The anti-crypto thread

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Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
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This isn't correct, either.

Is this some kind of "well technically" argument, because I don't think there's a good way to dispute that mining hasn't been a primary driver of the rise in GPU prices this past year or so. While it's not the only factor, it's almost certainly the largest one.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,226
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I'm not sure how you can say that "miners didn't effect video card pricing"
That's not what I said. You claimed that "miners were the ones jacking up the prices of GPUs". Inferring that it was SOLELY the miners. Which is incorrect. You knew it was only one part of the puzzle, but you decided to be disingenuous to throw shade on miners (only), when there were many more actors at work here.

* Pandemic - miners were NOT responsible for COVID-19
* Supply chain disruptions - miners were NOT responsible.
* Shipping delays - unless you believe that EVERY container on every ship waiting outside of port contains NVidia GPUs, then this is NOT the fault of miners.
* Inflation of currency - Stimmy checks and easy money, lead to inflation. Miners were arguably not responsible for this, as the stimmy money was related to shutdowns and stay-ins.
* Insane demand for PC parts - amidst a shortage, the number of people "stuck inside" / "work from home", caused a boom in PC gaming, which given the shortages of production and supply chain issues mentioned above, caused prices to rise, especially also due to inflation.

Sure, mining increased demand somewhat, but miners aren't the ones causing the mfg's to constantly re-visit their MSRPs and effectively double them.

And miners did not cause scalpers. Most experienced miners that I know of, avoid paying "scalper prices" for GPUs. Most of the people feeding the scalping monster, are desperate gamers. (and a few newbie FOMO miners.)
 
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Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
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That's not what I said. You claimed that "miners were the ones jacking up the prices of GPUs". Inferring that it was SOLELY the miners. Which is incorrect. You knew it was only one part of the puzzle, but you decided to be disingenuous to throw shade on miners (only), when there were many more actors at work here.

If miners weren't willing to pay the prices that they do for GPUs it wouldn't be possible for anyone to jack up the prices of GPUs to the level that they're at. Even if you cut out retailers, scalpers, and everyone else in the supply chain, those same miners would still bid against each other to cause the price to rise to where it's at.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,226
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If miners weren't willing to pay the prices that they do for GPUs it wouldn't be possible for anyone to jack up the prices of GPUs to the level that they're at. Even if you cut out retailers, scalpers, and everyone else in the supply chain, those same miners would still bid against each other to cause the price to rise to where it's at.
Are you forgetting gamers and work-from-homers, that need a GPU? They're part of that pool called "demand". It's not solely comprised of miners.

Like I said, it's mostly gamers that feed the scalper machine, by paying scalper prices.
 

beginner99

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2009
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I'd imagine that most people in this forum have an axe to grind against Ethereum, because the miners of it have been jacking up the price of video cards for the past year. Worse yet, it's not the first time it has done this. I'm sure that a lot of us remember the graphics card shortages back in late 2017.

I see it already was discussed but miners aren't the sole cause of GPU prices and shortage. Miners also bought laptops with GPUs by the millions yet there is absolutely no shortage of gaming laptops. In fact gaming laptops might be cheaper to enter gaming than via desktop given the dGPU pricing.

the whole shortage is also being abused or held up high intentionally by not allocated enough chips do the dGPU market but to OEMs and by simply limiting production especially of the higher end version. AMD is a business but let's be honest. The sure are keeping volume low intentionally and actually are profit from the shortage. They have zero incentive to produce GPU dies so they produce as little to get away with, can charge a lot for them and use most wafers for much more profitable CPU products.
AMD first fulfills their contracts (consoles, Tesla, OEMs = laptops mostly) and DIY is an afterthought. Why make 100 dies when you can just double the price and produce just 50 dies? and use the saved production make much more profit on server cpus?

On top of that there is also a general substrate and capacity issue hence NV also can't ramp up production which is still puzzling a bit as what other customers does Samsung really have for that process?

The first change for GPU pricing getting saner will be after Q2 when Intel will launch Arc and Ethereum will move to PoS.
 
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ultimatebob

Lifer
Jul 1, 2001
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Funny, you're not hating on NFTs or those people that made them a "thing". (Hint, again, not miners.)

I guess that I could blame the NFT gang for increasing Ethereum's transaction volume, but it would probably make more sense to blame the Ethereum dev team for failing to scale the protocol to meet that demand. They should have seen the warning signs that this was going to happen during the last Ethereum boom of late 2017/2018 and prepared for it better.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
21,582
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I guess that I could blame the NFT gang for increasing Ethereum's transaction volume, but it would probably make more sense to blame the Ethereum dev team for failing to scale the protocol to meet that demand. They should have seen the warning signs that this was going to happen during the last Ethereum boom of late 2017/2018 and prepared for it better.

