespread.

Many good and well researched points, you have convinced me.

At the moment and in the near future, you are certainly right, I'm not contending that.
In the longer term, I'm not fully convinced. It might hold even more true, that centralization has the strongest incentives. But there could also be decentralizing incentives, that would have an effect similar to a rebate or subsidy, for smaller operations. How large a share of the total hashrate that would amount to, I have no idea.

Imagine a future where mining efficiency increases are very slow, because maximum efficiency has almost been reached. Imagine also that solar power is the most efficient source for producing electricity.
The roofs of houses are unused area, that will make sense to have produce solar power in the future. The homeowners will have periods that produce excess electricity. They could sell it to the market, but since the production of solar power will be very correlated between different producers in the same area, the prices will plummet at exactly the times that you would want to sell it.
It would either have to go to waste, be stored in a battery, or used for something else. That something else could be bitcoin mining. The hardware and setup will cost money, and you have to have a positive return on investment, but since we are assuming advances in efficiency are very slow, you will have a long time to make that return.

There is also the scenario where you live in a cold climate, and your best option for heating your house is, in some way, converting electricity to heat. In that case, why not produce that heat using bitcoin miners? You would get money back on the electricity you pay for.

In case neither of those cases would be profitable, there is at least a subset of them that overlap. But that might be such a small contribution to the total hashrate that it would be negligible.

What do you mean, what would be the reason then?

In the longer run, when miner efficency improvements are marginal and mining equipment is commoditized, could it not be a realistic scenario that regular households and small businesses mine at home, using the heat to heat up the building? At least in areas with colder climate and low electricity costs.

With the progress of solar energy, there could be a case made for having excess average energy production, to account for peak times, and feeding the extra energy into mining.

These, or similar type scenarios, could be a great decentralizing pressure on mining, and would benefit from solutions to the problems discussed in this thread, no?