Would it be the best use of the equipment though? Just as a personal level, my computer could run 10 virtual machines easily as a VPS host. Each VPS would go for anywhere between 25 to 30 mXMR/mo and so, by using my equipment for a VPS host, I would be making 250 to 300mXMR/mo. Now, by mining, my equipment makes me about 30mXMR/mo. Why do I not stop mining on my computer and become a VPS host? Easy, because nobody knows who the fuck I am and who's going to trust somebody who they have no idea who they are to host a VPS for them. They won't. They will go to a place like digital ocean instead. So a company that has a computer with five i9s in it could mine with them or they could become a VPS host and make a hell of a lot more money something like 5x more money. It just doesn't make financial sense.
Discussion
In this scenario, we are assuming bitcoin is gone. So i would be expecting the price of monero to shoot up to tens of thousands of dollars as it sucks in the capital that was in bitcoin. And i think VPS services would be done on i8s or other older CPUs because it’s difficult to justify the opportunity cost. But even if you continued to use your i9 for VPS services, it would not earn as much as it would if you were mining.
But even if we put all that aside. What happens when the demand for more CPUs for mining grows? New gen models will come out. So you’ll have the i10 then work your way up: i11 i12 i13 etc. Eventually these new models will be so expensive and powerful, that ordinary consumers will not be able to afford it or have any need for it. The market would look a lot like the asic market.
Idk these are all very interesting concepts. Monero seems to work optimally with the number of users it has today. And maybe it’s better like that. I don’t think it functions well as a store of value because you can’t audit the supply and i don’t think it can scale without suffering to centralization because there is no blocksize limit. But this was an interesting conversation and i approach your time. Most monero people just shill privacy like that is the only thing that matters.
I agree. You really made me have to think and that's something that you don't get a lot online. I wonder if we're already approaching the point where regular people don't need the kind of CPUs that are coming out as is. There also becomes a question of just how much more efficient can we really make a CPU because eventually we're going to get to the point where quantum physics causes particles to just jump logic gates and you can't make them any smaller and therefore can't put any more transistors on a chip. From what I understand, we are already rapidly approaching that limit even today.