If it'd been done for ideological reasons, I could respect it even if I didn't agree with it. Not sure if I would agree or not, depending on the reasons. But let's be real, Trump didn't do it for ideological or moral reasons. He sold out his country for personal profit, as he does in every other venture.

Tens of thousands of unnecessary covid deaths, massive tax cuts for the rich and tax hikes for the average person, packed the supreme court with activist judges gutting rights and regulations, gross mishandling of classified documents that totally coincidentally coincided with an alarming rate of intelligence assets getting killed, refused to allow the peaceful transition of power, etc., etc., etc., but sure, nothing at all happened under Trump, and Project 2025 definitely won't actually happen if he's reelected, right?

I could be mistaken, but I don't think that's unreasonably long for miners. Probably unfavorably long, but not prohibitively so. Plus, it means it's viable for hackers since it'll actually turn a non negligible profit. Hackers don't have to break even. They use your hardware and your electricity and take all the revenue while you take all the costs.

GPU mining has been unprofitable for years now. It was only kept afloat by Ethereum, but that went proof-of-stake. Its been unprofitable in Bitcoin for ages now, since like... Early to mid 2010s. Ever since the rise of ASICs, GPU mining has been a great way to light cash on fire. I don't think GPU mining will ever be substantially profitable again. If it ever does, I think an ASIC can be built for any algorithm if it's profitable enough to do so.

It seems counter intuitive, but I think mining is going to remain an important aspect of cryptocurrencies. It burns energy, but I think it will help keep the game theory appropriately balanced for all actors in system.

Probably mostly, yeah. There may be some relatively minor cost increases as providers test what they can get away with, but ultimately, to my understanding, the biggest expense of a mining op by far is the electricity, and that puts immense downward pressure on what providers can demand from miners. Miners love the idea of helping to stabilize the grid specifically because waste power would otherwise not be sold at all, which means they can get a discount on it. If providers try to screw with the prices too much, it can very quickly become more cost efficient to pack up and move out of the area entirely.

On the providers' end, it makes a degree of sense not to screw this up even if they could pressure them for more. Being able to guarantee a viable, permanent base load on your grid means you have some degree of stable, guaranteed income to finance operations. A single piece of high end mining hardware pulls over 3 kW of power all by itself, so they can add up quickly. A single large scale mining operation could easily end up in the 1-10 MW range, probably more than that if they really get serious. That isn't a ton of pull per mining op, but a quick estimate suggests a US city could cover about 1,500 people with 1 MW of power, but they won't spread that evenly over day and night, so let's say the spread's real bad, and they only cover about 500 people during peak hours. Still, in a particularly rural area, that may actually constitute a respectable base load, and it may make a big impact on the economics of expanding into that area.

Of course, companies get greedy, so it's very plausible that they shoot themselves in the foot by trying to raise prices and running off the miners. My guess is someone'll try to do it once, get absolutely rekt financially, and everyone will collectively look at that and decide the amount of money they're getting now isn't so bad.