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How badly is cryptocurrency worsening the chip shortage?
- rasz 5y agoGood news everyone! Crypto Miners Driving High Demand for AMD CPUs with Big L3 Cache https://www.extremetech.com/computing/328908-crypto-miners-driving-high-demand-for-amd-cpus-with-big-l3-cache https://www.extremetech.com/computing/328908-crypto-miners-d... :(
- VHRanger 5y agoI was just saying how we have too many current-gen CPUs and no one knows what to do with them
- vmception 5y agoMonero’s RandomX algorithm is CPU optimized too.
- zucker42 5y agoI've heard speculation that this "news story" is a result of Rapteoreum trying to hype itself up and convince people it's the next big thing. If you look at their website, their documentation is very sparse, they are a fork of Dash, and they are giving me shitcoin vibes.
- satronaut 5y agoThis article is horrible. It fails to discuss the benefits of using proof of work as a consensus protocol. It uses chips, it doesn't waste chips.
- lpcvoid 5y agoThere isn't a single redeeming quality about Cryptocurrency. The sooner it dies, the better. "Using" chips for useless heat generation has no benefit at all.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jsutton 5y agoI guess you'd say the same thing about open source cloud computing? Crypto is an evolution of that, after all.
- lpcvoid 5y agoI seriously fail to see the relationship here. Please explain?
- leesalminen 5y agoUsing Ethereum as an example, the code is open source. The Ethereum Virtual Machine is a cloud computer. As in, when you execute code on the EVM it is executing on someone else's computer for a per-use price. Hence, "open source cloud computing". At least that's what I think the parent is getting at. I would agree it's a bit of an obtuse analogy and doesn't necessarily apply to all of crypto as a whole.
- WalterSear 5y agoDue to the massive redundancy and waste involved, the entire EVM performs less useful computation than one of AWS's smallest EC2 instance types; less than a current Raspberry Pi attached to a 100 gig SSD. In practical terms, the machine I'm writing this on is closer to cloud computing than the EVM is.
- leesalminen 5y ago> Due to the massive redundancy and waste involved, the entire EVM performs less useful computation than one of AWS's smallest EC2 instance types; less than a current Raspberry Pi attached to a 100 gig SSD. Ok, yes, that's fair. That doesn't totally negate the analogy, though. It just shows that it's a potentially inferior solution. > In practical terms, the machine I'm writing this on is closer to cloud computing than the EVM is. I think what the parent was getting at is the whole "cloud == someone else's computer" trope. Without knowing more details about the computer you're using to post on HN it's impossible to know but I think it's pretty likely you own the computer you're currently using. You wouldn't be using your employer's computer for non-work purposes, right? ;)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- VHRanger 5y agoIt uses them because they cost money. And securing the network costs money in a proportional amount to the market price of the coin. The network is no more or less efficient burning through 20% of the human race's energy output as it is burning 0.2% or 0.000002%. It produces no additional transactions, no more or fewer coins. Just more waste product.
- satronaut 5y agoit's way cheaper and more humanitarian to secure value in Bitcoin using computer chips than it is to send the US military into foreign countries to support the petro-dollar
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- __alexs 5y agoGrinding up working RTX 3090s to use as aggregate for building roads also "uses chips" but might also be considered waste.
- capableweb 5y agoThere seems to be two camps of opinions regarding cryptocurrencies. The first one is people who don't see any value whatsoever in cryptocurrencies. They typically say PoW is "waste" because they don't see value in the output, so there is no argument against them, as everything related to cryptocurrency is waste. It's largely a waste of time talking to these people, as they have made up their mind. The second group are people who see maybe a bit of value or more in PoW. Since there is a hypothetical value, there is no "waste" as much as "use" of doing this hashing. They see value in having a cryptocurrency network, so even if it's wasteful, the greater good is more important for them. It's largely a waste of time talking to these people, as they also have made up their mind.
- VHRanger 5y agoYou could just move it to proof-of-stake. Seriously, even if you find value in Bitcoin, proof-of-work is unsustainable. At current rates it's burning 0.5% of world energy. If price went to $300k it would end up burning 3% of world energy. As the article notes, this is regardless of L2 solutions - energy use is purely a matter of market price.
