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Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?
- victorvosk 5y agoRight, because GPU's are expensive and scarce because of crypto, and all other inflation, demand and supply chain issues are a completely unrelated topic that just happens to be coinciding... /s
- h4kor 5y agoI tried to correct for overall price development. The correlation still persists.
- bdcravens 5y agoThe GPU pricing and availability has been a problem well before the current environment. Well before COVID even.
- victorvosk 5y agoGPU's went up as crypto gained popularity, crypto has gained popularity as governments kept printing more money handouts. We now have high inflation, high demand, chip shortages, supply chain shortages and high crypto popularity because of out of control fiat printing. This also coincides with the governments sudden desire to regulate the industry despite it existing for nearly a decade now. Its a leak in the their system. You can't print money and hand it out where you want if someone has a hedge against your money printers.
- bdcravens 5y agoWhile I agree with you that out of control fiat printing is a problem, I think you're overstating things. You can't ignore the role of the pandemic in the supply chain issues, and you can't ignore that many turn to crypto only to gain more fiat. I say this as someone who has been in crypto since 2011, and I've seen what happens during the bear markets. Many who aren't "true believers" or whose bags are too heavy abandon it, even though the money printers haven't changed during those times.
- folli 5y agoTLDR: Yes.
- capableweb 5y agoMore nuanced TLDR from the actual article: > We can see a correlation between GPU prices and the value of crypto currencies, but correlation does not mean causation. A causation is plausible in this case.
- gonab 5y ago.
- titzer 5y agoRead the article. The author corrected for the overall market trends using linear regression.
- h4kor 5y agoThis would show up in the CPUs. But their prices are stable.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agoFor me, that indicates that it's not a "general chip shortage" issue (i.e. not "ASICs are making the chip shortage worse" either), at which point https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29766829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29766829 makes it hard to see the correlation as caused by cryptocurrencies.
- plebianRube 5y agoIndeed. A quick search shows chip supply side issues are a big factor. Increased demand, reduced supply. https://www.pcgamer.com/why-you-still-cant-buy-a-graphics-cards-according-to-a-supply-chain-expert/ https://www.pcgamer.com/why-you-still-cant-buy-a-graphics-ca...
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- daraosn 5y ago
- scottiebarnes 5y agoCloud / data center GPU consumption has also gone up in the past couple years.
- rvz 5y agoIf you mention anything about the cloud, deep learning training on GPUs and the impact on the environment that has and the increasing costs of training and fine tuning your neural net, they won't care at all, they will still do it after all these years. As you know it is still a valid point.
- ShamelessC 5y ago> If you mention anything about the cloud, deep learning training on GPUs and the impact on the environment that has and the increasing costs of training and fine tuning your neural net, they won't care at all, they will still do it after all these years. There is a recent trend to discuss environmental impacts of training deep learning models in papers. See e.g. Latent Diffusion Models (Heidelberg), RETRO (Deepmind). Further, I would posit that machine learning has a much clearer value proposition than cryptocurrencies which are a highly speculative. Finally, your argument is an example of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism. Rather than arguing against facts presented you are changing the subject to say "look here though! this happens here and you're all hypocrites for not noticing it!" This makes your argument seem defensive, biased and unconvincing.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rvz 5y agoExcept that I already agreed with the article before you commented [0], so it isn't Whataboutism. (You clearly knew due to your own reply to my comment). [1] Somehow, you thought I brought up the subject, or didn't I just simply agree with the parent comment too? Seems like you rushed to comment towards the wrong person. > ...than cryptocurrencies which are a highly speculative. How can a regulated stablecoin like USDP or USDC, or even CBDCs sitting on a cryptocurrency technology like XRPL or the Stellar Network etc. be 'highly speculative'? I hope you haven't shown your 'bias' and targeted me, instead of the parent comment. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29759242 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29759242 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29759347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29759347
- anm89 5y agoAre you trying to tell me that the price for a thing is affected by its supply and demand? The horror!
- krono 5y agoRather to which extent crypto in particular has affected the market.
- neogodless 5y agoYour comment comes from a place of assuming the answer to the question, which is kind of twofold. Does the profit from proof-of-work mining increase the acceptable GPU price for miners AND is there enough demand from these miners for GPUs due to the profit equation to significantly inflate those prices? If you assume yes, you get yes as the answer without proving anything.
