PSA: Remember cryptocurrency mining? May come back soon.

[bcredeur97]

DISCLAIMER: I don't really know the future. This is my own speculation. Don't use this as investment advice either.


I've been watching the cryptocurrency market a bit more closely the last few months. It honestly looks pretty healthy, this recent run upwards in price seems stronger than usual.

Remember when mining was insane and it drove up the prices of GPU's? I want to say there's a decent chance it will happen again soon. So if you have a shiny new GPU that you've been looking at, and thinking about buying? You may want to consider just pulling the trigger now on it.

Any thoughts on this? If this ends up being true it kinda stinks it'll probably drive up the price of AMD's brand new higher end GPU's at release

[Axeonelite]

Intriguing. My only thought. More cheap GPU's later? mayhaps. 

[Arrogath]

2 minutes ago, bcredeur97 said:

DISCLAIMER: I don't really know the future. This is my own speculation. Don't use this as investment advice either.


I've been watching the cryptocurrency market a bit more closely the last few months. It honestly looks pretty healthy, this recent run upwards in price seems stronger than usual.

Remember when mining was insane and it drove up the prices of GPU's? I want to say there's a decent chance it will happen again soon. So if you have a shiny new GPU that you've been looking at, and thinking about buying? You may want to consider just pulling the trigger now on it.

Any thoughts on this? If this ends up being true it kinda stinks it'll probably drive up the price of AMD's brand new higher end GPU's at release

my counter to this would have to do with the effort required to mine a single coin with GPU horsepower, the mining market seems to have moved to ASIC almost exclusively to overcome the limits of GPU compute.

[TempestCatto]

Didn't it become so bad that resellers were starting to limit purchasing? I thought I remember places like Microcenter forcing you to buy a GPU in a kinda bundle thing so they knew you were actually trying to build a computer and not a mining rig. I hope it doesn't have to come to that again. Honestly, fuck cryptocurrency and anyone thinks it's a good idea. It isn't backed by anything but hype and hope. It has no value imo. A Mexican Peso has more value in the UK that crypto does anywhere.

[Vishera]

As someone who knows the crypto-mining industry - It won't happen,

The difficulty to mine skyrocketed after the GPU mining boom of 2017 and the significant user base that followed it.

Now days GPUs are not powerful enough for mining,You will want an ASIC for mining - That's the best Price/Performance solution for mining in 2020.

 

EDIT:

The increased difficulty was necessary to prevent inflation.

[DrMacintosh]

I already upgraded to an RX 5700, I say let them mine! 

[Roswell]

The colossal waste of energy still annoys me to no end. They estimate that crypto mining accounts for more energy use per year than the entire country of Switzerland or Ireland. All for some digital number that still has no real value outside of the market it's traded in. 

[Goldilock]

47 minutes ago, Vishera said:

As someone who knows the crypto-mining industry - It won't happen,

The difficulty to mine skyrocketed after the GPU mining boom of 2017 and the significant user base that followed it.

Now days GPUs are not powerful enough for mining,You will want an ASIC for mining - That's the best Price/Performance solution for mining in 2020.

 

EDIT:

The increased difficulty was necessary to prevent inflation.

There may be chance new ASIC-proof coin will come up (wasn't it ethereum last time?), hence another GPU shortage.

 

Nevertheless I am still in the camp that crypto is big ponzy scheme until it can replace my OVO account.

[Vishera]

7 minutes ago, Goldilock said:

There may be chance new ASIC-proof coin will come up (wasn't it ethereum last time?), hence another GPU shortage.

 

Nevertheless I am still in the camp that crypto is big ponzy scheme until it can replace my OVO account.

It could happen but it won't have the user base nor the popularity of Bitcoin and Ethereum,

And the adoption rate of new players is low.

Unless they do something revolutionary - i don't see it happening.

[Goldilock]

At this point tech world move on from cyrptocurrency.

 

I don't see any blockchain / crypto seminar happening in my area, now it's all AI (AI this, AI that).

 

So I don't GPU shortage happening anytime soon nor will ever happen again.

[WkdPaul]

28 minutes ago, Goldilock said:

So I don't GPU shortage happening anytime soon nor will ever happen again.

Shortages caused by crypto? I think you're right, but no GPU shortages ever again? That's a strong statement.

[Arrogath]

what would be interesting is a coin that benefits more from cpu threads than gpu horsepower, threadripper would sell out in a heartbeat

[Goldilock]

5 hours ago, wkdpaul said:

Shortages caused by crypto? I think you're right, but no GPU shortages ever again? That's a strong statement.

Strong statement indeed. As far as I remember only crypto caused colossal GPU shortage, that's why I'm saying it.

 

Often times it was just small hiccup in production, nothing to worry about.

 

Do you remember any other GPU shortage than crypto mining boom?

[WkdPaul]

4 hours ago, Goldilock said:

Do you remember any other GPU shortage than crypto mining boom?

No, but we don't know what the future holds, there are rumors that the quarantines due to the coronavirus might cause memory shortages, that affects pretty much every devices.

