Your points can’t be answered one by one independently as they are all interdependent parts of a single system to me, but I see three main topics, so will answer in terms of those; ASICS vs GPUs, Secrecy vs Openness of mining, and the effects of scarcity.
In my understanding, GPU, graphic processing unit, describes the purpose and function of both ASICs and GPUs, ASIC, application specific integrated circuit, is a specific, most expensive manufacturing technique which gives the fastest computation of the GPU purpose.
Again by my understanding; the same advantages apply to both the gaming and Bitcoin applications, but the business case of supplying to the Bitcoin market outweighs that of gaming (higher prices are offered), therefore the algorithm computation market is getting to enjoy the benefits of ASICs, with some redirection of NVIDIA company efforts, hence the reason we see shortages of supply of cards for gaming, for now (See if you can buy the latest 3080 card on NVIDIA website). Logically, NVIDIA were equipped to cater for the known gaming market, with the natural expansion of that, but they were not equipped to supply both the gaming market, and a burgeoning other market demanding ASICs.
Which brings us onto the secrecy of the other market, again by my understanding, the same advantages of tax evasion enjoyed by Bitcoin mining businesses, existing almost exclusively on the internet, with business addresses in places willing to accept crypto mining activities, if any, are also enjoyed by the global business that is NVIDIA, no need to declare tax, since crypto is decoupled from fiat, except via markets. Of couse NVIDIA will choose to accept the terms of trade demanded by its customers, as that maximises profits. NVIDIA shareholders care only about profit.
On growth, mining farms continue to expand and multiply, as long as there is a competive “Arms race” of hashing power going on. Further, the difficulty does increase exponentially as you mentioned, by the activity of halving alone, disregarding all other things.
Profit takes us onto the final topic, the benefits or problems of scarcity, which is your opinion, entirely unproven, as our world to date has been driven by profit, and enforcement of scarcity, we have no alternative historical reference to base our beliefs on, other than being driven by scarcity enforcement and profit.
We all have a conflict of interest within us, the greedy animal instinctive part which seeks to maximise our own gain at the expense of others, and the logical part which knows that ultimately our individual greed is at the expense of the collective of all living things and all energy in our environment.
Both of those depend on a closed, zero-sum box environment, in which scarcity of all things exists.
If the box is opened to be no longer be zero-sum, enabling an abundance of all things to flow in, then we would no longer see any advantage to be had by scarcification.
Imagine someone trying to sell you a glass of water, standing under a waterfall, for example.
Energy is matter is information is money, it all comes from the sun, yet we have always restricted our consumption to the stored resources of Earth. The same mechanism as enabled us to do that, profit, is what locks us into continuing to do it by deliberate scarcity enforcement, all of which takes effort, and ingenuity.
Now with Bitcoin literally pushing up solar energy capacity, which is directly connected to the world economy via the markets, there is increasing wealth being pumped in, in the form of money-as-sunlight.
That part, is the part disputed by the entire global financial establishment, and everything that depends on it, and they are in control of scarcity, which is damaging to our species, and all other species and our environment, but still they will continue to try to enforce it, by continuing to have us believe it is the only way.
What we have seen in the past, of currencies failing in various countries due to excessive money issuance in Weimar, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe, for example, were isolated occurrences, where scarcity was enforced by external countries embargo.
The same thing can’t happen on a world scale, especially as there is now a direct financial connection to the energy of the sun.
So, use your logic dude, ignore your animal instinct, we are on the cusp of abundance.
Any currency drops meantime are entirely down to local governments and banks enforcing scarcity unnecessarily. Money saved and scarcified is value lost, not money spent.
In that, Satoshi was either mistaken, or feigning ignorance deliberately to draw in the greedy.
That will keep working until Bitcoin production stops, just because it doesn’t need to be printed any longer, we will have enough to use it and distribute via the markets, as the new authority to print endless tokens of money-as-sunlight, at the energy rate and distribution of around 1MW per Bitcoin.
If you still have doubts as to what happens with truly free money, look at all of the things that happened in the US, when the equivalent of 10k dollars per head was issued in one month.
People were not trading in markets, they were donating, oil prices went negative, investments stalled, bankrupt stocks in companies still offering desirable products soared, as did the dollar value itself.
Right there, we saw for a short while true, fine grained democracy.
I will never forget it, even if I never live to see again, I will keep writing here in full trust that one day, very soon, we will see it again, let completely loose after it can’t be contained any longer.
