One of the largest Ethereum blocks was mined today, at a value of a 112 ETH.

[arnavvr]

Summary

On February 22nd, 2020 at 6:15 AM PST, one of the largest blocks was mined by Ethermine, a large mining pool, which bolstered miners' profits at a time when earnings were falling due to difficulty increases and a reduction in the price of ETH from its high of  ~ $2000 earlier this week to a low of ~ $1580 on Monday. 

 

The roughly 112 ETH payout was equivalent to about $200,000 US Dollars, while a normal payout of roughly 4-7 ETH would usually result in a payout of roughly $7125 to $12,469. The high transaction fees, along with the large electricity usage that miners consume, has caused some in both the PC Gaming and Ethereum/DeFi community to express their displeasure at the current PoW (Proof-of-Work) system.

 

All of this comes after the news that Ethereum miners made record profits in January 2020, while Ethereum users and consumers of PC hardware continue to experience exorbitant costs.

 

Quotes

Quote

Ethereum miners earned a record $830 million in January as network activity, fees, and ether's price all surged. Monthly revenue has not reached this level since the previous record from January 2018 near ether's previous all-time high, according to data estimates by CoinDesk.

 

My thoughts

I'm personally conflicted about this. While I am an Ethereum miner, and the extra money today was definitely nice, the future of the Ethereum network is really at stake here with high transaction fees. Many of the really cool DeFi apps make no sense with transaction fees in the $12-$20 range. Climate Change is also an issue here. While I am personally mining on renewables, not everyone is, and as cryptocurrencies go more mainstream, the electricity usage could start to become a real problem. 

 

Sources

The infamous block #11907340

Ethereum Miners Earned Record $830M in January

[COTG]

ETH 2 cant come soon enough. Hopefully EIP 1559 will also get implemented asap and ahead of schedule in april because the selling pressure from miners is fucking insane 

[Moonzy]

Equivalent to finding a diamond ore in Minecraft

[Fnige]

46 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

Equivalent to finding a diamond ore in Minecraft

Id argue its like getting the current best speedrunning seed on a random seed speedrun

[strajk-]

$15-$20 tx fees? lol

I'm a day trader at DEX's and the fee is usually at the 50-250 range, specially on volatile assets where you want to use the fastest tx preset to fight frontrunners.

[Roswell]

7 hours ago, arnavvr said:

Climate Change is also an issue here. While I am personally mining on renewables, not everyone is, and as cryptocurrencies go more mainstream, the electricity usage could start to become a real problem. 

 

Bitcoin mining alone consumes the same amount of energy as the entire nation of Norway (over 5 million people).

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952

 

It's completely out of hand and needs to be addressed. If you factor in all of the other crypto currencies... Jesus Christ. It has to be something like 4 times as much. 

 

As far as fees go... it's kind of ironic that one of the main arguments for crypto used to be avoiding exploitative fees from the financial institutions. Now all the fees for crypto faaaaar outweigh fees that a typical consumer faces with their bank.

[Video Beagle]

I literaly don't understand this article..."one of the largest ethereum blocks was mined today"  ... what does that mean?

[Rym]

It means that one of the largest virtual ethereum blocks was mined today. Mining virtual currency is like mining real world gold, except in a virtual space. You could say they just finished mining a large block of gold they found deep in the virtual mines.

[Moonzy]

2 hours ago, Video Beagle said:

I literaly don't understand this article..."one of the largest ethereum blocks was mined today"  ... what does that mean?

the larger the volume, the larger the block reward is

 

 

ETH have been having some high volumes recently, this article is about the spike on the left

[tikker]

Damn, that's an average transaction fee of 0.24 ETH. Here I am debating whether or no to withdraw to a personal wallet because it's a "mere" 0.06 ETH.

[StDragon]

When we lost power in Texas, Crypto didn't exist. These virtual numbers were useless. Cash is king baby!

[arnavvr]

53 minutes ago, StDragon said:

When we lost power in Texas, Crypto didn't exist. These virtual numbers were useless. Cash is king baby!

Sure....

 

 

[Master Disaster]

20 hours ago, Moonzy said:

Equivalent to finding a diamond ore in Minecraft

Unless your name is Dream.