- rvz 5y agoAssuming everyone commenting here has read the post, if it is 'cryptocurrencies' 'like' Bitcoin and Ethereum that use PoW? Then, that is an undeniable, and an undisputed; Yes. However, if you are talking 'cryptocurrencies' that means you are talking about all of them. Not all cryptocurrencies are like Bitcoin, and Ethereum and not all of them use PoW. So the title should be: 'Is Bitcoin, and Ethereum to blame for High GPU Prices?' or 'Are cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, and Ethereum to blame for High GPU Prices?' Rather than generalising for 'ALL' active cryptocurrencies in existence, which everyone knows isn't true but continue to attack anyway.
- gambiting 5y agoAll cryptocurrencies are the same scam anyway, really don't see the need to differentiate this way.
- CrazyStat 5y agoSome of them artificially inflate the cost of hard drives instead of GPUs, totally not the same!
- yokoprime 5y agoAre storage prices inflated at the moment? How is a physical commodity comparable to a ledger with hashes, ultimately assigned a value purely out of demand, despite being devoid of any actual purpose or usefulness?
- CrazyStat 5y agoStorage prices jumped sharply a few months back due to Chia. They've mostly come back down since then. I have no idea what the point of your second question is.
- criddell 5y agoWhat's artificial about it?
- radu_floricica 5y agoMight have also been ML
- Bombthecat 5y agoDefinitely! Demand for ml stuff is rising two digits per year at least.
- optimalsolver 5y agoBetter an AI researcher or scientist get one of these cards than some scumbag miner.
- dylan604 5y agoWhy do you think an AI researcher can't be a scumbag as well? Clearview AI anyone?
- benreesman 5y agoI’m annoyed as the next guy that my deep-learning rigs are costing 5 figures, but “scumbag” might be a little strong for people who arbitrage NVIDIA’s repeated failures to effectively segment their GPU offering?
- speedgoose 5y agoNo I think it's fair, unless they heat up their bedroom while mining.
- wpietri 5y agoIt is deeply weird to me that of all the people involved you place the failure on Nvidia here. Regardless, I'm ok with the term "scumbag" for anybody who tries to profit from a negative-sum system.
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y agoBut they are. I ranted about this here a few weeks ago, but we're still getting intermittent rolling blackouts because of energy shortages caused by miners moving into the country (we have cheap electricity… for now at least).
- gtsop 5y agoAlternate answer: No, the manifacturing cost of the gpu stays relatively the same, greedy sellers increase price because of the increased demand. It's not like they wouldn't make profit on regular prices.
- factorialboy 5y agoSupply steady. Demand exponential increase due to cryptocurrencies. Blame whomever you wish.
- gtsop 5y agoI just don't get why people hide behind their finger. This is capitalism 101. You either like it and go by it or dislike it and try to change it. For some reason X the demand for product Y has increased which leads to price bump. If you are pro capitalist economy then you just accept it for what it is. If you don't like it then discuss alternate economies. The rules of the economy are the ones to blame, not the people who play by the rules.
- lottin 5y agoIt probably has something to do with the fact that crypto is perceived as having no social value, and therefore people are less inclined to accept negative consequences that may result from such an activity.
- gtsop 5y agoYes this is probably it. But if we walk down that route, what prevents anyone from having a say into what everybody else does with their products. Eg: If think there is no social value in crafting wooden cups, do I have a say in what you do with your purchased wood?
- lottin 5y agoNot you, as an individual, but as a society, absolutely. There are plenty of laws that regulate or forbid certain activities.
- bick_nyers 5y agoETH Hashrate has tripled in the past year alone, adding 600 TH/s. A 3080 does about 100 MH/s. That's about 6 million 3080s.
- bick_nyers 5y agoIn addition, it looks like 9.25 million 1000 series cards (1060, 1080, etc.) sold in the first quarter in which they were released, which we can extrapolate out to about 30-40 million in the first year. It would be interesting to see what percentage of manufacturing capacity NVIDIA is at, as 25%-50% would put ETH GPU mining at the majority of sales. Especially considering that supposedly higher volume cards such as the 3060 do a quarter of the hashrate of a 3080, which would be about 24 million cards. Of course, AMD is also part of the conversation as well, but I believe that they are quite a bit less volume than NVIDIA. Then of course, not all GPU miners are mining ETH necessarily and so on.
