China’s Inner Mongolia Declares War on Crypto Mining

[LAwLz]

48 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

Yes, but back then higher end, higher power consumption cards and less efficient power supplies were more popular due to their price, now with the increase of GPU pricing they are less popular and PC's that are far more power efficient became more popular. There's a clear difference in power consumption in a system with a 1060/rx 480 compared to older similar PC with similar class card, 660/760/960. And if you look at the steam hardware survey the most commonly used GPU's by gamers are lower power ones, like the 1060, 2060, 1650, 1050 and so on and that's about 35 percent or so of the entire steam hardware survey at least. Assuming that the average pc consumes just as much power in 2020 as it did in 2012 is not a fair assumption to make.

Power consumption hasn't gone down. It has stayed relatively the same, or gone up across the board.

 

 

GTX 660 Ti - ~140W

GTX 760 Ti - ~160W

GTX 960 - ~125W

GTX 1060 Ti - 125W

RTX 2060 - ~170W

RTX 3060 Ti - ~200W

 

If anything, power consumption has gone up in the last couple of generations. 

 

Xbox 360 - ~100W (depending on model)

Xbox Series X - ~180W

 

 

Also, look at Intel's latest processors, or even AMD. Far more power hungry that most CPUs were 8 years ago.

[Rym]

Ah, good news. So it begins.

 

Then again, what surprise could there possibly be when mining consumes as much power as one or two whole countries.

[Craftyawesome]

17 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Do we actually know how big of an impact miners have on the shortages?

I think a lot of people are quick to blame miners for shortages, but from what I can tell we don't know how much of the blame are on miners vs just the pandemic (both increase in demand as well as reduced manufacturing capacity).

Supposedly 100 to 300 million in nvidia Q4 revenue was crypto related.

https://www.coindesk.com/nvidia-ethereum-mining-quarterly-revenue-earnings

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-q4-earnings-100-300-million-dollars-cryptocurrency-mining

 

This is 2%-6% of total revenue, or 4%-12% of gaming revenue.

Although, Nvidia's CFO says they lack “the ability to accurately track or quantify” how the cards are used, so take it with a grain of salt.

[Moonzy]

38 minutes ago, Rym said:

Ah, good news. So it begins.

 

Then again, what surprise could there possibly be when mining consumes as much power as one or two whole countries.

i think the on-going discussion right now is about gaming consuming as much, if not more power than mining now

so... i guess mining isn't the only thing on the chopping block if that's the reason

[AndreiArgeanu]

20 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Power consumption hasn't gone down. It has stayed relatively the same, or gone up across the board.

 

 

GTX 660 Ti - ~140W

GTX 760 Ti - ~160W

GTX 960 - ~125W

GTX 1060 Ti - 125W

RTX 2060 - ~170W

RTX 3060 Ti - ~200W

1st of all, there's no such thing as a consumer 760 ti, only OEM, and that's pretty uncommon, 1060ti doesn't exist either, and the number you've got are lower than what nvidia presents. The 760 is 170W, 660 ti is 150W, 960 and 1060 are 120W, 2060 is 160W. And my point still stands, back in 2012 higher end graphics cards were more popular since they were more reasonably priced and more people bought them as a result. And still there is a large majority of people that use 1050/ti, 1650/1660 card and so on which use somewhere between 75W-120W.

25 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Also, look at Intel's latest processors, or even AMD. Far more power hungry that most CPUs were 8 years ago.

Most people, as in 42% according to the steam hardware survey are using 4 core cpu's followed by 6 core cpu's at 28%, 4 and 6 cores cpu's are far more efficient than they were in 2012. Also 8 year ago you've got cpu's like the i7 950,  which has a TDP of 130W, or the i5 2400 with 95W TDP, while a 10400F has a 65W tdp in comparison while having more cores and hyperthreading.

[Moonzy]

30 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

1st of all, there's no such thing as a consumer 760 ti, only OEM, and that's pretty uncommon, 1060ti doesn't exist either, and the number you've got are lower than what nvidia presents. The 760 is 170W, 660 ti is 150W, 960 and 1060 are 120W, 2060 is 160W. And my point still stands, back in 2012 higher end graphics cards were more popular since they were more reasonably priced and more people bought them as a result. And still there is a large majority of people that use 1050/ti, 1650/1660 card and so on which use somewhere between 75W-120W.

