The anti-crypto thread

[BFG10K]

Great news, crypto's collapsing across the board: https://www.techpowerup.com/282380/...ions-in-less-than-24-hours-did-the-bubble-pop

Also China's banned crypto, though individuals can still have it: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-financial-payment-bodies-barred-122712260.html

The sooner this cancerous parasite is wiped out, the better.

 

[DrMrLordX]

BTW intel said their GPU's will not be hash rate limited.

Arc doesn't even go on sale until April at the earliest. That's one month before PoW takes a huge hit.

 

[Aikouka]

Apparently my nephew (who is into mining, I am not) has also heard of friends that mine choosing apartments with all utilities included and signing a 1 year lease, and then firing up a bunch of mining rigs lol and using a crap ton of electricity. I'm not even sure how much you can pull from a couple of wall outlets without looking it up, but you'd think the landlord could put in smaller breakers and lock the breaker panel or something?

Downsizing the breakers wouldn't be against code, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anything smaller than 15A where an outlet would likely run off a 20A breaker in normal situations. Although, it likely wouldn't matter, because if someone were using an apartment for a mining farm, I'd assume that they'd spread the machines out around the apartment to spread the load.

As for whether the landlord can do anything about it, there would need to be some clause in the lease agreement to either allow them to sanction the tenant or terminate the agreement if the person is abusing the free utilities. If the location doesn't have anything in their lease agreement, I wouldn't be surprised if they either added it, or simply removed the paid utilities option.

 

[jpiniero]

Bitcoin is above 61k, near it's ATH.

 

[biostud]

Arc doesn't even go on sale until April at the earliest. That's one month before PoW takes a huge hit.

Also being the new player in town, they want sell all the GPUs they can. No need to gimp their cards.

 

[VirtualLarry]

https://www.reddit.com/r/EtherMining/comments/q8vjk1

ETH PoW (mining) to continue through at least June 2022.

 

[DrMrLordX]

ETH PoW (mining) to continue through at least June 2022.

So one month past the originally-scheduled merge date?

 

[ultimatebob]

Arc doesn't even go on sale until April at the earliest. That's one month before PoW takes a huge hit.

It will probably take the crypto miners six months to make a good Intel miner that's performance optimized anyway. Who knows, Ethereum might actually be moved to Proof Of Stake by then anyway? I doubt it, but who knows.

 

[biostud]

While I still really don't understand why crypto valuta can be used as an investment object, do you think there is a limit to how many currencies that can be interesting at the same time, and if some move to proof of stake, does that leaves room for new mining based coins?

 

[DrMrLordX]

if some move to proof of stake, does that leaves room for new mining based coins?

Basically, no. It's been covered earlier in the thread, but to recap:

When dealing with a PoW token, the value of the token is based on:

a). market interest in the token (hype)
b). proliferation of node operators
c). number of non-node-operating users (people using the token outside of exchanges)

You can't just point your mining client at another project and make bank, especially not if everyone else is doing the same thing as you, all at once. Difficulty spikes, profits go down, and you don't necessarily get any additional help from a).-c). in propping up the value of the token.

It will probably take the crypto miners six months to make a good Intel miner that's performance optimized anyway. Who knows, Ethereum might actually be moved to Proof Of Stake by then anyway? I doubt it, but who knows.

It might not take six months exactly. Arc should be similar enough to Gen 12/Xe that they can make some educated guesses about it prior to launch and be halfway there in April; that being said, that would buy them (at most) two months time before PoW is changed forever. And that's assuming Arc launches in April.

 

[nosurprises]

https://www.reddit.com/r/EtherMining/comments/q8vjk1

ETH PoW (mining) to continue through at least June 2022.

Reading some of those reddit comments is pretty funny lol

[–]Hotness4L 171 points 2 days ago
Looks like GPUs are back on the menu boys.

[–]Vv4nd 121 points 2 days ago
gamers don´t need them anyways. ruining them with new world.

[–]c0horst 39 points 1 day ago
Honestly some of these new GPU's look like they're more for miners than gamers anyway. Like the AMD 6600. That thing is a true piece of redacted for gaming, it's basically a re-released 5600, but it's one of the most efficient mining cards for ETH ever released.
Gamers don't need redacted.

[–]JetherBStrong 2 points 1 day ago
Exactly. Gamers aren't gonna buy a 6600xt over a 3060 which is way better and more attractive
Only people I know with 6600xt are miners Lol

[–]JoeMama42 8 points 1 day ago
redacted only buy one card. Not a lot of money in selling 1 card to a poor person once every 4 years.
No redacted they're designed for miners.




Profanity and homophobic posts are not allowed.


esquared
Anandtech Forum Director

 

[VirtualLarry]

Honestly some of these new GPU's look like they're more for miners than gamers anyway. Like the AMD 6600. That thing is a true piece of s*** for gaming, it's basically a re-released 5600, but it's one of the most efficient mining cards for ETH ever released.