- jes 5y agoWhat if crypto currencies are to blame for low GPU prices? In other words, what if the opportunity to make money via crypto currencies has accelerated the development of GPU capabilities and availability beyond what would have happened if crypto currencies never came into existence?
- cryptica 5y agoAnd what's to blame for Bitcoin's high price? A broken fiat monetary system. I can't believe some people still think that Bitcoin is more speculative than major tech stocks. Facebook, Twitter, Google, Uber, Snapchat... All propped up by money printing. I think if we ran a simulation using hard (non-fiat) money, the net losses of these big tech companies would be even more significant than Bitcoin's losses on electricity. They're only profitable because of the fiat monetary scheme. If you remove the scheme, I think it's likely that revenue would dry up and profits would quickly go negative. These companies are just not viable in a hard money system. More profitable competitors would quickly spring up and there would be constant churn. The reason why Bitcoin is so successful and anti-fragile is that it's located everywhere. It always has access to the easiest money from all around the world. It has placed itself at the root of every scheme around the world.
- surfmike 5y agoIt wouldn’t matter if Google or Facebook’s profit was denominated in ETC, BTC, or fiat; those companies are massively profitable.
- cryptica 5y agoIt would matter if all of their customers' earnings were also denominated in BTC. It would dramatically affect their customers' spending habits. For example, while they might be willing to borrow fiat to pay for ads, they might not want to borrow BTC for this same purpose because they know that they may not be able to meet repayments (e.g. BTC's scarcity means that it may not be possible to acquire back that borrowed BTC in the future; cost of BTC is likely to be higher due to the deflationary dynamic). Hard money would affect behavior in profound ways.
- after_care 5y agoWhat? One of the hallmarks of a tech company is that the costs associated with producing the product is relatively flat and the revenue from the product goes up linearly with usage. Most tech companies then spend their money on recruiting more engineers, to try to build more products that are cheap to maintain and generate smooth rising revenues. The increased fed spending changes the stock price, but it’s not changing the fundamentals of why selling network access software is so good.
- rvnx 5y agoYes.
- criddell 5y agoIf you look at it more abstractly and ask if high demand and limited supply are driving up prices, it sounds like a dumb question.
- afrcnc 5y agoyes
- iqanq 5y agoIt's been years since the crypto boom - why hasn't production ramped up accordingly? Or are manufacturers waiting forever until it blows over? Because that may never happen.
- kzrdude 5y agoExponential growth outgrows any supply, so that's a possibility
- groundhogday3 5y agoI've read that takes 2 years to get a new semi-conductor fab up and running. While demand for GPUs has skyrocketed not only in crypto but in other areas. Couple that with us going into 2 years of global lockdowns and subsequent supply disruptions have probably exacerbated the situation greatly.
- wayoutthere 5y agoIt takes two years under normal circumstances; from what I understand backlogs for the lithography equipment are a huge bottleneck in the industry since there are only a few companies that make such specialized machines. They were already backordered for years pre-pandemic, with most of those getting pushed out because of supply constraint issues. We’re never going to return to the level of industrial output pre-Covid. There are a dozen high-likelihood scenarios down the pipe in the 2020s (Russia, China/Taiwan, climate drought / famine, etc) that will continue holding global productivity down. We’re looking at global stagflation for most of the rest of our lives as a result, meaning crypto is a good hedge. NVidia just needs to start pricing its top-tier GPUs for crypto farms, then refurbishing the last generation for consumers when the crypto farms upgrade.
- tsimionescu 5y agoIf Ethereum moves to PoS, half the crypto GPU market goes poof in an instant. Not a good thing to hedge more chip fabs on, I would bet.
- groundhogday3 5y ago
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- sabellito 5y ago
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- literallyWTF 5y agoWhat else is there to say? Somethings don’t require paragraphs and paragraphs of shit everyone already knows.
