Nvidia Sold $175 Million Worth of GeForce RTX 30 GPUs To Crypto Miners

[Dracarris]

6 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

you want to argue about scale but that's how things are irl?

how many roller coasters vs how many christmas lights? pretty sure Christmas lights power consumption is higher than roller coasters

It is an ANALOGY for effs sake!! Projecting it back to reality: Equal amounts of gamers and miners, one of them wasting at least 10x as much energy as the other. This cannot be shown from studio to gamer in a forum post, obviously. You may either stick to your bubble world and lame "not true until proven on paper"-excuse where mining is not worse than gaming or apply some common sense and rethink your attitude.

[Colonel_Gerdauf]

I am going to ignore everything else you said, as it is too unbelievably out of touch with the conversation and reality to bother responding to.

But this I will need to highlight:

9 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

so far i did not receive any citations, while i did my math just for him because he asked so many times for it

he said im making claims i couldnt back, and i backed it up

 

What exactly have you brought for citations? I have been looking at your post history in this thread, and you have not delivered anything of merit.

 

So... again, stop bullshitting everyone and talk to us straight, please.

[Moonzy]

4 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Because it is.

yea im not arguing that mining doesnt produce greenhouse gasses, but instead why energy shouldnt be used for mining, but it's fine for other forms of... i guess, entertainment?

 

feels like net neutrality argument all over, if im being honest.

 

2 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

This cannot be shown from studio to gamer in a forum post, obviously.

then dont make a claim you cant prove, that's what you said to me few pages ago...?

I'm not having an attitude but I simply wish for equality, both in term of energy use and the way you want facts to be presented.

 

4 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

apply some common sense

so far nothing i said is out of line, perhaps it's perspective

 

again, it's fine to agree to disagree, no one's mind will be changed here after 17 pages of discussion

[Colonel_Gerdauf]

2 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

again, it's fine to agree to disagree, no one's mind will be changed here after 17 pages of discussion

Okay, fine, but my previous statement stands:

Remember, calling facts opinions does not ever make the facts opinions, no matter what nonsense you pull.

[Dracarris]

Just now, Moonzy said:

then dont make a claim you cant prove, that's what you said to me few pages ago...?

I'm not having an attitude but I simply wish for equality, both in term of energy use and the way you want facts to be presented.

I showed you with hard facts that even under very optimistic assumptions (350W single-GPU mining rig, high overall energy share of gaming PC), mining uses between 10x-15x more energy than gaming. No gaming studio or steam server will change that factor so signifcantly that the two will even become comparable. That is common sense and btw one of the most important engineering skills. Make an educated estimation, and if it shows several x of difference while even being optimistic for one side, you don't have to continue following that path and analyze all the details with tons of effort.

[Kisai]

3 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

yea im not arguing that mining doesnt produce greenhouse gasses, but instead why energy shouldnt be used for mining, but it's fine for other forms of... i guess, entertainment?

 

 

In a zero-sum game, no energy would be consumed for luxuries or entertainment. If energy isn't being productive, it's wasted, thus generation sources would be dialed down. Reality doesn't work that way.

 

The thing that makes mining worse than pretty much everything is that it produces nothing tangible. Not even the heat generated from the computers can be recovered in a usable way. The heat from the actual thermal generation source is more efficient than converting it to electricity in the first place. This is the big argument against going full-electric for all natural gas appliances, as burning the gas generates heat, and requires no conversion. The same issue is seen with wireless charging, it's more efficient to not use the wireless charging, and if everything moved towards this, we would start needing more generation capacity as well. 

 

 

[Moonzy]

5 minutes ago, Kisai said:

The thing that makes mining worse than pretty much everything is that it produces nothing tangible.

hmm... i wonder how you would define "nothing tangible"

bitcoin may be an imaginary number, but it does have value in the market and people make and lose millions on it

some people rely on it for a living

it's like stock market, unless my understanding of it is incorrect

 

14 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

I showed you with hard facts that even under very optimistic assumptions (350W single-GPU mining rig, high overall energy share of gaming PC), mining uses between 10x-15x more energy than gaming. No gaming studio or steam server will change that factor so signifcantly that the two will even become comparable. That is common sense and btw one of the most important engineering skills. Make an educated estimation, and if it shows several x of difference while even being optimistic for one side, you don't have to continue following that path and analyze all the details with tons of effort.

again, i dont disagree that mining consumes electric, but the preferential treatment of "miners shouldnt get gpu and shouldnt use electricity" kind of baffles me

a bigger crime doesnt excuse a smaller crime from being a crime, at least that's what i think

 

last thing i want is for electricity companies to charge me differently for each appliances i use

[Blade of Grass]

9 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

bitcoin may be an imaginary number, but it does have value in the market and people make and lose millions on it

some people rely on it for a living

it's like stock market, unless my understanding of it is incorrect

It's not really at all like the stock market, because everything on the stock market represents legal claim to tangible things (ignoring exotics/derivative products, which still derive their value from a real thing, like a stock or bond, etc). Like if I buy a share of a company, I legit own some % of the actual company. If I buy a bond, then they have the obligation of paying me back and until then I have the right to lay claim to their assets if they dont.