There's a bit of truth to that.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Man, mining isn't the only reason for the GPU price boom. It's the forced lockdowns that cause supply chain lockups. Many, many different categories are rising in prices. So miners are the fault of that too?

This isn't going to stop. It's going to continue. PoS might soften it a bit but I doubt it'll change the long term trend.

Also I remember little before the mining boom Nvidia introduced GTX 1080, which increased prices. Yet people faulted mining for the price boom long after that.

Mining is just one of the reason for the increase. People need a source to blame that's all.

 

[beginner99]

Mining is just one of the reason for the increase. People need a source to blame that's all.

Miners bought tons of gaming laptops, also in bulk. Did you see any shortage of gaming laptops or laptops in general? No. Mining isn't the big cause. A big cause is factory shutdowns in China due to COVID and issues with power (not enough). On top of that NV struggles with a not so great Samsung process which probbaly doesn't yielf all that well while AMD even if they had the wafers has absolutely no interest in producing enough supply for their RDNA series. The money is in CDNA and CPUs.

 

[nosurprises]

Man, mining isn't the only reason for the GPU price boom. It's the forced lockdowns that cause supply chain lockups. Many, many different categories are rising in prices. So miners are the fault of that too?

Miners bought tons of gaming laptops, also in bulk. Did you see any shortage of gaming laptops or laptops in general? No. Mining isn't the big cause.

With GPU prices going over 200% MSRP, how much of that increase do you contribute to crypto mining and how much of that do you think it's caused by other factors? I'm betting substantial of the increase is caused by mining. And miners buying gaming laptops just to mine is stupid. I doubt it's profitable competing with a desktop RTX.

 

[ultimatebob]

Miners bought tons of gaming laptops, also in bulk. Did you see any shortage of gaming laptops or laptops in general? No. Mining isn't the big cause. A big cause is factory shutdowns in China due to COVID and issues with power (not enough). On top of that NV struggles with a not so great Samsung process which probbaly doesn't yielf all that well while AMD even if they had the wafers has absolutely no interest in producing enough supply for their RDNA series. The money is in CDNA and CPUs.

I don't think that the gaming laptops offered as much "bang for the buck" as the higher end video cards did when it came to crypto mining. It's probably a lot more cost efficient to have a single mining rig with 4 or 5 cards attached to it than using 5 separate gaming laptops.

 

[VirtualLarry]

With GPU prices going over 200% MSRP, how much of that increase do you contribute to crypto mining and how much of that do you think it's caused by other factors? I'm betting substantial of the increase is caused by mining. And miners buying gaming laptops just to mine is stupid. I doubt it's profitable competing with a desktop RTX.

A laptop RTX 3060, for example, was un-gimped, whereas the desktop ones were nerfed.

And you can't blame "miners" for higher prices, without first blaming scalpers and less-than-scrupoulous vendors, willing to go over MSRP and almost up to ebay scalper prices.

Likewise, the only reason that miners were willing to pay scalper prices higher than MSRP, was due to lack of supply / availability (@ MSRP), which is due to GPU mfgs, which is again due to the Pandemic.

 

[nosurprises]

A laptop RTX 3060, for example, was un-gimped, whereas the desktop ones were nerfed.

And you can't blame "miners" for higher prices, without first blaming scalpers and less-than-scrupoulous vendors, willing to go over MSRP and almost up to ebay scalper prices.

Likewise, the only reason that miners were willing to pay scalper prices higher than MSRP, was due to lack of supply / availability (@ MSRP), which is due to GPU mfgs, which is again due to the Pandemic.

There is no way a laptop can be used to mine more cost efficiently than a regular desktop GPU. The GPU in a laptop is nerfed by nature of being in a laptop. Also, miners would be paying for a bunch of stuff that doesn't contribute to mining (a display, RAM, keyboard, mouse, cpu, MB -- the whole computer). I guess some would still try.

I'm blaming crypto mining that is creating artificial demand for computing resources. I guess you can say I'm hating the game, not necessarily the player -- though I don't like some of the miners that spin up a coal plant dedicated to mining.

In April of this year, in the middle of a pandemic, you can get 14TB HDD for $200. Then Chia crypto that uses HDDs showed up; the HDD prices immediately triple -- there is suddenly not enough supply, and scalpers are showing up. Now 6 months later, Chia has crashed and HDD price is coming back down to what it was.

 

[aigomorla]

And nvidia isn't helping by this rumor added on top:

Evil rumours suggest Nvidia's GPU supply is about to drop by 30%

And in before you say 'well, what's the difference if it's 30% of nothing?'

www.pcgamer.com

lol... why innovate, when you can milk the current gen for even more profits..

I doubt we'll see a 4000 series on schedule.... hell, im still waiting for the 1660 Super to go back to 250 dollars, but i guess that is wishful thinking.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

hell, im still waiting for the 1660 Super to go back to 250 dollars, but i guess that is wishful thinking.

Wishful? I think we're in mythological territory now.