- limusrazor 5y agoPoS is not as decentralized as PoW. With PoW, you can literally transform energy into cash. In order to be part of a PoS network, then you need to buy the token/coin first. What if you are in a country that restricts crypto? How can you participate in the network? The whole point of using blockchain is to make something truly decentralized. If you are sacrificing decentralization, then you should ask yourself whether you are using the proper data structure for the problem that you are solving.
- TimJRobinson 5y agoIt's not quite market price, it's miner rewards. As Bitcoin gives off less and less rewards (it halves the amount every 4 years), the amount of miners should go down, as it then becomes unprofitable for a lot of them. This is actually a second problem of Bitcoin though - If in say 20 years it ends up being worth a lot, and gives very little mining revenue causing few people mine it, it becomes vulnerable to attack from nation states. Because the cost of a 51% attack is only a fraction of the possible rewards for a successful attack.
- politician 5y agoTLDR: An angry rant about PoW schemes. Views expressed are similar to the sorts of comments you've probably already read here in HN comments on past articles. If you're looking for some new insight, it isn't here.
- zxcb1 5y ago”Cryptocurrencies core tradeoff is that they eschew the concept of trust in humans” When humans trust each other again, Bitcoin and PoW will be obsolete.
- rglover 5y agoThey've never trusted each other and never will. This is a utopian fantasy.
- azth 5y agoI think the poster you're responding to was being sarcastic :)
- artursapek 5y agoI can't tell if he's being sarcastic.
- capableweb 5y agoThat's their point. The core value from cryptocurrencies is just that, you cannot trust the other party, so here is a system that allows you to transfer money between others, without trusting anyone (well, except trusting the developers and makers of the protocol that is).
- joosters 5y agoNot just the protocol makers/devs. Let's pretend you are trying to buy something online with ethereum... (ridiculous of course, who uses these coins to buy real stuff?) You'll have to trust: * The website you're using (is it a fake clone of the site you thought you were visiting) * The people that made your crypto wallet (app or hardware, or both?) * Your computer (lots of crypto stealing malware out there) * The person/company you are sending money to (are they who they say they are? are they going to just disappear with your coins, since the transaction can't be cancelled) * The smart contract you might be using (how many bugs are in it, has it got a backdoor to rip users off) * The miners building the blockchain (it's not just that they don't have to mine your payment - some miners will front-run transactions to do whatever you are trying to do first) * [...] But sure, apart from that, it's completely trustless!
- 37ef_ced3 5y agoDemand for GPUs for Ethereum mining goes to zero in Q1/Q2 2022, when the beacon chain merges with mainnet. Quote: "This will mark the end of proof-of-work for Ethereum, and the full transition to proof-of-stake." https://ethereum.org/en/eth2/merge/ https://ethereum.org/en/eth2/merge/ The price of (demand for) GPUs is strongly correlated with the market price of Ethereum. The Economist, June 2021: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/06/19/crypto-miners-are-probably-to-blame-for-the-graphics-chip-shortage https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/06/19/crypto-m... Today, just like in 2018, we can see the price of Ethereum reflected in Nvidia's stock price. When Ethereum moves to proof-of-stake, mining GPUs will flood the market and demand for new GPUs will no longer be tied to the cryptocurrency bubble.
- AutumnCurtain 5y agoGuess I'll hold off on the new PC build a little longer.
- dncornholio 5y agoThese prices are becoming the norm, not the exception, already took too long.. I am slowly giving up hope a GPU will go for MRP ever again. I also just want my GPU man
- rbanffy 5y agoMy decision is to not care about games or heavy number crunching/ML training. This frees me from needing a dGPU. The added benefit is that my laptops get cheaper.
- zucker42 5y agoHas Ethereum ever met a roadmap deadline?
- 37ef_ced3 5y agoProof-of-stake was scheduled for December 2021, but it slipped to first-half 2022. Don't kid yourself, it won't slip forever. This is going to happen, soon.
- WillPostForFood 5y agoThe shortage of 5nm chips for GPU's isn't the big part of the chip shortage right now.