There's been discussing of PoS and sharding making txn rate go way up for the base chain. Buterin himself was pushing for both back when he had a more hands-on relationship with Ethereum. The EF has categorically failed to deliver on both fronts.
 

Stuka87

Diamond Member
Dec 10, 2010
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Are you forgetting gamers and work-from-homers, that need a GPU? They're part of that pool called "demand". It's not solely comprised of miners.

Like I said, it's mostly gamers that feed the scalper machine, by paying scalper prices.

Where are you getting this "data"?

"Work from homers" aren't using gaming GPU's, or dedicated GPU's at all in the majority of cases. The vast majority of them using mobile machines (eg: laptops), like myself. Sure there is a very small subset that are working on graphic arts and such, but they are using workstation GPUs, not gaming GPUs.

All data suggest that GPU price hikes (going back MANY years) have always followed mining trends. This isn't the first time this has happened.
 

repoman0

Diamond Member
Jun 17, 2010
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It’s really obvious that mining affects GPU prices — all you have to do is go on ebay, look at sold listings and compare LHR vs non-LHR. I did this exercise for the eVGA FTW3 Ultra variant of 3080 because I ended up with one of each and wanted to sell one (my OG from Nov 2020 and one I grabbed from the queue a couple weeks ago). The unlimited hash rate version has around $400 premium in my estimation.
 
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Stuka87

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I'm not saying it hasn't. But what I'm saying is, ETH mining is NOT solely responsible for GPU pricing, either.

Why are GT 1030 cards now $149 rather than $79, for example? That can't be because of GPU mining...

Sure it can.

The vast majority of GPU's sold (under normal conditions) are mid range cards. These tend to be the x060 class for nVidia, and the x600 class from AMD. However, these cards are now going for double their normal price. This puts them outside the budget for many people.

However, those many people still need a GPU. So this means the demand for lower end cards has gone up significantly compared to what they otherwise would be in normal conditions. As demand rises, so does price. And because you have what would be two segments of users trying to all buy the cards from a single segment, the price will go up.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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Sure it can.

The vast majority of GPU's sold (under normal conditions) are mid range cards. These tend to be the x060 class for nVidia, and the x600 class from AMD. However, these cards are now going for double their normal price. This puts them outside the budget for many people.

However, those many people still need a GPU. So this means the demand for lower end cards has gone up significantly compared to what they otherwise would be in normal conditions. As demand rises, so does price. And because you have what would be two segments of users trying to all buy the cards from a single segment, the price will go up.
So you're agreeing with me, that "demand" for GPUs comes from more than just miners, but also gamers, streamers, WFH'ers, professional users, etc.

That was kind of my point.
 

Stuka87

Diamond Member
Dec 10, 2010
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So you're agreeing with me, that "demand" for GPUs comes from more than just miners, but also gamers, streamers, WFH'ers, professional users, etc.

That was kind of my point.

I am saying the price on low end cards like the GT1030 are going up because they are the only affordable option for many users. Its the only affordable option because mid and high range cards have sky rocketed in price due to extra demand caused by mining.

This same thing happened back in late 2017 to early 2018. Where GPU prices went up in excess of double their MSRPs. That was driven entirely by GPU mining. We are in this same state now. Only now its significantly worse, as it has been going on for much longer, and there is no end in sight.

Which is to the detriment of all. Not just gamers, but on a much more global sense. GPU chip manufacturing is being prioritized over others types of chips, creating shortages in other markets. Absolutely gigantic amounts of power (and thereby emissions) are being consumed/created all so that people can try to cash in. These people do not care about others, they do not care about the environment, all they care about is themselves.
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
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Are you forgetting gamers and work-from-homers, that need a GPU? They're part of that pool called "demand". It's not solely comprised of miners.

Like I said, it's mostly gamers that feed the scalper machine, by paying scalper prices.

Can you point to other instances where gamers have driven prices to more than twice the MSRP for prolonged periods of time? I know you can't, but it hardly matters. We can probably get a good measure of how much miners have bought just by examining the hash rate over time for various coins. Here's one website that tracks the ETH hashrate: https://ycharts.com/indicators/ethereum_network_hash_rate

According to their data, the hash rate on September 12, 2020 was 246.62. I chose that date because it's the first data point on the 3 yr graph immediately before the launch of the first Ampere cards. The data for yesterday says the hash rate is at 964.70. It's nearly quadrupled in the year and a half since the newest generation of cards launched.