- delabay 5y agoAlternate opinion: proof of work mining provides a valuable service to society much moreso than videogames and the premium on GPUs reflects this. This isn't mainstream opinion of course, however I predict it will be. Crypto mining is the true first electricity buyer of last resort. It's a productive activity which can use megawatts of power and be turned off at a moments notice in order for the grid to meet the demands of society (as what is happening in Texas right this very moment). What other MW scale industrial process can turn off at the flip of a switch? It's a defacto subsidy on green power projects. The HN crowd hates to see it, but crypto mining is becoming integrated at the deepest levels with our electricity grid. It won't happen everywhere as some jurisdictions may ban this "unholy union" but the moment public opinion changes, this integration of grid and crypto is a slam dunk no brainer.
- poisonborz 5y ago> Bitcoin miners rarely use GPUs anymore, but ASICs Seeing the title and the conclusions, how can this be the case? Computationally they're not much behind ASICs per $, are much more broadly available to buy and are easier to sell when needed.
- msgilligan 5y agoGPUs are used to mine cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin.
- 1-6 5y agoAnd GPUs are better positioned to pivot at any point and mine something else or go on resale when profitability equations change.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 5y agoFor Bitcoin mining’s computational needs, the specific ASICS designed for Bitcoin mining are several orders of magnitude ahead of GPUs in efficiency.
- runeks 5y ago> Computationally they're not much behind ASICs per $ […] Is this really true for Bitcoin? I’ve been out of the mining game for a long time, but ~5 years ago this certainly wasn’t true. Back then GPUs were at least an order of magnitude less efficient than ASICs.
- tcoff91 5y agoBTC ASICS have much better performance per watt for mining Bitcoin. It’s almost impossible to be profitable with btc mining on GPUs. ETH and many other alts are mined on GPUs though.
- donkarma 5y agoAnyone who buys a GPU second-hand is an idiot. They would have been running at maximum silicon temperature 24/7 with the result of massive wear.
- bvaldivielso 5y agoThe article only attempts to show there's correlation, and ends up by saying "correlation doesn't imply causation, but maybe there's causation". So basically, we don't know. I'm not blaming the author, because determining causation is hard, and checking there's correlation between two variables can still be interesting, but the article falls short of answering the question.
- wpietri 5y agoCorrelation is correlated with causation, so I think this sort of exploration of a question is still valuable.
- bvaldivielso 5y agoI agree that it's valuable and interesting, just not a definitive answer to the question
- wpietri 5y agoDid I miss where somebody promised you a definitive answer to the question?
- IshKebab 5y agoThey provide decently good evidence of causation, because of the lack of correlation with CPUs. Correlation doesn't prove causation, but it is evidence for it.
- m_ke 5y agoI work in deep learning and had to camp out in front of a best buy to get my hands on some 3090s. A good portion of the people in line with me were crypto miners who were waiting to get more GPUs to add to their collection because they're making money on each one and as long as it's profitable it makes perfect sense for them to buy up more.
- speedgoose 5y agoI was told that the Nvidia Tesla cards are easier to buy.
- ShamelessC 5y agoNot at best buy they're not.
- speedgoose 5y agoYes it's hardware for professionals in GPU computing. But you can buy them in other places.
- 1-6 5y agoIt still doesn’t help that the Ethereum hashrate limiter is not imposed on the highest-end card (it’s FHR not LHR). The 3090 (aka 30-series Titan cards) are still really hard to find. The the 24GB of double-sided GDDR6x gets super hot though and all implementations of the card did not take that into account. The 3080ti’s are easier to find as they’re LHR and price per hashrate ratio isn’t good. What I mean by easier is that bots have a tendency of going after cards with price/ratio. It doesn’t help either that DDR5 RAM is also highly scalped. PC memory is in direct competition to GPU memory and vice versa.
- ShamelessC 5y agoPlease don't buy GPU's to mine cryptocurrency, you're contributing to a global chip shortage and I really want to play Halo Infinite in 4k. For real though, cut that out.
- ericd 5y agoNot sure why they mention Bitcoin throughout, afaik no one is using GPUs for Bitcoin anymore, ASIC miners like Bitmain's S19 thoroughly dominate.
- h4kor 5y agoBitcoin is the biggest crypto currency and uses proof of work. As mentioned in the conclusion, ASICs use the same resources as GPUs. This can have an effect on GPU prices. Additionally bitcoin is still the "gold standard" and most crypto currencies follow the price development of bitcoin.