 

Bitcoin on the other hand represents, errr, a bitcoin? Which is supposedly a currency? But basically no one accepts it as payment for anything because it's far too volatile and no one wants to take the "currency" exposure risk of accepting it. Maybe you could argue bitcoin is a store of value, like a precision metal, but precious metals still have some tangible use, which can give them some reason to increase in value since they're 'scarce'. 

[MageTank]

51 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

 

This is all true, but you always have to consider the effort you put in and the amount of energy saved. Stopping mining is absolutely trivial, requires zero effort and the potentials for saving energy are absolutely enormous as I have shown in a qunatitative way here.

 

Since everyone brings up the "gaming wastes also energy"-argument again and again, let me re-stress this: Lets assume my gaming rig causes 10% of the total energy used in our household, which is most probably a gross overestimation, that equates to 16.1kWh per month. The entry-level mining rig from @Moonzy consumes around 280kWh per month. That results in mining using more than 17x the energy compared to gaming, which again gives many people the benefits of stress relief and recreation. Sure gaming is a luxury commodity, just as mining is. And when it comes to the question which one we should cut, I think the answer is quite clear. Start cutting where you can safe the most with the smallest effort, I think this guideline is quite a no-brainer.

 

Sure both mining and gaming require servers and online infrastructure and lets say gaming requires more, reducing the gap to 10x-15x. Still quite a clear picture where we could safe most.

The same can still be said of gaming. It takes zero effort to quit gaming and to save the precious metals used on GPU's, the energy consumed by your system and the time that could be better spent saving the planet instead of staring at moving pixels. You are essentially fine with everything you dislike about mining when it's attributed to gaming, just because it's on a smaller scale. This is the hypocrisy that annoys me every time this debate comes up on this forum. There seems to be this constant witch hunt for miners whenever there is a GPU shortage. Whenever someone points out that they paid for their GPU's and it's a hobby, just like gaming, gamers mount up on their high horses and start preaching environmental impact and electricity costs as if they themselves are exempt from this line of accusation. Whenever someone calls out gamers on their hypocrisy in these debates, they are met with the classic "but they are worse than we are, so that makes us okay" nonsense.

 

Everyone has their way of justifying their actions in their minds. We tell ourselves that what we are doing is the lesser of the two evils and that gives us the moral obligation to proceed in spite of it still being wrong in the end. If that helps you feel morally superior at the end of the day, by all means, do what you have to do. I only ask that you put an end to your incessant need to tell others how to live their lives. We've covered that it makes no sense to you, that you do not understand the motivation behind it, and that you find it utterly pointless and foolish to pursue mining. If you've anything left to share on the subject, I am happy to hear what you have to say.

46 minutes ago, Colonel_Gerdauf said:

I do not like this line of thinking at all.

 

There are no "opinions" about this, so get off your god damn high horse and look at the actual matters for just a minute.

 

This idea of mining for the profits falls into the exact same line of thinking that many scalpers have. "hey we bought it, so it is fair. Nobody has a right to complain about how much we choose to sell the cards for hurr durr capitalism". This I will absolutely not ever entertain, and this kind of ultra-linear thinking is what got us into so many nightmares in the tech world alone.

Doing it for the science? Redundant as it is the world's least efficient way to learn about discreet mathematics.
Doing it to "kill fiat"? Lmao, good luck with that. That is the same nonsense preached by the miners back in 2013, and looking at the real world, zero progress has been made.

Doing it for fun? both of the previous objections stand here.

 

 

Remember, calling facts opinions does not ever make the facts opinions, no matter what nonsense you pull.

It's been quite some time since I've seen you on this forum, though that's likely due to my own inactivity. Any who, I'll chime in while I am on this subject.

 

I disagree with the notion that there are no opinions in the context of this conversation. Much of it is very opinionated and rooted in subjective understanding (and potentially misunderstanding, depending on whose perspective you have) of the overall situation. If you are making the claim that mining is bad due to the impact it has on the environment, then that (based on what I can find on Google) would be a factual claim. That, I believe we can all agree on (miners included, assuming they understand where power comes from). Claiming that miners are bad because they are unfairly taking all of the GPU's is not a fact, that is an opinion (I am not claiming you've ever said this, only saying this as a point of reference). Fair and unfair can be extremely subjective. What sounds fair to me, might not be fair to you. I've seen your posts on this forum, I don't believe I need to explain this any further to a man of your intellect.