Now put on your best straight face and tell me again who's buying up most of these GPUs. Gamers aren't in the pool, Larry. They're all crowded into the half-empty dixie cup beside the pool. I don't care if its miners buying up the GPUs. It's their money and I won't fault anyone who sells to the highest buyer. Just don't piss down my back and tell my it's raining.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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According to their data, the hash rate on September 12, 2020 was 246.62. I chose that date because it's the first data point on the 3 yr graph immediately before the launch of the first Ampere cards. The data for yesterday says the hash rate is at 964.70. It's nearly quadrupled in the year and a half since the newest generation of cards launched.

Now put on your best straight face and tell me again who's buying up most of these GPUs. Gamers aren't in the pool, Larry. They're all crowded into the half-empty dixie cup beside the pool. I don't care if its miners buying up the GPUs. It's their money and I won't fault anyone who sells to the highest buyer. Just don't piss down my back and tell my it's raining.
Best estimates are that 60% of that hashrate are ASICs. Time to re-calculate?

I'm saying, that miners don't pay scalper prices. Gamers do. Gamers feed the scalping beast, and their bots, which is what is really fuelling the price rise.
 

VirtualLarry

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Aug 25, 2001
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We are in this same state now. Only now its significantly worse, as it has been going on for much longer, and there is no end in sight.

Which is to the detriment of all. Not just gamers, but on a much more global sense. GPU chip manufacturing is being prioritized over others types of chips, creating shortages in other markets.
Last time, there was no Pandemic, no supply-chain problems, and no silicon shortage.

There's an industry-wide silicon shortage, accentuated by supply-chain problems, that affects GPU production as well as appliance and automotive.

The way that you phrase it, you seem to think that miners are somehow BEHIND the "chip shortage". Which is absolutely Q-insane level non-sense.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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This really shouldn't even be framed as "gamers versus miners". It should be: "humans versus bots". Gamers and hobbiest miners (or both), are both competing, on essentially level footing with each other, against the scalper's bots. And boy, the results aren't pretty.

That's one reason why I don't have any Ampere cards, because I refuse to pay "scalper prices", including Newegg retail pricing that is the same as last week's ebay listing (scalper) prices for that class of card.

This is all a wholly separate discussion from Nvidia direct-shipping palettes of GPUs to "big" (warehouse) mining operations.
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
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Best estimates are that 60% of that hashrate are ASICs. Time to re-calculate?

I'm saying, that miners don't pay scalper prices. Gamers do. Gamers feed the scalping beast, and their bots, which is what is really fuelling the price rise.

Source for those estimates?

Look at the forums and all the people grumbling about prices who are holding out. Those are the gamers and they aren't paying the scalper prices. The only people who can are those who will use the GPU to mine and break even on the purchase price after some number of months.

What you're suggesting doesn't make any sense. If it did you'd have to explain why scalpers haven't done this before when it's clearly so easy and profitable. Don't tell me it's shortages. Nvidia posted recorded revenue in their last quarter. To quote their financial statement "Record Gaming revenue of $3.22 billion, up 42 percent from a year earlier."

You'd also need to explain why gamers will pay double MSRP for a GPU, but the console prices aren't approaching the same levels. In some cases the market price is higher for a GPU that's no more powerful than what you could get from one of these next generation consoles. I just checked eBay and the PS5 and Xbox consoles getting bids are rarely more than 25% over MSRP.

Like I said, I don't care if miners want to pay triple MSRP because a GPU is worth that much money to them. It's their money and no one else has any more right to a GPU than they do, but don't try to feed me a load of nonsense. I'm not sure if I should respond to it or use it to fertilize my garden.
 

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
Super Moderator
Sep 28, 2005
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I'm saying, that miners don't pay scalper prices. Gamers do.

no this is so wrong....
Gamers for that price range are cheap and can not afford a 600 dollar gpu nor would they ever think of buying a 600 dollar gpu when they were set on paying 250-300 for it.

That 300 dollar gpu is now 800-900 dollars.... the only group of people i can think which would buy them at that price is either the desperate esport people / streamers who had hardware failure / or just people who are well off.
Then you got your miners, who do not care about the markup, but more how many extra days it will take to pay off the GPU at that price. Which i guarantee is where 70-80% of all the RX480/580 + Radeon 7 + 6600XT + 1660 Super + Non-LHR 3060 + 3070.