Most people, as in 42% according to the steam hardware survey are using 4 core cpu's followed by 6 core cpu's at 28%, 4 and 6 cores cpu's are far more efficient than they were in 2012. Also 8 year ago you've got cpu's like the i7 950,  which has a TDP of 130W, or the i5 2400 with 95W TDP, while a 10400F has a 65W tdp in comparison while having more cores and hyperthreading.

but how about the growth of the gaming industry? particularly during the lockdown

does it not more than cover any of the efficiencies?

 

but I don't think it matters, it's basically not the "order of magnitude worse than gaming" that some people say around here

it's more like... maybe half at best, which is still no small amount, still equal to some country's power consumption

[Jet_ski]

Let’s look at the Cambridge Bitcoin ONLY power consumption index. Again this is only for Bitcoin and not etherium or other cryptos.

 

https://cbeci.org

First, notice the growth rate in power consumption. In a span of 5 years, power consumption goes from 3 to 130 TWh. That’s an annualized growth rate of 120%. Every year it more than doubles the power consumption.

 

Second, look at the upper bound of their estimate: it’s 450 TWh per year. Even though they currently estimate 130 TWh per annum, under certain conditions it could be much worse.

 

It’s impossible to debate some people as they respond with personal attacks instead of presenting evidence to make their point. It’s reminiscent of Exxon and BP promoting misinformation about climate change.

[WkdPaul]

35 minutes ago, Jet_ski said:

It’s impossible to debate some people as they respond with personal attacks instead of presenting evidence to make their point. It’s reminiscent of Exxon and BP promoting misinformation about climate change.

???

 

None of this happened in this thread. Also, nobody here debated those numbers, but argued against the "it's useless" argument, or they're saying that gamers are also using a lot of electricity for what many would argue is useless (yes, there are people out there that will happily argue that gaming is a waste of time and is the reason for many problem in society, I don't agree with them, just like I don't agree that crypto currencies are useless).

Edited March 4, 2021 by wkdpaul

[TheReal1980]

Or you could just buy Cardano and stop mining.

[suicidalfranco]

6 hours ago, williamcll said:

I do wonder what happens to all those graphic cards though.

first they'd have to be graphics card

[MageTank]

3 hours ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

1st of all, there's no such thing as a consumer 760 ti, only OEM, and that's pretty uncommon, 1060ti doesn't exist either, and the number you've got are lower than what nvidia presents. The 760 is 170W, 660 ti is 150W, 960 and 1060 are 120W, 2060 is 160W. And my point still stands, back in 2012 higher end graphics cards were more popular since they were more reasonably priced and more people bought them as a result. And still there is a large majority of people that use 1050/ti, 1650/1660 card and so on which use somewhere between 75W-120W.

Most people, as in 42% according to the steam hardware survey are using 4 core cpu's followed by 6 core cpu's at 28%, 4 and 6 cores cpu's are far more efficient than they were in 2012. Also 8 year ago you've got cpu's like the i7 950,  which has a TDP of 130W, or the i5 2400 with 95W TDP, while a 10400F has a 65W tdp in comparison while having more cores and hyperthreading.

It's only fair that I play both sides of the debate here, since there is some truth to what you're saying.

 

To add on to your points, 2012 was a different landscape in general compared to modern graphics card designs & marketing. Back then, SLI/Crossfire was far more popular, so much so that PCB's with dual-GPU solutions were sold very commonly (GTX 690, Radeon 7990, though this is technically early 2013, but same thing). This trend even continued on to the cards of 2013/2014 with the GTX 760 Mars and Nvidia's Titan Z. Compare this to today's practices and you'd see that SLI is almost practically dead by Nvidia's own hands, with the exception of the highest end cards. AMD even killed Crossfire on the RX 5000 series and the Radeon VII cards. Short of DX12 shenanigans, owning multi-GPU setups isn't as common nowadays for gaming as it was back in the day, especially with monitor technologies making up for shortcomings in raw GPU horsepower (adaptive sync/VRR technologies). 

 

I would consider all of this to lend further credence to your side of the argument.