 

Seeing your responses in this thread, I'd like to hear directly from you on how you feel about the following.

 

1. Do you see miners as a normal GPU consumer like you would a gamer? If not, why?
2. Does your problem with miners stem from GPU availability, environmental impact, arrogance/annoyance of miners, or a combination of the 3?
3. If gaming had as much of an environmental impact as GPU mining, would you feel the same about gaming as you do about mining?

 

The reason I ask is because I genuinely want to know where this disdain for mining comes from. If it comes from people that are jaded over not getting a GPU, I simply can't feel sympathetic to their causes. I myself wouldn't mind a new GPU, but I am not owed a new GPU by any means. If it stems from people that genuinely care about the environment, I'd expect these people to have the exact same attitude towards gamers (though I suppose on a smaller scale, to match the smaller scale gaming has on an environmental impact). This lesser evil nonsense makes no sense to me. I do not believe in devoting oneself half-way to a cause, so I expect people in that camp to follow through against all parties. Lastly, if your issue is with the arrogance of miners, or the annoying miners that mock people for wasting their GPU's by not doing anything with them, then I'll gladly join you in giving those people a swift kick in the teeth. I belong to the "Mind your own business" camp, there are a very few things in this world that I despise more than people that feel the need to tell others how they need to be living their lives.

 

Though given what I've said in some of my previous posts in this very thread, that might make me a little hypocritical myself, lol. 

[Kisai]

1 minute ago, Moonzy said:

hmm... i wonder how you would define "nothing tangible"

When you mine gold, you have gold, and gold has industrial uses, not just wearing it as a sign of wealth. In fact a lot of gold jewelry is seen as investments and rarely even worn. When you mine Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc there is nothing tangible. If the internet got wiped out, there is nothing. If you lose the wallet password, there is nothing. If your house burns down from mining, and you lose the wallet entirely, you have nothing.

 

1 minute ago, Moonzy said:

 

last thing i want is for electricity companies to charge me differently for each appliances i use

Oh they definitely do that already. 

a) Service upgrades (eg 100A to 200A service)

b) Stepped energy billing/time of day billing

c) Electric vehicle meters in parking garages in Multi-family housing.

d) Tesla Superchargers, EV destination chargers.

 

 

If energy companies required separate meters for "industrial" activity on the same premises, you'd be paying different rates for electricity. One of the things that was happening during the beginning of bitcoin, was that energy companies would report to law enforcement suspected grow-ops (before legalization of marijuana) due to residential housing consuming farming-levels of energy. The utilities absolutely know who is doing this, and short of a regulation being made that cryptocoin mining can not be done in residential housing, the utilities have no reason to do anything about it.  

 

It does actually remind me of some of the earlier "unlimited internet" ads when p2p apps were growing, as these ISP's, caught in a lie, had to start backpeddling and enforcing data caps to curb the wastage of bandwidth of residential users, especially on cable networks which were designed only for high speed downloads, not uploads. 

 

But in regards to the Geforce cards. Again, these are gaming cards, marketed as gaming cards. While someone buying them for mining can't be prevented just like scalping can't be effectively prevented. If there were dedicated mining cards or ASIC's, people have less to get upset because they can't use them anyway. The one or two people who buy a GPU to game, and then have it mine or do folding while they sleep is not the intended use of a GPU, but if your electricity is cheap enough, maybe you don't care. But if suddenly everyone does it, then than it's a much larger problem. What if your ISP gets the same idea and starts including a mining ASIC in their cable modems and won't let you use any other device? What if your IoT devices all come with bitcoin asic's as well? you're now paying for all these devices to generate bitcoin that you do not benefit from.

 

And don't say "won't happen", because Amazon has shown it's willing to do things to break your ToS with your ISP already. 

 

 

 

[Moonzy]

1 minute ago, Kisai said:

If the internet got wiped out, there is nothing.

i think the likelihood of this happening is slim

and we'll have bigger worries than bitcoin and energy consumption at that point

 

2 minutes ago, Kisai said:

If you lose the wallet password, there is nothing. If your house burns down from mining, and you lose the wallet entirely, you have nothing.

hmm... it's still a possession, and possessions, whether physical or digital, can be lost one way or the other

 

5 minutes ago, Kisai said:

What if your ISP gets the same idea and starts including a mining ASIC in their cable modems and won't let you use any other device? What if your IoT devices all come with bitcoin asic's as well? you're now paying for all these devices to generate bitcoin that you do not benefit from.

that'd be like browser ads that mined crypto on visitors.

i would think this would be against the law, unless it's known by all parties? IANAL

and if there are no other options, then it really is checkmate.