- ericd 5y agoDo you think Bitmain is winning bids for fab capacity against Nvidia/AMD? I guess their newest miner is slated to be on 5nm...
- h4kor 5y agoThey can probably pay higher prices when mining rewards are high.
- ericd 5y agoMaybe. Just hard to imagine a company with employees numbered in the low hundreds competing for fab capacity with nVidia.
- h4kor 5y agoNVidia has a far greater complexity to handle. GPUs do a lot of things and are more generalized with each iteration. In comparison ASICs are super simple chips. If GPUs would still use the fixed rendering pipeline they started with ( only push your triangles and texture to the GPU and you get your image) they could also handle their business with a few hundred employees. Just shrink your chips to the latest fab size, add more computing cores, maybe improve some algorithm if a better solution is found.
- darthrupert 5y agoDoes increased demand raise prices?
- swalsh 5y agoFor some reason, only secondary markets follow the law of supply and demand. On the primary market, price is fixed so you just get shortages.
- gruez 5y agoBut that's not the question. It asks whether they're to blame for high GPU prices, which presumes a certain threshold before the criteria is met. If there were a few hundred GPUs bought by miners, and that demand caused GPU prices to climb $10 over MSRP, I doubt that would qualify as them being responsible for "high" prices, even though they did raise it.
- atarian 5y agoOne of the craziest videos I saw last year was a mob of people rushing a Micro Center to get their hands on a 3080 TI: https://youtu.be/UNcx9JdC9VM?t=239 https://youtu.be/UNcx9JdC9VM?t=239
- neogodless 5y agoAnd those are all LHR cards. So in that specific case they were probably mostly gamers tired of waiting for an upgrade.
- jrockway 5y agoWasn't the LHR DRM instantly broken?
- neogodless 5y agoNot exactly. Some degree of the lower hashrate was circumvented, but not at all a complete reversal.
- mirekrusin 5y agoWe've seen same thing happening with toilet paper.
- bdcravens 5y agoAnd yet only one is a requirement for life (sans bidet)
- FranksTV 5y agoYou think that's crazy, I remember people rushing to get Windows 95.
- swalsh 5y agoI guess we'll find out. It's increasingly likely the merge will happen his year. When ETH moves to PoS, mines will likely move to other currencies, or sell their hardware, that said the return for alternative crypto's still on PoW is unlikely to match that of ETH. I would be very surprised if demand from miners is not reduced.
- h4kor 5y agoLet's hope this happens. They have been promising this for a long time. It's the "fusion energy will be available soon" of the crypto currency space.
- FranksTV 5y agoYou can raise a lot of money on potential. When something becomes real suddenly it has to work. Its like the Oak Island treasure. If they ever actually dig something up, it'll kill the tourist revenue.
- dagaci 5y agoPC Hardware can come from an Era with so many manufacturers and true-actual fierce competition, resulting in complete commoditisation of components. However, now in 2022, there are only 2 CPU vendors,2 GPU vendors and even with storage the number of manufacturers is small. Only TSMC can deliver 5nm and Mr Cook has all that capacity on lock (AMD and Intel will get a look only when he is done with it) Mining like with politics is just some easy target to blame, the problem is Monopolies and duopolies. Events have catalysed a market rife with monopolies and duopolies: these rule the supply chain, they have seen the true prices the market will accept, how can we expect prices to go back to "normal"?
- jcranmer 5y agoI walked into a computer store last night. There were shelves full of CPUs and SSDs and HDDs, and buying several of them at once would have no one batting an eye. Yet there was a policy: only 1 graphics card per customer per month, and that applies solely to graphics cards (and prebuilt computers containing graphics cards). In other words, there is visibly a shortage of graphics cards that is not affecting any other components. That strongly suggests that there is something driving demand for graphics cards that is not driving demand for other key components of computers, which are available in sufficient supply. And the list of things that extra demand could be coming from is rather short indeed.
- xwdv 5y agoSome crypto miners are accumulating so much wealth that they are looking into building their own chips and hardware to mine even harder than what you can buy commercially from Nvidia.
- latchkey 5y agoNot for ETH. ethash is memory controller bound, not chip bound. This is why older generation GPUs are higher ROI than buying latest and greatest.
