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I 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 miner

by m_ke 5y ago

I 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 ago
I was told that the Nvidia Tesla cards are easier to buy.
- ShamelessC 5y ago
  Not at best buy they're not.
  - speedgoose 5y ago
    Yes it's hardware for professionals in GPU computing. But you can buy them in other places.
- 1-6 5y ago
  It 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 ago
    Please 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.
    - legulere 5y ago
      You’re also contributing to global warming with mining and contribute to a scheme that allows criminals to transfer money. If your local hospital has to shut down because of ransomware you are making that possible.
barkingcat 5y ago
If nvidia straight up just stopped selling any cards, declined all their client/customer base, and just put 100% of their global output to mining cryptocurrencies, I think it's a good chance nvidia can do a 50%+1 attack on both bitcoin and ethereum at the same time. Once they successfully do the attack, they can take over the blockchains and allocate all cryptocurrencies to themselves, cash out, and it'd probably register as a good profit on their income statements.
- cultofmetatron 5y ago
  as a thought experiment, lets say I had a time machine. I go back in time with a super computer and mine all the coins the first year and lock them up in my wallet. I then return to the present day. Are they worth anything?
- capableweb 5y ago
  Yeah, they could do that, but what most of these claims ("X could easily profit Y by doing 50%+1 attack") miss, is that once that attack has been made, who'd trade anything with the currency that was attacked? Lets say nvidia does "conquer" Bitcoin and have all the bitcoins, who'd in the right mind would continue to buy/sell Bitcoins after that? The market for Bitcoin would collapse faster than nvidia could excitedly scream "PROFITS!" to their shareholders, making the whole attack unnecessary in the first place.
  - belltaco 5y ago
    Can such an attack be done without detection?
    - capableweb 5y ago
      No, the whole point of using a blockchain is to have a publicly verifiable ledger of all transactions. If anything goes wrong, there will be so many alarm bells ringing across the world that probably it'll be a hearable event for most people living in places that resembles modern civilization.
mgh2 5y ago
Although AMD may deny it, I suspected this was a reason for their current success, not what they claim publicly...but this study seems to find no correlation (with ether and bitcoin prices) https://www.windowscentral.com/best-gpus-crypto-mining https://www.windowscentral.com/best-gpus-crypto-mining
- beebeepka 5y ago
  Not sure what you are trying to say here but that list is weird. Why is 5700xt that great but 5700 not even listed? Not much difference between the two
Animats 5y ago
What are they mining, Monero? Is GPU mining still a thing for Bitcoin or Ethereum?
- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
  GPU mining is a thing for Ethereum, hopefully not for much longer
  - 300bps 5y ago
    People have been saying “not much longer” for years. First EIP-1559 which frankly didn’t reduce my profitability much at all. Now ETH 2.0 with PoS. That’s at least six months off and has already been delayed repeatedly.
- is_true 5y ago
  where I live most people are mining ETH, unfortunately electricity is subsidized
- 300bps 5y ago
  ETH. I bought a new computer in March of 2021 for $1,900 including tax. The computer happened to have an RTX 3070 card in it. I have mined and sold $2,800 of ETH in the 9 months I’ve owned it. The extra power has cost me a couple hundred dollars. I’ve made anywhere from $3 to $75 per day during that time (thank you Shiba Inu launch date for the highest numbers). I’m continuing to make about $3 per day. You can look up current profitability for any graphics card at whattomine.com. Bottom line is I could have added infinite graphics cards to this setup and the profit would’ve gone up linearly. Anyone that doesn’t think GPUs are high due to ETH mining has no idea what they’re talking about. The analysis from OP seemed ridiculous to me. I didn’t even see LHR mentioned in the article which are GPU manufacturers attempting to make GPUs unprofitable for miners so they can only be used for gaming. (Hint: didn’t work very well).

by m_ke 5y ago

speedgoose 5y ago

I was told that the Nvidia Tesla cards are easier to buy.

ShamelessC 5y ago
Not at best buy they're not.
- speedgoose 5y ago
  Yes it's hardware for professionals in GPU computing. But you can buy them in other places.
1-6 5y ago
It 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 ago
  Please 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.
  - legulere 5y ago
    You’re also contributing to global warming with mining and contribute to a scheme that allows criminals to transfer money. If your local hospital has to shut down because of ransomware you are making that possible.

barkingcat 5y ago

If nvidia straight up just stopped selling any cards, declined all their client/customer base, and just put 100% of their global output to mining cryptocurrencies, I think it's a good chance nvidia can do a 50%+1 attack on both bitcoin and ethereum at the same time. Once they successfully do the attack, they can take over the blockchains and allocate all cryptocurrencies to themselves, cash out, and it'd probably register as a good profit on their income statements.

cultofmetatron 5y ago
as a thought experiment, lets say I had a time machine. I go back in time with a super computer and mine all the coins the first year and lock them up in my wallet. I then return to the present day. Are they worth anything?
capableweb 5y ago
Yeah, they could do that, but what most of these claims ("X could easily profit Y by doing 50%+1 attack") miss, is that once that attack has been made, who'd trade anything with the currency that was attacked? Lets say nvidia does "conquer" Bitcoin and have all the bitcoins, who'd in the right mind would continue to buy/sell Bitcoins after that? The market for Bitcoin would collapse faster than nvidia could excitedly scream "PROFITS!" to their shareholders, making the whole attack unnecessary in the first place.
- belltaco 5y ago
  Can such an attack be done without detection?
  - capableweb 5y ago
    No, the whole point of using a blockchain is to have a publicly verifiable ledger of all transactions. If anything goes wrong, there will be so many alarm bells ringing across the world that probably it'll be a hearable event for most people living in places that resembles modern civilization.

mgh2 5y ago

Although AMD may deny it, I suspected this was a reason for their current success, not what they claim publicly...but this study seems to find no correlation (with ether and bitcoin prices) https://www.windowscentral.com/best-gpus-crypto-mining https://www.windowscentral.com/best-gpus-crypto-mining

beebeepka 5y ago
Not sure what you are trying to say here but that list is weird. Why is 5700xt that great but 5700 not even listed? Not much difference between the two

Animats 5y ago

What are they mining, Monero? Is GPU mining still a thing for Bitcoin or Ethereum?

X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
GPU mining is a thing for Ethereum, hopefully not for much longer
- 300bps 5y ago
  People have been saying “not much longer” for years. First EIP-1559 which frankly didn’t reduce my profitability much at all. Now ETH 2.0 with PoS. That’s at least six months off and has already been delayed repeatedly.
is_true 5y ago
where I live most people are mining ETH, unfortunately electricity is subsidized
300bps 5y ago
ETH. I bought a new computer in March of 2021 for $1,900 including tax. The computer happened to have an RTX 3070 card in it. I have mined and sold $2,800 of ETH in the 9 months I’ve owned it. The extra power has cost me a couple hundred dollars. I’ve made anywhere from $3 to $75 per day during that time (thank you Shiba Inu launch date for the highest numbers). I’m continuing to make about $3 per day. You can look up current profitability for any graphics card at whattomine.com. Bottom line is I could have added infinite graphics cards to this setup and the profit would’ve gone up linearly. Anyone that doesn’t think GPUs are high due to ETH mining has no idea what they’re talking about. The analysis from OP seemed ridiculous to me. I didn’t even see LHR mentioned in the article which are GPU manufacturers attempting to make GPUs unprofitable for miners so they can only be used for gaming. (Hint: didn’t work very well).