We had this problem back in 2012-2013 when ASICs started appearing for BTC.
People assumed there would be 51% attacks and centralizations and in the end everything turned out fine.
Most likely ETH will go POS and it will be the end of profitable mining. There are just way too many GPUs on the market now and after ETH the mining rewards from the available coins will be nil.
Maybe in 2022 or so, GPU mining will be profitable again when everybody has already sold their GPU on Craigslist or eBay and the supply of mining GPUs is lower. Basically what happened in beginning of 2016.
People assumed there would be 51% attacks and centralizations and in the end everything turned out fine.
Most likely ETH will go POS and it will be the end of profitable mining. There are just way too many GPUs on the market now and after ETH the mining rewards from the available coins will be nil.
Maybe in 2022 or so, GPU mining will be profitable again when everybody has already sold their GPU on Craigslist or eBay and the supply of mining GPUs is lower. Basically what happened in beginning of 2016.
I don't really agree that everything has "turned out fine". 51% attacks and 51% network domination are two things to consider separately. Sure, there have been rare occasions where 51% 'attacks' have caused problems. But I'm more concerned about the network domination where some small group controls the majority of resources and really has too much control over various outcomes... well, mainly market prices.
I see ETH and BTC separate from many other coins. They have "arrived"! lol... I mean soooo much is reliant on ETH now they can do whatever they want with POS or whatever and they will be fine because of all the real money support flowing in for ICOs.
BTC has it made because of brand recognition and tangible infrastructure in place.
The problem I have is that unknown coins freshly hitting the street are now controlled by these "secret" miners. There are FPGA and maybe ASICs controlling small alt coin networks and it is a HUGE problem.