I think the progress will become more predictable now that they've basically reached the maximum amount of compute possible from a single chip. The speed breakt

I think the progress will become more predictable now that they've basically reached the maximum amount of compute possible from a single chip. The speed breakthroughs going forward will be optimized ASIC designs and smaller gates. But going from CPU -> GPU -> FPGA -> ASIC we saw huge gains in performance. That's no longer the case and hence we should see more linear scaling of mining operations. But I do tend to agree with the assessment that if BTC remains popular and continues to gain credibility then we will see more and more mining operations come on line as the mainstream starts to invest. I mean, can you imagine if a large bank decided one day to hedge its bets and do it's own dark pool of miners? They could throw so much money at it that it could really disrupt current trends.