 

Something like this, or other could happen again and supply could be affected on a longer term, who knows?

[DaQa]

On 2/12/2020 at 9:33 PM, bcredeur97 said:

DISCLAIMER: I don't really know the future. This is my own speculation. Don't use this as investment advice either.


I've been watching the cryptocurrency market a bit more closely the last few months. It honestly looks pretty healthy, this recent run upwards in price seems stronger than usual.

Remember when mining was insane and it drove up the prices of GPU's? I want to say there's a decent chance it will happen again soon. So if you have a shiny new GPU that you've been looking at, and thinking about buying? You may want to consider just pulling the trigger now on it.

Any thoughts on this? If this ends up being true it kinda stinks it'll probably drive up the price of AMD's brand new higher end GPU's at release

Pretty sure crypto mining doesn't use gpus anymore

[WkdPaul]

9 hours ago, DaQa said:

Pretty sure crypto mining doesn't use gpus anymore

Lots of GPU mining still, just not at the scale that happened at the peak of BTC value.

Spoiler

 

Edited February 14, 2020 by wkdpaul

[Beerzerker]

On 2/13/2020 at 8:37 PM, DaQa said:

Pretty sure crypto mining doesn't use gpus anymore

That's the most efficient way to mine so yes - It still does with no end in sight.
Personally I don't care for it nor will ever do any of it.

Honestly I could have started a decade ago if I had wanted to but knew even then it was just a crock of shiite so I didn't and don't regret it one bit.

[kriegalex]

I would agree with OP, but not in the scale of 2018. Radeon VIIs seem to do well, you can find a lot of videos about it. I'm less experienced with nvidia, but I guess they can still mine the same coins even more efficiently with Turing now. You can still mine a lot of coins with GPUs. Ethereum is still around and Cuckatoo31 and Grin/Mimblewimble (I love this name) has made its way to the profitable spot also.

 

Ethereum should hit 2.0 soon(ish) and even though it is going to switch to PoS, there will be an in between phase with PoW (GPU mining) and PoS ("mining without compute power" in short). Ethereum 2.0 could drive the price super high, thus making mining super profitable thus causing a small shortage, but because PoS is not using compute power anymore, the shortage will quickly fade away as PoS takes its place and PoW is phased out.

 

Disclaimer: this is not investment advice.

[WkdPaul]

On 2/24/2020 at 5:04 PM, kriegalex said:

You can still mine a lot of coins with GPUs.

And with RandomX Monero algo, CPU mining did a small comeback!

[Porkey]

On 2/13/2020 at 12:51 AM, Arrogath said:

what would be interesting is a coin that benefits more from cpu threads than gpu horsepower, threadripper would sell out in a heartbeat

Monero benefits WAY more from CPU threads now. After it switched algos back in November, it seems like it's mostly a CPU-based coin now.

On 2/26/2020 at 11:17 AM, wkdpaul said:

And with RandomX Monero algo, CPU mining did a small comeback!

From my poking around, it looks like it wasn't a "small" comeback. Each thread on my 8370 is able to match or exceed the hashrate of my 980 Ti.

[Engineer.AI]

On 2/13/2020 at 9:36 AM, Goldilock said:

At this point tech world move on from cyrptocurrency.

 

I don't see any blockchain / crypto seminar happening in my area, now it's all AI (AI this, AI that).

 

So I don't GPU shortage happening anytime soon nor will ever happen again.

Of all the things that could make a comeback in this entire Cryptocurrency/ Blockchain craze, it is the worst aspect of it (Mining) that makes a comeback/ you care to mention.

I agree with @Goldilock, there is no other way to put it. The world has moved away from CC. If there is a better alternative, then a global version of a less tedious currency is much appreciated.

On 2/13/2020 at 9:03 AM, Vitamanic said:

The colossal waste of energy still annoys me to no end. They estimate that crypto mining accounts for more energy use per year than the entire country of Switzerland or Ireland. All for some digital number that still has no real value outside of the market it's traded in. 

This, of all the things, is the greatest downside of CC and mining in general - And for what exactly? CREDIT?

[WkdPaul]

8 hours ago, Porkey said:

Monero benefits WAY more from CPU threads now. After it switched algos back in November, it seems like it's mostly a CPU-based coin now.

From my poking around, it looks like it wasn't a "small" comeback. Each thread on my 8370 is able to match or exceed the hashrate of my 980 Ti.

Yeah, my 8700 generates more than my 1060 or 290x.

 

 

1 hour ago, Engineer.AI said:

This, of all the things, is the greatest downside of CC and mining in general - And for what exactly? CREDIT?

Personally, I see it as subsidized heating. Being in Canada and having freezing temperatures for half of the year means I spend A LOT on heating. So in my basement office, the heating is set to 15°c and my PC is mining when I don't use it. Ambiant temperature doesn't go below 17°c when the PC is mining. So in the end (for me) it's the same as keeping the heating at around 17-18°c but instead I get BTC out of it, so why not?

 

And no, I'm not mining during summer, because THEN it would be a wast of electricity (even if it's profitable!).

Edited March 3, 2020 by wkdpaul