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Aren’t they immediately going to start mining other PoW coins with those GPUs?
by shrimpx 4y ago
Aren’t they immediately going to start mining other PoW coins with those GPUs?
- dybber 4y agoMore/bigger miners ==> higher competition ==> miners will require higher transaction fee's to finance their operation? Or do I misunderstand it?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- giarc 4y agoI saw that argument on twitter when talking about the energy reduction for ETH mining. Someone commented that it won't change because they will just focus their GPUs on some other coin.
- apeace 4y agoTFA is pointing out that other GPU-based POW chains have become unprofitable. Partly because of the massive influx of GPUs increasing the difficulty of those chains, and partly because those coins are just not worth as much as ETH. If that's true, then lots of miners are going to be shutting down their GPUs and selling them.
- latchkey 4y agoPower companies are incentivized to sell power. They will just find other buyers.
- elil17 4y agoPerhaps you are right about power companies wanting to sell more power (although it seems like that is not the case for the marginal kWh given all that power companies do to incentive energy efficiency for their customers). But even so, at least that power would go to something useful (keeping buildings comfortable, purifying water, who knows what) rather than being burned in the crypto-pit.
- latchkey 4y agoI'm getting downvoted on my original comment, sigh HN. > Perhaps you are right about power companies wanting to sell more power (although it seems like that is not the case for the marginal kWh given all that power companies do to incentive energy efficiency for their customers). It is literally called a power company. They offer special rates for large customers. That alone creates a marketplace. > But even so, at least that power would go to something useful (keeping buildings comfortable, purifying water, who knows what) rather than being burned in the crypto-pit. Did you have a choice in where that power went to begin with? No. "No one has the moral authority to tell you what is a good or bad use of energy (ex: watching the Kardashians)" -- https://twitter.com/danheld/status/1479135584685854729?lang=en https://twitter.com/danheld/status/1479135584685854729?lang=...
- simondotau 4y agoThe parent to your post never asserted “moral authority” around how power is used, only that they think this shift is a good thing in their view.
- latchkey 4y ago> at least that power would go to something useful I consider that a moral opinion.
- simondotau 4y agoUltimately it wasn’t the grandparent that asserted that proof-of-work Etherium mining wasn’t useful, it was the Etherium blockchain community themselves — which is why they have stopped doing it. It’s not a “moral opinion” to accept someone else’s assessment of the utility of their own actions. Is it a “moral opinion” to state a preference that crude oil is more useful when refined and injected into an ICE vehicle than if it’s burned on site in an oil well fire?
- latchkey 4y ago
- simondotau 4y agoThe only way for them to find other buyers is to lower prices, which benefits everyone.
- latchkey 4y agoI don't think that's the only way. There are other factors that go into choosing a power source. For example, they could offer cleaner power or the quantity of power available can also be factors.
- kortilla 4y agoCopper companies are incentivized to sell as well, but they don’t get to pick the price. Once the price falls enough some copper mines go out of business. The same thing happens with power companies and we get a net reduction in generation.
- LazyMans 4y agoNot really. https://whattomine.com/gpus https://whattomine.com/gpus
- Volundr 4y agoOuch, looks like for most cards even if energy was free a miner would be looking at ~1000 days to break even. Hopefully this really does more or less end GPU mining.
- cesaref 4y agoThose numbers are based on $0.1/kwh electricity costs. Here in the UK the cost is around $0.4/kwh, so I don't believe any of those cards would generate any sort of profit. Basically the electricity cost is the main driver, and you'd need to check what your local cost is to evaluate this. Of course if you are running from home generated power (e.g solar) then the equation changes, but so does the capital cost.
- WalterBright 4y agoIf home power generation was cheaper (considering all costs) than grid generation, everybody would have a home setup.
- onionisafruit 4y agoIf you have excess capacity and no way to sell it to a grid, then it might make sense to do some mining, but then you are really just recouping some of what you over spent on solar panels.
- _0w8t 4y agoIn winter if one uses resistive electrical heating and where heat pumps are not allowed like in some apartment blocks mining can be free as the consumed electricity just heats the home.
- 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y agoMining is only profitable when the block reward and transaction fees are worth more than the costs of mining (electricity, capital costs). ETH was the only coin big enough to support all those GPU mining rigs. With ETH gone, there are too many miners and not enough valuable stuff to mine.
- adriand 4y agoI'm sure this is a stupid question, but I'm going to go for it anyway: isn't Bitcoin also proof-of-work? Why isn't that where ETH miners are going?
- ur-whale 4y ago> Why isn't that where ETH miners are going? Mining BTC on a GPU isn't profitable. You need a dedicated ASIC chip that is far more efficient at the task than a GPU if you want to hope turning a profit mining Bitcoin. Something like this: https://www.bitmain.com/ https://www.bitmain.com/
- duskwuff 4y agoBitcoin mining all switched over to custom ASICs long ago, and is barely profitable even on that hardware. The GPUs that were used for Ethereum mining can't compete.
- wongarsu 4y agoFor some more background: bitcoin's POW is basically just sha256, which was trivial to port first to GPUs and then to custom hardware. That makes mining a bigger up-front investment and thus more centralized, which is why almost all later coins chose POWs that aren't easy to speed up with ASICs
- cedricd 4y agoI'm fairly sure that Bitcoin mining just isn't as profitable to mine with a GPU -- it's more cost-effective to use an ASIC designed for that purpose.
- 4y ago
- karaterobot 4y agoThe article gives an answer to this. > "The only coins showing profit have no market cap or liquidity. The profit is not real." That is, the remaining PoW derived coins are not as profitable for miners, presumably not enough to cover their margins.
- Retric 4y agoPresumably those other coins are close to an equilibrium point where more people mining them would be unprofitable. Aka if the total block rewards from other coins are 1 million dollars per month, there is no way spending 2 million per month on electricity is a good idea.