 

That said... I firmly believe that there are more people gaming nowadays than what there was back then, and I also believe that the landscape of gaming has changed now compared to what it was back then. 2012 was mostly dominated by MOBA's, low-end E-Sports shooters and MMO's. Now you have AAA battle royale titles being the go-to games for most kids and people aiming for 360hz refresh rates for that competitive edge. Couple this with PC gaming becoming more and more accessible, and console gaming's maturity to a more X86-like design bridging the gaps between software ports, it's easier than ever for people to get into gaming and not have to compromise on performance all that much. 

 

I'd also agree that power efficiency is much better on modern hardware nowadays, but it also seems like you have far more people interested in overclocking and exotic cooling solutions now than what you did back then. What used to be considered a niche hobby is now a fad and art piece for a system enjoyed by all. 

 

Strapping 18 fans to a single radiator and taking a CPU to 5.4ghz wasn't all that easy to do in 2012, but it was easy enough to do in 2018, lol.

 

I'll go on the record and say that I firmly believe that gamers are not utilizing as much power as crypto mining right now, mostly because most of the gamers I know are pretty casual with their hardware and don't leave them on overnight, and if they do, they are often configured to sleep and consume little to no power anyways. That said, I also firmly believe the moral snobs that call mining "useless for society" while simultaneously ranting about their inability to secure a GPU for gaming are being hypocritical as gaming isn't contributing all that much either. Those of you readying your keyboards to tell me that it's inspiring kids to learn how to program and creating jobs can settle down, because this same argument works in reverse when discussing cryptos. Plenty of values can be learned from the hustle of crypto miners and traders, especially if you compare the trading landscape to that of the stock market. Plenty of programmers making it big during this crypto boom with their app designs as well. 

 

I guess my point at the end of all of this rambling is, I am fine with people throwing stones at the opposing side of their morality war, but I ask they examine if their points are attributable to their own causes at the very least. Nobody likes debating with hypocrites that end their arguments with "Yeah, well... their worse!". That's just plain childish, and it's often how these discussions end on this forum when it comes to this particular subject. If it continues to end that way, nobody is ever going to find common ground or improve their mutual understanding.

[Brooksie359]

8 hours ago, Wh0_Am_1 said:

Well.... it's not actually it is supporting decentralized digital monetary transfers.... so it's more like comparing a slipnslide with a garden. While it does create currency, it also serves the same purpose as the large server farms that most card companies and banks operate. Though with extra cryptography to make it more secure.

Its completely unnecessary unless you are a criminal and need untraceable transactions. If anything its worse than doesn't do anything but does harm just by existing. Also you can't use cryptocurrency to buy products anyways so it would be more like using water to create a garden that never produces anything editable even though that was the point of the garden in the first place. 

[Brooksie359]

8 hours ago, MageTank said:

Don't mind me, was checking to see if this would look silly if I changed a few words, still does, lol.

 

We can argue the inverse of this argument though. You are operating under the assumption that mining cannot be entertaining for those that do it. I myself am not a miner (have been on the record many times on this forum about my disinterest in cryptocurrencies in general) but I have many friends that enjoy the mining and trading aspect of cryptocurrencies and they do seem quite entertained by the process. So much so that they enjoy the trips they make to secure new hardware. To them, hunting for new hardware is a thrill in and of itself. Others enjoy the trading aspect, much like those that enjoy the trading aspects of the stock market. Who are you to decide what is entertaining for others?

 

I personally enjoy beating my head against a wall when memory overclocking, despite others finding it completely tedious and a total waste of time, but it's entertaining for me and I continue to do it. If we are to dictate what is classified as entertainment and judge based entirely on those preconceived notions, then we might as well argue every subjective opinion we have as if it is fact.

 

I know you think comparisons cannot be made, but I am having no difficulties making these comparisons. If you'd like to spend some time to dispute them, I'd be happy to engage you in that endeavor, but know that I intend to drive the point home that those that cannot discern between their wants & needs cannot deem their hobby more important than others with these moral dilemmas. Either both are wasteful & harmful to the environment, or neither are. If you want to compare and argue the degrees to which each are damaging, that would be an entirely different conversation.