- 15155 5y agoWhy would Bitmain be releasing the Antminer E9 if it has no benefit over GPU? Ethash is bounded by memory bandwidth, sure, which is why HBM-based ASICs and FPGAs will be better than non-HBM GPUs in almost every case for mining ETH.
- latchkey 5y agoIt isn't just hash/watt, it is $/hash. HBM is expensive. This is also why the bitmain boxes only come with 6gb. The dag will eventually grow and render them useless, just like we saw with 4gb gpus... The ethash asic's are not that much better than GPUs as they are all bound by memory controller speed. Even with faster memory, the gate is always how fast you can move through the DAG. That red circle is the issue... https://www.vijaypradeep.com/blog/2017-04-28-ethereums-memory-hardness-explained https://www.vijaypradeep.com/blog/2017-04-28-ethereums-memor... The only benefit of the bitmain boxes is that they are plug and play. You buy one box, stick it on the shelf, plug it in and that's it. GPUs are significantly more difficult to tune and run, especially at large scale. The ROI on these boxes is terrible... imaging you buy one and it burns out... zero chance for repairs on any sane timeline. Why does bitmain sell it? Easy money for a company that has a long history of ethics violations. When I was buying L3+'s directly from bitmain, they'd come clearly used.
- ameminator 5y agoSo in the last little while, Ethereum mining has become almost impossible on GPUs with 4gb of RAM and below. Prices of these sub 4gb RAM cards have plummeted to match. So I would say, yes, high GPU prices are caused by cryptocurrency mining.
- svara 5y agoA game theoretically designed paperclip maximizer is growing so large that we're starting to see collateral damage in the broad economy; car prices and availability issues, just to name one example.
- Wiseacre 5y agoThe mineral industry has been experiencing this for centuries.
- rasz 5y agoForget car prices, look at overall energy prices this winter.
- dave333 5y agoThe cost of power is about to drop significantly. A leased 250 KW Suncell generator could mine a lot of crypto. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100011186387437 https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100011186387437
- NotVerstappen 5y agoWell thanks, that's a good couple of minutes of hilarity. You should really use an /s though; I was hoping for a breakthrough in solar concentrators or something similar.
- svara 5y agoI don't see the direct link between energy prices and PoW mining. At least not beyond the theoretical supply and demand argument, and PoW mining energy demand is still relatively small. Care to elaborate?
- Reichhardt 5y agoIts dead easy to fix it though: for politicians to ban the purchase of Proof of Work cryptocurrencies. All of the major exchanges are centralized now anyway. Tank the price (via basic supply-demand microeconomics) and you solve electricity and chip supply issues. The fact that this easy step hasn't been done suggests a broader conspiracy to destabilize Western nations and sow chaos, perhaps to usher in a transfer of global power from West to East. Note that China has banned the mining and trade of these cryptocurrencies long ago.
- Yizahi 5y agoShort answer - yes. I don't have ANY data to prove this point, but strictly empirically - 1) it only takes a small number of GPUs bought due to increased demand to significantly alter price, all because the shop inventories are small. 2) Eth is not the only GPU mined coin and miners can easily and quickly switch to RVN or whatever else when Eth is diving. 3) outside factor - Bitmine is placing big orders at TSMC which also impacts capacity to produce GPUs.
- jeanlucas 5y agoShort answer - yes. I don't have any data to prove this point, but strictly empirically - 1) there's a shortage of chips in the world and the crypto market isn't even a dent on the total demand
- gorkemyurt 5y agoAI, VR and crypto all require GPUs and coming of age at the same time..
- AmericanBlarney 5y agoAuthor is looking for the wrong correlation - the price is only indirectly linked to the amount of silicon being diverted to crypto. Should be correlating to hash capacity.
