Solved! Nvidia sells $30 million worth of "mining GPUs" to a single company.

[moonbogg]

Hut 8 Buys $30M Worth of Nvidia's New Crypto Mining GPUs

The batch of processors will add 1,600 GH to Hut 8's mining capacity.

www.coindesk.com

Wow. I guess that says it all. Try and tell me none of those GPUs could have been used for gaming cards. Even miners are sounding pissed about this in a video I watched. They feel like they don't have a chance to buy cards either, lol. This mining business is much bigger now than gamers and small-scale miners alike. It's basically a corporate thing now as far as where GPUs will be going for a long time it seems. How will this effect gamers getting cards you guys think?

 

[bigboxes]

Same with Credit / Debit cards? Say goodbye to easy online purchases? Because they're a waste of electricity, doing all of that transaction processing, having all of those offices, CC terminals, cash registers, they all add up to loads of power usage. On the order of what Bitcoin uses.

Just no.

 

[Mopetar]

I think even Micro Center et. al. are feeling the hurt right now. My hypothesis is their 5000 series Ryzen CPUs are only staying in stock because you simply can't get a GPU to pair it with. Further evidence to this hypothesis is Micro Center's PowerSpec in-house brand full systems, which include these unobtainium GPUs, go out of stock much more quickly.

There are far more Zen 3 CPUs being made than GPUs so I think it's just a case of the demand being satisfied sooner. AMD makes more money from selling CPUs as well so they do have a lot of incentive to use more of their limited wafers for Zen chiplets and that doesn't even consider how they can be more flexibly shifted to different product lines which means AMD doesn't really have to worry about overproduction of those chiplets except in the long term.

Mining is a waste of resources. I'm against mining. I don't care about gaming. It's about outlawing something that has no benefit. It's completely made up. I'm for the government regulating it into non-existence.

You could make the same argument about PC gaming. It's just wasting resources to display a bunch of imaginary pixels on the screen for no benefit outside of the subjective enjoyment of the person doing it. All of those GPUs being wasted by gamers could be used to find a cure for cancer instead.

Be careful about wishing for a government that can regulate things you don't like into non-existence. It's also powerful enough to regulate the things you do like into non-existence as well and naturally the worst sort of people will be attracted to that kind of power.

 

[bigboxes]

Gaming serves a purpose. Mining does not. Make cryptocurrency illegal and you can still mine. There's just no purpose for it. Completely made up. I'm going to write my representatives and push for legislation doing just that.

 

[fleshconsumed]

Gaming serves a purpose. Mining does not. Make cryptocurrency illegal and you can still mine. There's just no purpose for it. Completely made up. I'm going to write my representatives and push for legislation doing just that.

Your hatred of crypto is making you biased. Mining absolutely does have a purpose - it secures transactions written to the network, it's what guarantees immutability of the data being stored, it provides a data security service. One could argue that it is actually a better use of electricity than spending it gaming - think of all the enviromental damage being done to the planet just so that a few people can play call of duty. Now, of course, like any new technology it will take time for it to mature, and crypto/blockchain is not an exception, it's not as efficient as it could be right now, but it's getting there, once PoS becomes the norm blockchain will be vastly more secure, transparent, and more efficient than traditional books of records that are used right now.

 

[bigboxes]

Your hatred of crypto is making you biased. Mining absolutely does have a purpose - it secures transactions written to the network, it's what guarantees immutability of the data being stored, it provides a data security service. One could argue that it is actually a better use of electricity than spending it gaming - think of all the enviromental damage being done to the planet just so that a few people can play call of duty. Now, of course, like any new technology it will take time for it to mature, and crypto/blockchain is not an exception, it's not as efficient as it could be right now, but it's getting there, once PoS becomes the norm blockchain will be vastly more secure, transparent, and more efficient than traditional books of records that are used right now.

Remove cryptocurrency and tell me how valuable mining is.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Remove cryptocurrency and tell me how valuable mining is.

I don't think that you understand how this all works, if you're making statements like that...

 

[bigboxes]

I understand how it works. I'm saying it's made up and a waste of resources. It's real in the sense that people have bought into it's value. I hope it crashes on it's own. If not, I want government to regulate it out of existence.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I think that GPU ownership should be taxed. Excise-taxable, per $1000 of value, just like vehicles. This would apply to miners and gamers alike. Want to have a warehouse full of GPUs to mine with? Then pay more tax. Rather than just outlaw mining.

What do you think @bigboxes , are you with me? TAX GPUS!

 

[bigboxes]

I think that GPU ownership should be taxed. Excise-taxable, per $1000 of value, just like vehicles. This would apply to miners and gamers alike. Want to have a warehouse full of GPUs to mine with? Then pay more tax. Rather than just outlaw mining.

What do you think @bigboxes , are you with me? TAX GPUS!

We already pay tax on sales. If it's more valuable to miners, they will still buy up all the supply.

 

[VirtualLarry]

We already pay tax on sales. If it's more valuable to miners, they will still buy up all the supply.

This would be a yearly tax, payable every year/season.