 

6 minutes ago, Kisai said:

And don't say "won't happen", because Amazon has shown it's willing to do things to break your ToS with your ISP already

yea i saw that, it's pretty BS

wonder how they got away with it

[Blademaster91]

20 minutes ago, MageTank said:

 

Seeing your responses in this thread, I'd like to hear directly from you on how you feel about the following.

 

1. Do you see miners as a normal GPU consumer like you would a gamer? If not, why?
2. Does your problem with miners stem from GPU availability, environmental impact, arrogance/annoyance of miners, or a combination of the 3?
3. If gaming had as much of an environmental impact as GPU mining, would you feel the same about gaming as you do about mining?

Sorry for quoting you but I'd llke to give my 2 cents on this because I think thats a very good thing to ask in this thread.

1. If a miner has a few GPUs as a hobby, I suppose they would be a normal GPU consumer because a gamer could be buying more than a single GPU,but this thread is about miners contacting Nvidia directly and buying mass quantities of GPUs, I wouldn't consider anyone doing that as a consumer because a normal consumer cannot do that.

2. Combination of the 3, IMO.

3. Sure, but most gamers are buying 1 or 2 GPU's and using them for years, miners buy up every GPU they can at every launch, using them and putting it on the used market which can affect the rest of GPU market, thats happened before.

20 minutes ago, MageTank said:

The reason I ask is because I genuinely want to know where this disdain for mining comes from. If it comes from people that are jaded over not getting a GPU, I simply can't feel sympathetic to their causes. I myself wouldn't mind a new GPU, but I am not owed a new GPU by any means. If it stems from people that genuinely care about the environment, I'd expect these people to have the exact same attitude towards gamers (though I suppose on a smaller scale, to match the smaller scale gaming has on an environmental impact). This lesser evil nonsense makes no sense to me. I do not believe in devoting oneself half-way to a cause, so I expect people in that camp to follow through against all parties. Lastly, if your issue is with the arrogance of miners, or the annoying miners that mock people for wasting their GPU's by not doing anything with them, then I'll gladly join you in giving those people a swift kick in the teeth. I belong to the "Mind your own business" camp, there are a very few things in this world that I despise more than people that feel the need to tell others how they need to be living their lives.

 

Though given what I've said in some of my previous posts in this very thread, that might make me a little hypocritical myself, lol. 

My issue with this are those buying up GPUs to the point it affects supply for everyone else, and the arrogance of miners claiming gamers are entitled idiots for wanting a single GPU they won't use to make money, instead using what the hardware was marketed towards. I agree with you though and I don't care what someone does with their GPU, its just annoying when people put out opinions as fact and claim anyone is entitled for wanting to enjoy their hobby.

I can really understand gamers being frustrated here, being isolated is bad enough, and some waited and saved up to upgrade to play the newest games, now they can't because miners bought up GPUs directly while a normal consumer has to sign up for pre-orders or use a bot to even have a chance at finding a GPU.

[Dracarris]

23 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

again, i dont disagree that mining consumes electric, but the preferential treatment of "miners shouldnt get gpu and shouldnt use electricity" kind of baffles me

a bigger crime doesnt excuse a smaller crime from being a crime, at least that's what i think

I never asked for any preferential treatment. Lets just agree to the following deal: You and me both can buy one GPU and get 20kWh per month of electricity for non-essential use, lets say to waste on entertainment. I will use them for gaming and you can use the 20kWh for mining. We both get exactly the same. Deal? No problem in the both of us using resources, the important aspect is that we both use the same amount of resources.

27 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

last thing i want is for electricity companies to charge me differently for each appliances i use

You have it in your own hands. If more and more people will start pulling an x-fold amount of the energy typical for a household of a given size from the grid every month, companies will sooner or later have to apply a step profile for the kW/h price. With a very harsh step height.

 

19 minutes ago, MageTank said:

The same can still be said of gaming. It takes zero effort to quit gaming and to save the precious metals used on GPU's, the energy consumed by your system and the time that could be better spent saving the planet instead of staring at moving pixels. You are essentially fine with everything you dislike about mining when it's attributed to gaming, just because it's on a smaller scale. This is the hypocrisy that annoys me every time this debate comes up on this forum.

Is this really so hard to understand? It takes the same resources to build a GPU, no matter for what you use it. Well then there is the fact that miners usually use much more GPUs and replace them sooner. But lets put this aside for a moment. This leaves the fact that miners use a multifold of energy than what the typical gamer uses. Your line of argumentation is absolutely flawed, there is no hypocrisy. If I use 15x the energy than what you use, what I do is objectively worse. Period. There is no such thing as "but you also waste energy". Yes, but at a completely different scale. I gave a quantitative example and the gap between gaming and mining in energy use is just insane. There is no discussing this away, this is no personal opinion, this is no hypocrisy, these are objective facts. Period.

[Slottr]

-Locked-

This thread has more than run its course.