Question are video card prices headed down yet?

[VirtualLarry]

I guess that the Ethereum devs need another month to build up their staking horde and unload the parts from their mining rigs

BTW, none of the devs are miners, nor do they care about miners at all. Even though miners support their coin.

 

[moonbogg]

BTW, none of the devs are miners, nor do they care about miners at all. Even though miners support their coin.

How do the devs get rich off their scam? Just give themselves a bunch of coin or something?

 

[ultimatebob]

BTW, none of the devs are miners, nor do they care about miners at all. Even though miners support their coin.

Yeah, I don't buy that. The Ethereum developers were probably miners early on, and HODL'ed a ton of crypto for themselves. They wouldn't be so eager to migrate to Proof Of Stake (and start earning interest on their crypto horde) if it didn't benefit them financially.

 

[ultimatebob]

How do the devs get rich off their scam? Just give themselves a bunch of coin or something?

Yeah, actually they did that too. Ethereum had a "premine" of 12 million ETH that went to the developers.

Back then, one ETH wasn't worth much... about 30 cents each. Now, that amount is worth 36 billion dollars worth of crypto now.

Nowadays, if someone launched a new crypto with that much premined, it would be considered a scam.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Yeah, actually they did that too. Ethereum had a "premine" of 12 million ETH that went to the developers.

Back then, It wasn't worth much. That's 36 billion dollars worth of crypto now.

Nowadays, if someone launched a new crypto with that much premined, it would be considered a scam.

-Its actually a sort of smart way to incentivize coin development.

You start off with a ton of worthless coin, more than you'd ever reasonably mine, but it drives you to keep developing your coin and keeping it stable and growing without boom/bust cycles.

If you tried to sell it early, it might collapse the coin or delegitimize your coin.

Not saying this was the thought process and it would be nice if it was better regulated, but it's actually a really sharp way to reward the creators of a coin while also helping build trust in the stability of an alternate currency.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Many miners will then switch to other coins, which will flood those small markets with coins and drive up the difficulty (so it takes more effort to mine a coin), both driving down the returns really fast.

You're right that it will drive up difficulty, but it won't flood anything with more coins/tokens. It'll jack up the total hashrate though. Through the roof. Total rewards should remain the same for any GPU-mineable token.

 

[Aapje]

You're right that it will drive up difficulty, but it won't flood anything with more coins/tokens. It'll jack up the total hashrate though. Through the roof. Total rewards should remain the same for any GPU-mineable token.

If the hashrate goes up for the other coins, then more of those coins will be mined. Presumably lots of miners will actually want to sell those coins, so that will drive down the value (same demand, more sellers).

And that the total rewards should stay roughly the same, as the difficulty increases to compensate for the increased mining, is exactly the issue, because many more miners have to divvy up the same pie. That means that the profit per miner is much lower. And that is what matters for their profitability. As soon as the returns are below the electricity costs, it costs money to mine.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

As soon as the returns are below the electricity costs, it costs money to mine.

Doesn't really matter to me. We're there for the foreseeable future in my country.

Mining is not likely to ever be profitable again here.

 

[DrMrLordX]

If the hashrate goes up for the other coins, then more of those coins will be mined.

Generally no, unless the blockchain is set up that way, which is rare/non-existant. Adding more hashpower just increases global hashrate and difficulty. Not rewards for mining.

 

[Aapje]

Generally no, unless the blockchain is set up that way, which is rare/non-existant. Adding more hashpower just increases global hashrate and difficulty. Not rewards for mining.

There's a delay between the increase in hashpower and the increase in difficulty, right? For Bitcoin, that seems to be two weeks, so if a lot of ASICs come online, more coins will be mined for two weeks until the difficulty adjusts.

I'm not sure exactly how fast the Ethereum Classic, Ravencoin, etc difficulties adjusts, but it seems to take some time as well.

 

[Aapje]

Mining is not likely to ever be profitable again here.

Proof of Work coins automatically adjust the returns so enough people will mine somewhere, based on the need of the network. Key for gamers is that the most needy networks either use ASICs (Bitcoin) or switch to Proof of Stake (Ethereum).

Then in the long term it will remain profitable for a few people to mine the smaller Proof of Work coins, but without much of an impact on gamers.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Then in the long term it will remain profitable for a few people to mine the smaller Proof of Work coins, but without much of an impact on gamers.

Oh, you haven't heard about our insane electricity prices. It's at 4.06DKK at the moment. That's US$ 0.5922 per KWh. With even higher (as in double) spot prices if you are not on a fixed price contract. Which are suspended for enrolment at the moment. Thank </deity> that I'm already on one.

Because of a certain </insert favourite expletive here> in a certain unpopular country right now, it's unlikely to come down again before next year at the earliest.

 

[jpiniero]

Oh, you haven't heard about our insane electricity prices. It's at 4.06DKK at the moment. That's US$ 0.5922 per KWh.