At least in my state, they charge sales tax on vehicles (each time it transfers ownership) as well as yearly excise tax bills.

I'm proposing a similar arrangement for GPUs. You would pay sales tax on purchase (even used), if applicable in your state, as well as yearly, as per assessment on your GPU collection.

It would be "fair", because it would apply across-the-board to all GPU owners, miners, games, DC/scientific people as well. It would also slightly discourage "hoarding" of GPUs as miners do, or at least, force them to incorporate as to be able to write off the tax as a "business expense", and thus be regulated.

It might also limit GPU ownership to 18+ only.

 

[Mopetar]

Why should GPU owners (which includes practically everyone with some kind of phone or computer) pay any additional tax? There's no regulatory body or other agency that needs to oversee them (as is the case with automobiles) or any infrastructure that already isn't paid for via usage which needs to be maintained.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Why should GPU owners (which includes practically everyone with some kind of phone or computer) pay any additional tax?

As a means of "regulating" Crypto.

 

[Mopetar]

As a means of "regulating" Crypto.

There are dozens of better ways of doing that as opposed to blanket tax on a product that most people don't use to mine crypto. That's like taxing all glasses because some of them could be used to drink beer and you want to regulate alcohol.

The reality of this is that everyone with a GPU to game now pays a tax and the miners move to a country without any taxes. Miners already relocate to counties/countries over subsidized electricity. You don't think they'd do the same over taxes? Unlike other kinds of production it's incredibly cheap to relocate and it can be done from anywhere in the world.

 

[CP5670]

That is pretty much happening now in China, they banned mining there and all the miners shipped their rigs out to other countries.

 

[VirtualLarry]

There are dozens of better ways of doing that as opposed to blanket tax on a product that most people don't use to mine crypto. That's like taxing all glasses because some of them could be used to drink beer and you want to regulate alcohol.

Just like all passenger motor vehicle owners pay a tax, whether or not they own/run a taxi service with those vehicles...

 

[Mopetar]

Just like all passenger motor vehicle owners pay a tax, whether or not they own/run a taxi service with those vehicles...

Vehicle registration fees exist to offset the cost of the DMV which oversees the licensing of drivers. As there is no similar government agency that exists for GPUs, there's no good reason to place a specific tax on GPUs. You have proposed a solution in search of a problem. It won't work at all for the reasons I've outlined above, but it's a terrible idea in and of itself.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Vehicle registration fees exist to offset the cost of the DMV which oversees the licensing of drivers.

I wasn't talking about registration fees, only actual Vehicle Excise Tax. Which, AFAIK, is purely because you simply own said vehicle.

 

[moonbogg]

You could make the same argument about PC gaming. It's just wasting resources to display a bunch of imaginary pixels on the screen for no benefit outside of the subjective enjoyment of the person doing it. All of those GPUs being wasted by gamers could be used to find a cure for cancer instead.

If that energy is used for other purposes besides gaming, those purposes are said to have value only because of the resultant subjective experiences people have as well. Experience is all any of us can ever have no matter what, so you might as well spend your time gaming and let the world burn around you. Just don't take that VR headset off and you'll be fine.

 

[IntelUser2000]

I think that GPU ownership should be taxed. Excise-taxable, per $1000 of value, just like vehicles. This would apply to miners and gamers alike. Want to have a warehouse full of GPUs to mine with? Then pay more tax. Rather than just outlaw mining.

What do you think @bigboxes , are you with me? TAX GPUS!

You know those dystopian future stories where the mega corporations are taking everything and ruining the world?

Well the ultimate mega corporation is the government, because unlike the corporations, they have zero competition, and they have all the law-making power they need to do things their own way.

Government intervention is the worst way to go.

 

[SaltyNuts]

At current market prices that's, what, 3 GPUs?

LOLOL! Beautiful, champ.

 

[Mopetar]

I wasn't talking about registration fees, only actual Vehicle Excise Tax. Which, AFAIK, is purely because you simply own said vehicle.

I think that depends on the country or state and what they call or how they structure their laws regarding vehicle ownership. I just pay a flat registration fee for my vehicles.

If that energy is used for other purposes besides gaming, those purposes are said to have value only because of the resultant subjective experiences people have as well. Experience is all any of us can ever have no matter what, so you might as well spend your time gaming and let the world burn around you. Just don't take that VR headset off and you'll be fine.

Yet people will pay more for some subjective experiences than others and right now mining is deemed to be more valuable than gaming. In a world of finite resources it's not possible for everyone to have their preferred subjective experiences all of the time. I can't buy a nice piece of beachfront property at a price I'm willing to pay because there are other people who want it and are willing to pay a lot more for it. If instead I buy a concert ticket with my money then there's someone else who couldn't buy it for less than I was willing to pay.

I suspect if you put it to a vote and told people they can have GPUs for video games or GPUs for curing cancer, the video games would lose. Perhaps the current system seems deeply flawed because it has produced a world where we see so many GPUs being used for what to us might seem silly, but do remember that it gives people the ability to choose what they want.