[StDragon]

43 minutes ago, arnavvr said:

Sure....

 

At least I can afford a wheelbarrow to carry my cash.

 

#Weimar Republic 

[Lurick]

2 hours ago, StDragon said:

When we lost power in Texas, Crypto didn't exist. These virtual numbers were useless. Cash is king baby!

Good luck withdrawing it from a bank without power

[Moonzy]

53 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Good luck withdrawing it from a bank without power

That's called robbery and it's illegal

[arnavvr]

5 hours ago, Lurick said:

Good luck withdrawing it from a bank without power

It's not just withdrawing money; people with gasoline-powered cars thought they were safe when there was no power. Well, gas pumps don't work when there's no power, so....

[Letgomyleghoe]

21 hours ago, Vitamanic said:

 

Bitcoin mining alone consumes the same amount of energy as the entire nation of Norway (over 5 million people).

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952

 

It's completely out of hand and needs to be addressed. If you factor in all of the other crypto currencies... Jesus Christ. It has to be something like 4 times as much. 

 

As far as fees go... it's kind of ironic that one of the main arguments for crypto used to be avoiding exploitative fees from the financial institutions. Now all the fees for crypto faaaaar outweigh fees that a typical consumer faces with their bank.

the entire nation of norway is the population size of a small US state, you should get that in actual numbers instead of comparisins that sound big but really aren't. 

[arnavvr]

1 minute ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

the entire nation of norway is the population size of a small state, you should get that in actual numbers instead of numbers that sound big but really aren't. 

Quote

Cambridge researchers say it consumes around 121.36 terawatt-hours (TWh) a year - and is unlikely to fall unless the value of the currency slumps.

[Jet_ski]

44 minutes ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

the entire nation of norway is the population size of a small US state, you should get that in actual numbers instead of comparisins that sound big but really aren't. 

I saw an article that says Bitcoin alone is now responsible for 0.5% of global electricity usage.

[Roswell]

1 hour ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

the entire nation of norway is the population size of a small US state, you should get that in actual numbers instead of comparisins that sound big but really aren't. 

What?

 

If you think the energy consumption of over 5 million people “really isn’t big”, that’s unfortunate. That’s also just Bitcoin... what’s the consumption equivalent for all of them combined? Is the emission footprint for 15 million people not big enough to notice too? 
 

It’s senseless pollution in a time when we need to do everything we can to reverse course.

 

A small state also isn’t 5 million people, lol. I guess you don’t live here. 28 out of the 50 states are under 5 million in population.

 

6 hours ago, Moonzy said:

That's called robbery and it's illegal

Power outages aren’t robbery.

[arnavvr]

4 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

What?

 

If you don’t think the energy consumption of over 5 million people “really isn’t big”, that’s unfortunate. That’s also just Bitcoin... what’s the consumption equivalent for all of them combined? Is the emission footprint for 15 million people not big enough to notice too? 
 

It’s senseless pollution in a time when we need to do everything we can to reverse course.

 

A small state also isn’t 5 million people, lol. I guess you don’t live here. 28 out of the 50 states are under 5 million in population.

I live in California. Any state under 20 million is small.  

[Spindel]

On 2/23/2021 at 1:14 AM, arnavvr said:

*snip*...Climate Change is also an issue here. While I am personally mining on renewables, not everyone is, and as cryptocurrencies go more mainstream, the electricity usage could start to become a real problem. 

 

So you say you care about CC but you still WASTE resources that could be used to perform real work on crypto currency?

 

Yeah just drop the justifications for your hypocrisy and admit that you don't care.

[Video Beagle]

On 2/23/2021 at 2:33 AM, Rym said:

It means that one of the largest virtual ethereum blocks was mined today. Mining virtual currency is like mining real world gold, except in a virtual space. You could say they just finished mining a large block of gold they found deep in the virtual mines.

See, I don't understand this. Who made the virtual mines? Someone programed it and put the stuff there...how is it found?  Real mines are a limited resource.  Why can't I go '@create mine_etherum name="My Mine"'

and be rich?

