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Miners are the target of anger not (necessarily) because it’s wasted energy,[a] but because them using GPUs creates a self serving cycle: Difficulty goes up, mo
by colejohnson66 5y ago
Miners are the target of anger not (necessarily) because it’s wasted energy,[a] but because them using GPUs creates a self serving cycle: Difficulty goes up, more GPUs are bought to counteract that, repeat. This isn’t helped my the monetary reward for doing so.[b]
Deep learning, gaming, etc. are different in that someone doing 2 way SLI doesn’t make others need to do the same. If my online opponents are playing on RTX 3090s, I’m not forced to upgrade to play with them.
[a]: The energy usage is a byproduct of the proof-of-work system
[b]: hence why things like Folding@home, SETI@home, etc. never gained massive popularity like coins did; they don’t reward you except in feel-good thoughts
- qeternity 5y ago> using GPUs creates a self serving cycle: Difficulty goes up, more GPUs are bought to counteract that, repeat. This isn’t helped my the monetary reward for doing so. Not quite. Price continues to go up, courtesy of Tether, which makes the mining rewards more valuable. This encourages new miners to join the network which pushes difficulty higher, until the difficulty level rises such that every unit of output costs more to produce than its worth. Then it's no longer profitable to mine. But again, Tether has no choice but to keep things pumping.