Not relevant at all. You leave your system to mine and therefore are not entertained by mining. It sounds to me like they just are into hardware in which case they don't need cryptocurrency. And exactly like you said if they want to be entertained  by trading then just go trade stocks as that actually has regulations and isn't such a shit show like cryptocurrency. 

[Brooksie359]

9 hours ago, Moonzy said:

Problem is, mining isn't doing nothing

It's crunching numbers for adding it to a blockchain

 

Your "no reason" needs some clarification

Because earning profit may as well be a good reason for many people

 

Google runs their servers doing number crunching, providing services to people

Mining runs their number crunchers, contributing to transaction and blockchain

 

Both are for profit

 

Just because you don't benefit from it doesn't mean it's doing nothing

Blockchain and transactions is completely useless and we already have other methods of doing transactions that doesn't require us to break the power grid. For profit? I would say simply for profit isn't good enough as profit must derived from providing a good or service while cryptocurrencies does nothing but waste electricity. I guess we should go back to mining coal because it did profit guys. Yep gotta destroy the environment to provide something we already have at a massively larger impact on the environment. Not to mention cryptocurrency is strictly less useful than current transactions methods because you can't use cryptocurrency to buy most things anyways. 

[Moonzy]

51 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Gaming is completely useless and we already have other methods of entertainment that doesn't require us to break the power grid.

'-' I edited some stuff

 

Just few posts ago we discussed that at best, gaming consumes about half as much as crypto mining.

 

But again, that's besides the point, we all use power to do different things and we value things differently

Just because you don't see the value in it doesn't mean people are wasting resources

 

I don't buy EA games but they're happily operating, I mind my own business and let them do their thing, and not judge them by using resources on things I do not care about

 

51 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

For profit? I would say simply for profit isn't good enough as profit must derived from providing a good or service

Which dictionary did you use?

Because profit, from my understanding, is getting more out than what you put in, not necessarily monetary value

 

Don't think it's anything to do with requiring it from a source of goods and services

[Wh0_Am_1]

1 hour ago, Brooksie359 said:

Its completely unnecessary unless you are a criminal and need untraceable transactions. If anything its worse than doesn't do anything but does harm just by existing. Also you can't use cryptocurrency to buy products anyways so it would be more like using water to create a garden that never produces anything editable even though that was the point of the garden in the first place. 

Crypto as a system is good even if you aren't a criminal. Sure crypto is an awesome tool if you are a criminal (I'll get back to this later) One of the many benefits of crypto is that it is not bound to a nations economy or financial status. SO if things go crazy like how it is in Venezuela it offers relative stability and prevents governments from extracting wealth from all of those that deal in the currency, such as how at the moment the US government is extracting wealth from all those that deal in the US dollar by inflating their currency (just letting you know to fully understand how important crypto is you need to get relatively deep into economic theory) Rather instead the value of crypto is decided by market forces, as no crypto currencies are currently dominant currencies this is decided by how much people are willing to invest in the currency, for profit, out of lack of trust in any one nation's currency such as the dollar, or sometime to oversight of governments.

Now one thing to understand, most of the popular currencies are not untraceable, for most currencies (there are some exception but none of them are popular at this time) anyone can view the transactions and which wallets they were moved to, and for governments and banks with access to the banking system, with power of deduction it is possible to track down the people involved in the transactions. Now back to that criminal topic, believe it or not governments are not always benevolent, they are easily corrupted and can perform rather evil acts, having systems like that can provide freedom to those living under authoritarian or corrupt governments, for example that is why China is trying to stamp this out. They want to control who can purchase services as part of their sesame credit system if you are not loyal to them, are of the wrong race, practice any religion (like the Uyghur Muslims in Shin Jiang province, or Falun Gong) they want to prevent those who are disloyal, and they don't like, as well as those associated or related by family from taking a single step. 

[Wh0_Am_1]

9 hours ago, Moonzy said:

That's just a small segment of the mining ecosystem, it's a worldwide thing so the fly shortage will still be a thing

Sure, more GPU may pop up here and there, but the pricing wouldn't budge much because there's other miners buying them (I paid $2000 for a 3080)

so gamers wouldn't buy it still

I was just thinking that it may extend the shortage.