 

[VirtualLarry]

hell, im still waiting for the 1660 Super to go back to 250 dollars

Not gonna happen till ETH mining crashes / hits PoS.

 

[BFG10K]

In April of this year, in the middle of a pandemic, you can get 14TB HDD for $200. Then Chia crypto that uses HDDs showed up; the HDD prices immediately triple -- there is suddenly not enough supply, and scalpers are showing up. Now 6 months later, Chia has crashed and HDD price is coming back down to what it was.

Yep, exactly right. Not to mention that GPU pricing directly tracks with Ethereum pricing to this day.

Mining causes BOTH shortages and scalpers. You can't have scalpers if there's no shortage.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Mining causes BOTH shortages and scalpers. You can't have scalpers if there's no shortage.

Yep, miners caused the world-wide COVID-19 Pandemic, and all of the supply-chain snafus that we've seen since. So simple! Just blame miners!!!

 

[VirtualLarry]

Not to mention that GPU pricing directly tracks with Ethereum pricing to this day.

Yes, funny how even cards that CAN'T even mine ETH, are indeed tracking alongside all other GPU relative pricing. Couldn't be supply and demand and gamers, too. Gotta be miners, mining ETH on cards that it's impossible to mine on, right?!?!.

I'm talking like $400+ GTX 950 2GB and R9 290 cards, that I saw recently.

Has nothing to do with just greedy vendors, must be miner demand, for cards that can't even mine ETH.

Edit: Don't get me wrong, BFG10K, it's not that miners have NO culpability in higher prices. For a somewhat-experienced miner, it's mostly just a numbers game to them. Cost of card, how much can I make a day, does it make break-even in a reasonable time, and allow for profit. Scalpers know this, and smarter scalpers know just how high that they can push prices on newer-gen cards, before miners won't buy them. But the supply shortage is not specifically due to miners, they're on the "demand" side of supply+demand, along with gamers and other scientific users and whatnot. The supply-side being so topsy-turvy due to the Pandemic, as well as shipping issues, that are also largely Pandemic-related, doesn't help things along.

And then big companies like NVidia, either cut shipments by 30%, or stop producing Ampere altogether (depending on which rumor that you believe), simply to keep market prices for GPUs high, so that they can release next-gen (40-series) GPUs at a higher price structure. That's dirty pool, and has nothing (directly) to do with miners. But they get blamed all the same.

 

[UsandThem]

Yep, miners caused the world-wide COVID-19 Pandemic, and all of the supply-chain snafus that we've seen since. So simple! Just blame miners!!!

Larry, Larry, Larry......

I know you are pro-mining. And I know that the current availability of many components/items is largely due to Covid issues.

But to not believe that mining profitability over the last 18 months has no impact on GPU availability/pricing is a little disingenuous. All we have to do is look at 2018 when it happened, and we had same issues (although not on the scale we have this time because of Covid).

GPUs were next to impossible to buy, many businesses began bundling the GPUs with other components (B&H Photo did since I bought one from them), and scalpers/flippers were making money off of it (I made a few bucks doing this).

 

[VirtualLarry]

But to not believe that mining profitability over the last 18 months has no impact on GPU availability/pricing is a little disingenuous.

Please see my edit to my last post. I'm not saying that mining has NO culpability, but considering the "laws" of supply+demand, if demand spikes, that will push the price equalibrium up, given the same supply, but it doesn't (directly) affect supply. Shortages are caused by a large of supply. That's why BFG10K's statement was itself disingenuous and didn't make sense. Supply and demand are independent variables.

Edit: If he had properly said, "mining demand increases prices nearly exponentially", I might have agreed with him, but "mining demand causes shortages" (lack of supply), does not compute.

Maybe he effectively meant, "mining's exponential demand for GPUs, causes a relative supply shortage for gamers, by taking a larger and larger percentage of mfg supply", not that how I originally read his statement and disagreed with, that "excess demand affects supply". He meant relative portion of supply available to gamers, and not actual mfg supply. Sorry.

That said, I think retailers anti-botting countermeasures (BestBuy, in-store pickup after online order), queue-system (EVGA), random lottery (Newegg Shuffle), seem to somehow be "not enough".

It's really kind of like an attempt at "gamer socialism", having a top-down command economy of sorts, to allocate and distribute GPUs to gamers, rather than to just sell them to the highest bidder (generally a miner, could be a "rich" gamer too).

LHR was kind of an attempt, mostly marketing, to deter miners from buying the LHR GPUs. But, like any DRM scheme, it was soon cracked, and now deters miners little.

Like someone noted, a reddit comment, would GPU mfg's rather sell one GPU every four years to a broke-azz gamer, or would they rather sell pallets to those guys (miners) with the $$$?

And think of how much the GPU mfg's obscene profits due to miners and the mining craze, are going to funnel back upwards towards the GPU R&D pipeline, to make even better GPUs for gamers. That's something that gamers rarely admit about the "miner crowd".