I think what people are afraid of is that GPU farming is signaling a trend towards needing high(er) end hardware to farm, and thus moving away from the pi4/any old computer is good enough to use.
Even though it’s still possible to use it like you say. I think people still feel like it will mean that “others” will have an unfair advantage. I don’t see it that way though.
The other thing is that re-plotting always upsets people, and I do understand that. The whole idea was you make plots once, and then you’re good. This will be the third time making plots now in barely two years time.
You can keep your old plots, sure. But you will be losing out at least 15% compared to those who do re-plot. (The first compression level is basically free, it adds almost no overhead to the farm and still gives you about 15% more effective space).
Also, we are coming from “compression can’t be done, it’s snake oil” to “compression is real, and here it is, rejoice!” in the space of 6 months. (despite CNI’s best efforts to deny any such situation ever existed). So that’s twice now that CNI was caught off guard and had to scramble to get something out.
All that said, (re-)plotting just became a whole lot easier, faster and cheaper than it has ever been, so overall I think GPU plotting is a good thing. I see no reason why it will break anything fundamental.
I doubt everyone will re-plot, so for those of us who do, it will be advantageous.
I am doubling down, just got delivery of 10 x 16TB hdd’s so…But it’s hobby and hope, not investment genius. The best tech always wins? we’ll see. And even if it does, will that translate into profit for farmers? Who knows…
XCH still has a lot going for it that I like, but blockchain’s popularity as a whole is waning, and as others have pointed out, AI is the next big thing. So people paying millions for pixel monkeys might soon be a thing of the past.