Update from your boy Inabobo:
I'll concede that the Wikipedia definition is not the definition I was aware of. Seems kind of silly to have the same definition for two different terms (geometric and exponential), but since they are interchangeable, I'll keep that in mind from now on.
"With that in mind, even geometric/exponential growth is not sustainable, as I've already said. You are going to see a decaying % of the network hashrate increase per difficulty period. There will be spikes and troughs, yes, but the overall trend will be decreasing. Four months ago everyone was saying we would see 20 or 30% increases ad infinitum, which was ridiculous. The whole Genesis Block calculator was based on stupidity like that, and led to many incorrect conclusions about mining viability.
At the end of the day, we can throw out a number of these variables anyway, if we make a couple assumptions (dangerous, I know, but since you're here they are probably safe.)
If you're going to mine, it's better to mine with the most efficient hardware as it increases your bottom line. The Monarch is, far and away, the most efficient mining chip on the planet... and the fact that we designed it to scale up or down in the efficiency spectrum depending on the hashrate increases it's viability for mining during down times and cranking up the speed during uptick in BTC prices.
The cost of power is not the only factor in operating a large mining farm. You also have cooling costs and if your farm is large enough, you have staff costs to monitor/R&R the hardware, increasing that .01 or .02c kW/h cost by at least 2x... As difficulty climbs, even the cheapest power places with large farms are going to be turning off the units, and only the most efficient miners will remain. For the most part, everyone in this forum is not a large mining farm... so it doesn't even apply. If you're here and participating in this thread, you are most likely a hobbiest miner and thus paying more expensive electrical rates... so it's even more important that you run the most efficient miner, which, again, the Monarch is and it will allow you to run it much longer than any other miner out here or coming out any time soon."
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/the-monarch-discussion/8401-monarch-difficulty-continuation-closed-thread-@bfl_josh-2.html