Look at Red Panda Alone... he has more 3070 + 3080 then probably all the gamers that live in his district zone.
You also alone probably have enough GPU for everyone on your entire block.
I also can say without a doubt i have probably more 1660's mining at my house then kids who live on my block that play PC videogames.
(im at 18 x 1660 Supers by myself) i know i have contributed abit tiny, but still something to the shortages on 1660.

Your statement might apply to the 3080 + 6800XT, but that's probably it.

Also the last time we had a major price spike was again during a mining boom back in the 1000 series first launched.
That is also where high tier went from 499 to 799..... and now that 799 has went to 1099, and soon we'll see Titan V prices on top end GTX's.
 
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VirtualLarry

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Source for those estimates?
Bi8tsBeTripping and Sebs Fintech Channel, both did "spreadsheet videos" about whether or not GPU mining would be profitable after ETH 2.0 / "The Merge". On both of their videos, their estimate for how much of the current ETH hashpower, was roughly 60% ASICs.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
21,582
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For those of you who think blockchain assets have no use, even in a country where unrest has rendered hard cash useless or unavailable:


It's potentially paywalled, so I'll try to quote a decent summary:

When the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August of last year, Fereshteh Forough feared that the group would close her school in Herat, the country’s third-largest city. Code to Inspire, an NGO Forough founded, was teaching computer programming to young Afghan women, and the Taliban oppose secondary education for women.
Months later, the picture is much different — and worse — from what Forough imagined. The school survived, becoming mostly virtual, but has transformed from a coding boot camp into a relief organization. The biggest risk for Forough’s students wasn’t lack of education, it was hunger. Forough looked for a way to provide emergency checks to the women but was stymied by banks that don’t want to risk violating severe U.S. sanctions.
JPMorgan Chase repeatedly blocked her attempts to transfer money, she said, and she grew increasingly alarmed by students who said they couldn’t access cash at local Afghan banks — many of which have closed or imposed strict withdrawal limits. In response, she turned to cryptocurrency to provide monthly emergency payments to help students afford enough food to survive.
“Since September, we’ve been sending cash assistance, about $200 per month, for each family, because the majority of our students have said their family lost their jobs. They are the sole breadwinner of the family,” explained Forough, whose family fled Afghanistan in the early 1980s, during the Soviet occupation, and now lives in New Hampshire. Code to Inspire pays its recipients in BUSD, a so-called stablecoin whose value is tied to the U.S. dollar, and then the women convert it to afghanis, the local currency, at money exchanges. “We created a safe way for our girls to cash out their crypto and pay for expenses, so they can pay for medical expenses and food and everything that’s needed.”
There are several advantages to using crypto: Afghans fleeing the Taliban can take their assets with them without risk. Humanitarian agencies seeking to bypass banks and discreetly avoid the Taliban can provide cash directly to those in need. Smugglers and intermediaries who may steal or try to resell aid packages can be circumvented if aid is given directly through a digital transaction.
“I am still in disbelief that I could receive money without any fear of [it] being confiscated in such a transparent way,” said T.N., a 21-year-old graphic design student in Herat enrolled in Code to Inspire, in a statement to The Intercept. “Creating a BUSD wallet was very easy and it was a delightful experience knowing how fast and in such a private way you can receive money even in Afghanistan.”
 

ultimatebob

Lifer
Jul 1, 2001
25,135
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Bi8tsBeTripping and Sebs Fintech Channel, both did "spreadsheet videos" about whether or not GPU mining would be profitable after ETH 2.0 / "The Merge". On both of their videos, their estimate for how much of the current ETH hashpower, was roughly 60% ASICs.

In other words, YouTubers creating content for crypto miners don't think that crypto mining is a problem... Yeah.
For those of you who think blockchain assets have no use, even in a country where unrest has rendered hard cash useless or unavailable:


It's potentially paywalled, so I'll try to quote a decent summary:

That's cool, but if the Taliban discovered what they were doing they would probably put them in prison and torture them until they handed over their crypto wallets.

I'd imagine that it would probably go down something like this XKCD comic:

1642716448986.png
 

DisarmedDespot

Senior member
Jun 2, 2016
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For those of you who think blockchain assets have no use, even in a country where unrest has rendered hard cash useless or unavailable:


It's potentially paywalled, so I'll try to quote a decent summary:
I'm sure some Afghans are using crypto to dodge the Taliban and those sanctions.

I can also guarantee the Taliban will be using crypto to dodge those same sanctions. Just like how North Korea does. And just like how ISIS did as well.

But hey, adoption is adoption!
 
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