[Wh0_Am_1]

9 hours ago, pythonmegapixel said:

I think the owners of mining farms are probably fully aware that they are creating a shortage

Well of course they are! There is money to be made! Though there is one thing that I believe is under rated by the gaming community. This is an opportunity for those already owning a gaming computer to pay it off and save up for upgrades. People could buy a computer once, and theoretically not need to have to worry about saving up for new ones, the computer will just pay for itself. 

[tikker]

1 hour ago, Brooksie359 said:

Its completely unnecessary unless you are a criminal and need untraceable transactions.

False, crypto is one of the worst for untraceability. Bitcoin and the like are easily traceable, because that's part of the point. Everything is kept on a public ledger that anyone can check and confirm. Law enforcement has also made great strides in analysing blockchains. If they can tie a wallet address to you, you're an open book regarding transactions from and to that wallet. The only coins where this is a somewhat of a concern are privacy coins like Monero.

1 hour ago, Brooksie359 said:

Also you can't use cryptocurrency to buy products anyways so it would be more like using water to create a garden that never produces anything editable even though that was the point of the garden in the first place.

False as well. I can buy PC watercooling parts at a local shop with a variety of crypto, I can order food deliveries with crypto and probably other things I haven't bothered to check. It is not common yet, but you can definitely spend it.

1 hour ago, Brooksie359 said:

Not relevant at all. You leave your system to mine and therefore are not entertained by mining. It sounds to me like they just are into hardware in which case they don't need cryptocurrency. And exactly like you said if they want to be entertained  by trading then just go trade stocks as that actually has regulations and isn't such a shit show like cryptocurrency. 

Now you're just attacking straw men. If you like scoring hardware at optimal price for mining, tweaking settings for max profits or efficiency etc. then you definitely are entertained by mining. If you don't like the volatility of crypto then it's not for you and you go to stocks or something else that is calmer. You aren't interested in crypto, that's fine. Just as it's fine that there are people that aren't interested in whatever your hobbies are. You're argument here is nothing more than "I don't like it so it's bad" while gatekeeping entertainment. Whatever your hobbies are, guaranteed there are people that see literally no point in that and consider those a waste of time and energy.

1 hour ago, Brooksie359 said:

Blockchain and transactions is completely useless and we already have other methods of doing transactions that doesn't require us to break the power grid. For profit?

Why would banks investigate blockchains or similar technology if it was useless? Blockchains by themselves don't even require "breaking the power grid". There are proof of stake blockchains.

1 hour ago, Brooksie359 said:

I would say simply for profit isn't good enough as profit must derived from providing a good or service while cryptocurrencies does nothing but waste electricity.

The only thing profit must be "derived" from is the difference between what you sold something for and what it cost you to obtain it. If the former exceeds the latter, you have made a profit. A toaster provides no goods or services either. It wastes electricity to generate heat. As a miner you provide the service, namely the transaction network, and get rewarded with goods, the crypto coin.

1 hour ago, Brooksie359 said:

Not to mention cryptocurrency is strictly less useful than current transactions methods because you can't use cryptocurrency to buy most things anyways.

It has only gained traction for the last couple of years. No suprise there that you can't spend it widely.

[Vishera]

8 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Power consumption hasn't gone down. It has stayed relatively the same, or gone up across the board.

 

 

GTX 660 Ti - ~140W

GTX 760 Ti - ~160W

GTX 960 - ~125W

GTX 1060 Ti - 125W

RTX 2060 - ~170W

RTX 3060 Ti - ~200W

 

If anything, power consumption has gone up in the last couple of generations. 

 

Xbox 360 - ~100W (depending on model)

Xbox Series X - ~180W

 

 

Also, look at Intel's latest processors, or even AMD. Far more power hungry that most CPUs were 8 years ago.

And my overclocked GTX 1660 consumes 120W~135W under full load

[Beskamir]

13 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Good on them. I wish more governments would do the same. Cryptocurrency is legitimately a problem when it comes to world power consumption and doesn't offer anything of value over normal fiat currency. No need to waste such large amounts of energy and resources on something so pointless. Definitely has a huge negative impact on the environment. 