- classique 5y agoCombo of crypto mining and the whole supply chain situation being in a bad situation
- squarefoot 5y agoOne word: yes. https://www.hardwaretimes.com/gpu-mining-farm-w-over-4000-geforce-rtx-3070s-caught-on-cam-as-gamers-struggle-to-procure-graphics-cards/ https://www.hardwaretimes.com/gpu-mining-farm-w-over-4000-ge... https://hothardware.com/news/a-look-inside-a-massive-rtx-3070-mining-farm-may-trigger-you https://hothardware.com/news/a-look-inside-a-massive-rtx-307... https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-shortages-worsen-cryptocurrency-coin-miners-ethereum https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-shortages-worsen-crypt... And energy prices, of course. More demand = higher prices. Also keep in mind that cryptocurrencies become harder to mine with time, therefore the pursuit of more powerful hardware and more energy isn't going to stop, therefore there's absolutely no way prices of hardware and energy will return to normal until governments won't stop this nonsense. Pushing for nuclear or carbon is just hiding the problem under the carpet: we don't need more energy because we already have plenty, but we must stop wasting it, especially in a way that is clearly bringing us to a path in which we will need more and more every year.
- orasis 5y ago"therefore there's absolutely no way prices of hardware and energy will return to normal until governments won't stop this nonsense." It will stop once the crypto prices reach parity with the hardware investments plus or minus further speculation.
- BoiledCabbage 5y agoCan you be more specific here? I see no mechanism for this to happen. Difficulty will simply increase from that point.
- financetechbro 5y agoI believe they mean that once is gets to a point where crypto mining is no longer profitable (revs < costs) the demand for more powerful machines / tech will decrease
- kingo55 5y agoAt least on the ethereum side they are moving to a Proof of Stake system which doesn't require the insane hardware and energy that Proof of Work consensus requires. So there will be some relief on the horizon. Also, I expect over time that fewer cryptos will use Proof of Work. Unless you're Bitcoin/Ethereum, proof of work chains get attacked all the time. Look at Ethereum Classic.
- naruvimama 5y agoJust waiting for the EU and US to restrict, crackdown or regulate bitcoin and other private crypto. At the minimum ban regulated institutions from dealing in it. Problem is too many people are already heavily invested in the pyramid scheme.
- 0x0nyandesu 5y agoMost capitalists see crypto and the GPU market as just capitalism working as intended. There's nothing stopping gpu manufacturers from producing more product. Given that crypto is already 10 years old and has other things depending on it you sound like an old man yelling at some kids on their lawn.
- acdha 5y agoWhat “other things” depend on cryptocurrencies which are about something other than selling cryptocurrencies? NFTs are the most common example but their valuations depend on people using the art as a loss leader to sell tokens.
- goldenbikeshed 5y ago> capitalism working as intended. Needlessly destroying the planet and making it more expensive for me to drown the inevitability of impending doom by playing AAA video games. Well ain't that just swell.
- sdn90 5y agoI'm very curious to see how this plays out over the next year: 1. BTC dominance seems to be getting lower 2. Ethereum PoS seems very likely to launch this year IMO 3. Alt chains which run on PoS like AVAX and SOL have been eating into Ethereum's market share of the smart contract space. Newly onboarded retail users to crypto have been priced out of Ethereum due to fees over the past year. The alt chains running PoW seem to have no real usage. 4. Fed raising interest rates could dampen the growth of crypto asset prices If I put myself in the shoes of a miner running GPU's, once the merge happens I only see these options: 1. I switch to a chain that is still profitable for GPU's. None of these have much demand for block space and unless that changes, other profit minded miners will be dumping the token. 2. Switch to some kind of P2P GPU-aaS like Render or Livepeer. I haven't been following this space to closely but I doubt it would have the same returns as mining Ethereum over the past years. 3. Exit out of mining and sell GPU's
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago"The correlation is stronger for Bitcoin than for Ethereum" indicates that there is no direct causation since GPUs are useless for Bitcoin mining. The author suggests that the demand for ASICs may contribute to the chip shortage which then drives up GPU prices, but that doesn't explain the lack of correlation with CPU prices.
- Grismar 5y agoThe article mentioned causation isn't shown, but can be inferred. However the inference comes down to "they happen at the same time and are related", so just correlation. All work enabled by new generations of GPUs happened at the same time and is related in the same way. Someone would have to come up with some real numbers of the actual number of cards used in specific scenarios. Mining will be in there, but so will scientific and engineering modelling, design applications, and obviously gaming, as well as some others I may be missing. What percentage of cards was purchased primarily for what applications?
- b__d 5y agoGeizhals is an Austrian website, not German. The just tend to have a .de URL too for German shops. Source: Imprint https://unternehmen.geizhals.at/impressum/ https://unternehmen.geizhals.at/impressum/