[Moonzy]

43 minutes ago, Video Beagle said:

Who made the virtual mines?

people, or aliens -shrug-

doesnt matter imo

 

43 minutes ago, Video Beagle said:

Someone programed it and put the stuff there...how is it found?

a block is simply a transaction, there's block reward (coins created when it's solved, or 'mined', this is finite and will be 0 one day)

but there's also transaction fee that people pay when they're transferring their coin, and higher volume = higher fee

 

43 minutes ago, Video Beagle said:

Why can't I go '@create mine_etherum name="My Mine"'

and be rich?

you can, you just need mass adoption of it

some coins are like that

 

4 hours ago, Vitamanic said:

If you think the energy consumption of over 5 million people “really isn’t big”, that’s unfortunate. That’s also just Bitcoin... what’s the consumption equivalent for all of them combined? Is the emission footprint for 15 million people not big enough to notice too?

here's a snippet from a thread that i never ended up posting because -shrug-

 

On 1/21/2021 at 5:05 PM, Moonzy said:

Quote

Mining is a waste of energy, we could do more with that energy.

 

As of writing, a 3060Ti monthly income is 233.16USD at 60.5MH/s on ETH (updated for 24/02/2021)

 

at 120W each, that's 86.4kWh per month ($8.64 in electricity fee if it's $0.1 per kWh, just in case you're wondering)

 

a gallon of petrol is equivalent to 33.7kWh

so a month, a 3060ti is consuming about 2.6 gallon of petrol equivalent of energy, while generating 233 USD a month

what can you do with 2.6 gallon (9.8 Liter) of petrol?

 

let's take taxi, for example

Avg car = 25 miles per gallon, so that's about 70 miles for 2.6 gallons

NY City taxi fare: $2.5 + $0.5/mile

Avg trip (singapore, i cant find any for NYC) is 9.5km in 2017, which is 6 miles

so the Taxi makes (70/6)(2.5) + 70(0.5) = $64 with the same amount of fuel, about a quarter of what a 3060ti is getting

 

I don't really care about the passenger being able to get to one location to other, just like how you probably don't care about how crypto gets from one wallet to another.

Income is what I care about (not to mention the click and forget aspect of mining, you dont have to deal with it when it's running)

 

even if you could find better use of the energy, i don't think it's fair to singularly point out that mining is a waste of energy

because "waste" is subjective, different people appreciates different things.

 

i enjoy mining because i like tinkering with hardware, and it generates income

joe likes to run repeated benchmark and pouring LN2 (which takes ALOT of energy to make) to get imaginary scores for fun

abby also enjoys playing candy crush, you may not enjoy it but she thinks it's fun and it's worth it.

 

"but miners use SO MUCH MORE!!!"

more doesn't make you bad, less doesnt make you good.

different task require different tools.

just because melting metals to make cars uses a lot of energy, doesn't mean they should stop.

 

"banks handle transaction at much lower energy cost"

crypto is very different from banks, you trust your bank to keep track on your account and handle transactions accordingly, but THEY control it

but crypto (from my understanding) requires validation from many PC to ensure no fake transaction goes through, and that takes energy.

but it's not very efficient (in term of energy per transaction) because as more and more people join the network, more and more energy is needed to solve the same question.

but it makes it more secure(?) correct me if I'm wrong

 

on a more personal note, i actually learnt a lot about energy usage and efficiency while researching mining stuffs

i actually changed a lot of my habits to save electricity and i am more conscious about electrical appliances running now

i used to run all my computers 24/7, but now i put them in sleep mode when not using etc etc, it saves quite a lot of energy

did you know that your gpu and cpu can run at much lower power and achieve the same performance in games as stock settings? i sure didnt

fiddling with undervolting is more satisfying than overvolting and overclocking where things run hot and loud for a wee bit more speed.

 

Quote

Global Warming

yes, mining is contributing to the global warming indeed

about as much as many other industries, but that doesn't make mining any less bad

 

asking people to stop earning money because of global warming is kind of irrational, but that's my opinion.

the transportation industry dont just shut down because they're 28% of the greenhouse gas emissions.

 

you may call it selfish, and i wouldn't disagree