 

13 hours ago, akio123008 said:

I'm no expert on crypto stuff, so I don't comment on it too much, but from what I know about it, I think cryptocurrencies shouldn't exist. I just hate the idea that people around the world are trying to reduce carbon emissions in all sorts of ways, sometimes even investing large sums of money, and then there's a bunch of people burning up a huge amount of power in these computers doing nothing useful at all, just to make what seems to me like a marginal amount of profit. Power that may as well be spent to do actual useful work. Imagine all that energy being used for scientific research for instance.

I agree but not all cryptocurrencies use proof of work. Ethereum 2.0 and many existing currencies use proof of stake which doesn't require computation to validate transactions. Although proof of stake basically incentivizes hoarding crypto which makes the deflation most cryptos experience even worse so I'm not sure if that's a great solution overall. Ideally there should be a privacy focused decentralized currency that has an inflation rate that automatically adjusts to a useful amount similarly to a normal dollar but isn't controlled by any centralized powers.

 

Also it's worth considering decentralized applications that go beyond just keeping track of finances. So projects like https://gitcoin.co/, https://www.golem.network/ or https://async.art/ are some examples of using crypto for more than just currencies.

[Justaphysicsnerd]

16 hours ago, manikyath said:

the hot side of their rooms reaches 40°c?

*Starts laughing in 40 degrees celsius ambient temperature*

[COTG]

17 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Good on them. I wish more governments would do the same. Cryptocurrency is legitimately a problem when it comes to world power consumption and doesn't offer anything of value over normal fiat currency. No need to waste such large amounts of energy and resources on something so pointless. Definitely has a huge negative impact on the environment. 

why comment on the utility of cryptocurrencies at all when you clearly don't have any knowledge or understanding of the subject? 

[Kisai]

21 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

I really hate how this always comes up and somehow people think that entertainment and cryptocurrency mining are equivalent when they are not. That like saying someone who uses water for a slipnslide during the summer for their kids is just as wasteful as a guy whole leaves his sink on for a couple of hours for no reason at all. They clearly aren't equivalent because one is actually providing entertainment while the other is just plain wasteful for no reason. 

A better context is "well if everyone stopped recycling, we would run out of newsprint, aluminium, and steel within a decade" 

 

Steel mostly goes doesn't get recycled. Those shipping containers coated in toxic chemicals from china? They rarely get used to ship anything back, and turning them into tiny houses is a bad thing since the amount of energy to clean them is as much as making new ones.

 

The point is. there is nothing recoverable from cryptomining.

- Used ASIC miners? Garbage.

- Energy used to mine bitcoin and others? Gone. Nothing recoverable.

- Used GPU's? Likely going to the landfill when better stuff comes out. A small amount might get resold if they're less than 2 years old. But who's going to dismantle a cryptofarm and stop making money for a day just to do that.

 

Quite frankly anyone championing the current generation of cryptocurrencies is either an idiot, or desperately trying to justify their foolish investment. This is not going to last. All that needs to happen to terminate all cryptocoin mining in any particular state or country is for the energy cost to start charging anyone using more than 15KW/day 10x the price from 6am to 6pm unless they have Solar cells that they can switch to. In which case if it drives people to install Solar... good. Otherwise all it's doing is driving up the cost of energy for everyone.

 

Until I can buy a soda from a vending machine with a cryptocoin and not be charged more than the cost of the soda, it shall remain a fad.

[Brooksie359]

6 hours ago, COTG said:

why comment on the utility of cryptocurrencies at all when you clearly don't have any knowledge or understanding of the subject? 

Why comment when you clearly have no idea what my knowledge of cryptocurrency is. Oh it does secure transactions that are untraceable? Great now we have an easy avenue for illegal dealings what great utility. Oh its decentralized so it should help getting away from one countries currency. Well that is pointless as cryptocurrency is so volatile and has no ability to do anything other than exchange for fiat currency for most places meaning that it doesn't even do what it set out to and likely never will. The fact that it even has the word currency in it name is such a joke that I can't take cryptocurrency seriously. At least with fiat currency has the backing of the economy in which the currency is used because its a legal tender and therefor is required to be accepted as payment for debts. Cryptocurrency on the other hand doesn't have anything backing it which is why its value is so volatile in the first place. Cryptocurrency needs to go.