I checked and at the current Ethereum price, a 3080 would actually be profitable even at 59c. Barely though. Certainly wouldn't be worth buying new.

Other coins are very much profitable today at cheaper electricty... only less profitable than Ethereum. For the kind of GPU flood people are hoping for, crypto prices in general would have to fall a lot.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I checked and at the current Ethereum price, a 3080 would actually be profitable even at 59c. Barely though. Certainly wouldn't be worth buying new.

Yeah, it'll just about pay for the electricity itself with a little bit left over. But that is all. Forget about getting any return on investment in any reasonable timeframe.

There are other more profitable ways to place money. Even if the market is somewhat volatile at the moment.

(full disclosure; I did mine a bit of Bitcoin back in the day when it was possible with a GPU, so it's not like I'm against the concept of mining itself. I did turn a pretty good profit on it eventually, but so did the taxman...)

 

[DrMrLordX]

There's a delay between the increase in hashpower and the increase in difficulty, right?

Again depends on the individual blockchain, but yeah difficulty does take awhile to adjust. But if you look at a project like Bitcoin specifically you'll see it has a time in the future (2140 for Bitcoin) when the last BTC will be mined out, so that delay won't have a significant impact on how rewards are distributed. For other chains that don't have an end date (per se) difficulty can adjust pretty rapidly. Ethereum adjusts every block:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4r6pxf/_/d4yo77r

Meanwhile, Bitcoin is every 2016 blocks:

Bitcoin Mining Difficulty: Everything You Need to Know

In order to ensure bitcoin blocks are discovered roughly every 10 minutes, an automatic system is in place that adjusts the difficulty depending on how many miners are competing to discover blocks at any given time.

www.coindesk.com

 

[Golgatha]

Cross posting. A few "deals" on eVGA.com et. al. today.

(probably the best deal)
12GB 3080 for $999 for example - https://www.evga.com/products/product.aspx?pn=12G-P5-4877-KL

My local Micro Center seems to be offering them at the same prices as well.

Please note, extended warranty prices are quite a bit higher since the start of the year for these GPUs. Middle columns are the current prices and the 10 year isn't an option anymore.

 

[postmortemIA]

If ETH Merge thing occurs near release of RTX 4000 series, it will be a perfect storm. I'd guess miners at this point are thinking twice before buying cards that will repay themselves in the long run, so we see 3080 and more expensive cards being very available near MSRP.

 

[moonbogg]

Any 3080 for $1000!!!! is a vomit-inducing bad deal. The msrp for the 10gb version should have been $500 and the Ti should have been $600 and $650 max for the best AIB versions.

 

[Staples]

I just caved and bought an Asus 3060 RTX 12GB for $500. Maybe not a good deal but I am sick of waiting. I've been running an RX 570 4GB forever and it was OK but I just bought a 4k/144hz monitor and despite the specs saying that it has v1.4 DP which can output 4k/144, it can't. I suspect they are really 1.2 DP. Although a little more expensive, I think Asus has better long term support / QA than most other board makers (so I went with them).

 

[ultimatebob]

If ETH Merge thing occurs near release of RTX 4000 series, it will be a perfect storm. I'd guess miners at this point are thinking twice before buying cards that will repay themselves in the long run, so we see 3080 and more expensive cards being very available near MSRP.

They pushed the Ethereum POS migration to "Q3", even though the testing for it went supposedly well. I guess that some big shots need more time to quietly unload their GPU's before then

I've been hearing rumors that the 4070 will MSRP for just $499. I don't really buy it, though. In 2022, that's destined to be a $700 to $900 card.

 

[Aapje]

The 3070 had an MSRP of $499, so I don't see how the 4070 is going to be below that with inflation and everything else, unless there is an immense market crash.

 

[jpiniero]

I've been hearing rumors that the 4070 will MSRP for just $499.

GPU MSRPs don't get set typically until close to launch.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

GPU MSRPs don't get set typically until close to launch.

yeah I think the key thing is how many cards are sitting on shelves waiting to be sold

 

[SKORPI0]

Prices and availability for the 3080Ti at Westmont, IL Micro Center.
Very tempting, but I might wait for the RTX 4080 series, speculated for release Sept. 2022 5 months away.

GeForce RTX 3080 Ti : Graphics Cards : Micro Center

Microcenter.com has the best deals on the latest Nvidia Graphics Cards & AMD Graphics Cards and more available at your local Micro Center Computer Store!

www.microcenter.com

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[moonbogg]

Prices and availability for the 3080Ti at Westmont, IL Micro Center.
Very tempting, but I might wait for the RTX 4080 series, speculated for release Sept. 2022 5 months away.

GeForce RTX 3080 Ti : Graphics Cards : Micro Center

Microcenter.com has the best deals on the latest Nvidia Graphics Cards & AMD Graphics Cards and more available at your local Micro Center Computer Store!

www.microcenter.com

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Those prices are 3X over the Moonbogg msrp, which is the only msrp that matters.