- vmception 5y agoThe only new take here is that it calls this artificial demand. Instead of just demand. It doesn’t say it directly, but it is interspersed throughout: Basically because the author is researching price manipulation in cryptocurrency, and proof of work demand is correlated to price, that chip production demand is artificially inflated. The counterpoints are that 1) miners have a much lower cost of production than the cryptocurrency’s market price. Their selling and dilution is not enough to bring down the market price as new and recycled cryptocurrency supply becomes a lower and lower percentage of the existing supply. (Edit since rate limited: I didn't say or imply that was their selling had any point or purpose, only acknowledging it has little and decreasing effect on the market price) 2) Miners reinvest into newer hardware, and there is a predictable or computable time before they are able to. Euphoria in wanting to do this will be related to the market price but the market price isn't why they do it. It is only verrry recently that miners could attract outside capital as they became publicly traded and the crypto institutional investors got big enough to also offer lending. The crypto financing space is self grown over the last decade, with still very little buyin from outside institutions.
- VHRanger 5y ago>1) miners have a much lower cost of production than the cryptocurrency’s market price. Only true in the short term. In the long term the arbitrage opportunity closes to zero. So while investment and production bottlenects create profitable mining opportunities, this profit leads to more mining. Any arbitrage opportunity eventually closes over time. > Their selling and dilution is not enough to bring down the market price That's not the point? Miner selling is not to bring down price, it's to pay electricity and silicon costs.
- vmception 5y agoI didn't say or imply that was their selling had any point or purpose, only acknowledging it has little and decreasing effect on the market price
- unveiler_1 5y agoBla, bla... 4% of global energy use.., bla, bla.. support me on Patreon. That's what passes for an HN front-page article nowadays? Breeding cows is almost 3x the % energy consumed quoted [0] (admittedly, in greenhouse gas emissions, but who's counting, no?) GPU market increased 20%+ YoY [1] to what I estimate being a ±400MM unit year; that's 80M GPUs at the 1/5 share quoted; assume an average of 6 GPUs per (retail) miner, that's 13MM miners; there are 2675 Ethereum nodes as of right now [2]; I call bullshit, again. So again, why do people post this clickbait crap here? And why does it make the front page of HN? Because crypto? There's tons of other reasons for "because crypto", and I'd love to believe we're less gullible than that over here. (of course, please let the downvotes flow to your liking, "because crypro") [0] https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/ https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/ [1] https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005748/en/2021-Quarterly-Report-on-GPU-Shipments---Featuring-AMD-Intel-and-Nvidia---ResearchAndMarkets.com https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211110005748/en/202... [2] https://ethernodes.org https://ethernodes.org
- EGreg 5y agoCows are eaten. The proof of work does what exactly vs proof of stake or something else?
- unveiler_1 5y agoSteaks get eaten to, no? /s The author's nowhere close to making a mindful argument between PoW and Pos, the whole article seems to be meant to drive people to Patreon based on some %s that should drive people mad. That's my point. It's a very polarised issue and I would expect more scrutiny and spider-sense here, precisely in your down-voting vein - at least you've put some thought, and steak(?) into it!
- h2odragon 5y agoWhat use is an old ASIC miner? Is there any?
- VHRanger 5y agoIt employs scrapyard employees!
- sharemywin 5y agoDon't worry I'm here to save the day. It's POP. proof of paperclips. Just invest in my paper clip maximizer. https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/paperclip-maximizer https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/paperclip-maximizer
- BenoitP 5y ago> Each Antminer takes up roughly one TSMC wafer. That's highly surprising to me. Have they gone the Cerebras way?
- limusrazor 5y agoAnother misleading article regarding PoW. There are two kinds of people here. The ones that think that crypto is pure speculation and a drug/criminal related technology hence is waste in any sense, and those who believe that crypto is solving something. It's pointless to discuss the value of decentralization here for the first group, so I have no argument here. For the second group, the ones that believe that crypto is solving something, I will remark that the only reason we are using blockchain is for its decentralized nature. For several reasons, PoW nature is way more decentralized than PoS. A big argument for PoW is that literally anyone can join the network by transforming energy into cash. On the other side, with PoS, the only way you can join the network is by buying a PoS token. You can't mine it if you don't hold the token before. That can be a problem for people based in countries that restricts crypto. At the same time, the players who hold the majority of the tokens have most of the mining power in PoS. If we are willing to sacrifice decentralization, then we shouldn't be using blockchain as a data structure. The fact that the governments have printed more money than ever added to the current inflationary rates over the last years makes me believe that its worth spending 2-3% of the world energy on a deflationary asset that is not in control of any person or government. Having a trustable currency is one of the most important aspects of modern society.
- glowplug 5y agoCryptocurrency mining is an unprecedented ecological disaster.