Sure, but the point is, noone no matter big or small is going to continue expanding their mining rigs exponentially once profits drop below 15%, so its not going to reach zero unless at some point the said mining operation ceases expanding, then they will just go out of business. As the difficulty rises, manufacturing improvements taper off, then the ability to expand will decrease, but it won't cease. I think we will see this tapering happen after about 40 billion => the problem is, many miners are hoping it will happen sooner, it won't.
A rise in fiat would probably result in a rise in the price of miners to match.
The days of purchasing a 2 TH/s miner and pocketing $300 a week from it will be over after the difficulty reaches and passes 40 Billion ( assuming the general trend in the price of BTC remains constant ). It would be more like, 2 TH/s = $30 running cost, earning $35 a week in BTC = $5 profit. Basically, keep the house warm in winter plus $5 for a cup of coffee and a muffin / scone / donut.
Well you are knocking on the door of the next boom for btc miners. Heating.
In the USA more then 5 million homes heat with electricity. Every one of them could use an ant miner s-1 down clocked a bit put in a nice case as a heater. That is a real market for 1,000,000 S-1s repurposed into space heaters. For electric heated homes.
No data center can compete very well with this. What does the electric heated home have free power. What the f do I mean.
Homes with electric heat spend watts to heat and get no hash 0. So spend 400 watts with a 2x down clocked pair of s-1's you get about 300gh. For free in terms of power. You were going to spend the 400 watts anyway on heat. So spend the 400 watts get heating and hashing. This gives a BIG EDGE to certain people over any data center.
I plan to repurpose my s-1s into space heaters this winter I have a few home owners that I know with electric only heat. No data center competes with this. so in the long run smaller mining will survive . Even do very well in the winter.
