why so little interest in mining?

[jwwagner25]

With such an active overall forum I'm surprised there aren't more people into mining. Is there not enough awareness or are people really just bitter on the subject? TIA

[freeagent]

I am mildly interested.. but was bitter previously

 

I might also be slightly apprehensive because of thefts..

 

But all in all, I am highly ignorant on the subject, and have only watched a few videos on the to0b, I am not educated on this subject by any means.. I don't even know how to get a wallet

[ahmad13610]

because hurting nature

 

 

[vsteel]

I think because if you are not deep into it already then you are too late.  The established people don't have a lot to talk about.  

[jwwagner25]

7 minutes ago, vsteel said:

I think because if you are not deep into it already then you are too late.  The established people don't have a lot to talk about.  

well that is definitely not true. All it takes is one GPU to start. In 12 months I have around .35 ETH, several chia coins, and some raptoreum. it's passive income that takes minutes to set up. I think it got a bad name because of GPU shortage; also misbelief that it takes insane time/money to get up and running. It's just like any other hobby or business venture; you can invest thousands of dollars initially or just go in with what you have. I did the latter, and have what I consider to be substantial holdings based off about 30 mins of 'work'. just my .02; thanks for posting. 

Jake 

[jwwagner25]

37 minutes ago, freeagent said:

I am mildly interested.. but was bitter previously

 

I might also be slightly apprehensive because of thefts..

 

But all in all, I am highly ignorant on the subject, and have only watched a few videos on the to0b, I am not educated on this subject by any means.. I don't even know how to get a wallet

see my post above. it's never too late to start! only takes a couple minutes to set up a wallet, don't know if we are allowed to name services but it's a quick google away. I was hesitant at first thinking it required in depth training or skill; if you are a tech nerd on a nerd forum (like we all are) then you can set up a wallet and start mining! ETH is most profitable currently for GPU mining

[BondiBlue]

For a lot of people it's simply not worth it because of heat and electricity concerns. In my area I wouldn't be able to mine at all during the summer months, for example. If you end up paying more in electricity costs than you get back from mining then why do it?

[OhioYJ]

3 minutes ago, jwwagner25 said:

well that is definitely not true. All it takes is one GPU to start. In 12 months I have around .35 ETH, several chia coins, and some raptoreum. it's passive income that takes minutes to set up.

Yes but have you spent on your utility bills? There is a bit more to this puzzle than my PC just makes me free money.

[jwwagner25]

3 minutes ago, OhioYJ said:

Yes but have you spent on your utility bills? There is a bit more to this puzzle than my PC just makes me free money.

fair point; I am paying around $13 USD (per month) for electricity to run my two GPUs 24/7 (total of 190 watts). So roughly $150 cost for 12 months. the .3 ETH I've earned in that time is worth considerably more than that. Of course it's all a gamble and I realize it could crash tomorrow and be worth nothing. It's all part of the fun. 

[jwwagner25]

7 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

For a lot of people it's simply not worth it because of heat and electricity concerns. In my area I wouldn't be able to mine at all during the summer months, for example. If you end up paying more in electricity costs than you get back from mining then why do it?

the heat concern is valid, but as far as your idea that a person would be paying more in electricity than what they get back in coin is silly. I don't think it would be possible to somehow screw up so badly as for that to be even a remote possibility, short of the entire market crashing. Anyway if someone is somehow dumb enough to do what you suggest, they probably have worse problems in other areas of life. 

[BondiBlue]

10 minutes ago, jwwagner25 said:

the heat concern is valid, but as far as your idea that a person would be paying more in electricity than what they get back in coin is silly. I don't think it would be possible to somehow screw up so badly as for that to be even a remote possibility, short of the entire market crashing. Anyway if someone is somehow dumb enough to do what you suggest, they probably have worse problems in other areas of life. 

It's not silly at all. Unless you already have a nice, high end GPU it's absolutely possible to make less with mining than you pay in electricity costs. If you think that's somehow silly then you're wildly misinformed. Not everyone has access to cheap electricity that can make mining viable. But go ahead and laugh at my comment if you want, or feel free to do some research about it online. It's a very real barrier to entry for lots of people in the world. 

[rkv_2401]

29 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

It's not silly at all. Unless you already have a nice, high end GPU it's absolutely possible to make less with mining than you pay in electricity costs. If you think that's somehow silly then you're wildly misinformed. Not everyone has access to cheap electricity that can make mining viable. But go ahead and laugh at my comment if you want, or feel free to do some research about it online. It's a very real barrier to entry for lots of people in the world. 

Not to mention, the value of the coin you're speaking of has gone up 6x in that time-frame. What if someone bought a graphics card at these ridiculous prices to start mining after EIP-1559, mining difficulty increases (has doubled since then), intends to use their mining profits to pay off their card (what good is a business if you can't pay off invested capital?) , and the value of the coin drops by 50% or 85%, back to the 700$ that it was at the start of the year? Mining is profitable for now, sure. But there's a very real chance it couldn't be, @BondiBlue raises a very valid point which is miners generally stop mining when they can't cover their electricity costs, and if you've been mining since/reading about mining before or around the 2018 crypto-crash you would know that.

 

And yes, I mine crypto myself.

[tikker]

There is interest in mining here. There's just not that much to it? All we can say is oh look at my <insert number> Mh/s. Other than that it's set it and forget it, and discussing your holdings and profits on the internet is just a bad idea.

1 hour ago, jwwagner25 said:

well that is definitely not true. All it takes is one GPU to start. In 12 months I have around .35 ETH, several chia coins, and some raptoreum. it's passive income that takes minutes to set up. I think it got a bad name because of GPU shortage; also misbelief that it takes insane time/money to get up and running. It's just like any other hobby or business venture; you can invest thousands of dollars initially or just go in with what you have. I did the latter, and have what I consider to be substantial holdings based off about 30 mins of 'work'. just my .02; thanks for posting. 

Jake 

It does take money to set up. The problem is the unpredictability. Currently we are deep into a bull market, making it an ever riskier bet to purchase expensive mining equipment than it normally already is. You are looking at ROIs of 6-12 months if you buy a GPU and that is assuming the market remains as profitable as it is now. Since we do not know what the crypto market will be in 6 months, it's quite a gamble to lock up $1000, which you won't see back until a year later, for mining.

 

Secondly there's the old adage about time in the market. If you are only in it for the profits and not the GPU, then you might as well invest that $1000 directly by simply buying crypto. Easier, faster and more profitable if the market continues to go up over the subsequent months.

59 minutes ago, jwwagner25 said:

but as far as your idea that a person would be paying more in electricity than what they get back in coin is silly

I mean it's true for old cards and it depends on how expensive your electricity is. Some places it's dirt cheap at <$0.1 per kWh and other palces it's much more expensive. Over here it's $0.27 per kWh and in Germany it's even $0.36 per kWh. The market is favourable at the moment, making most GPUs profitable, so it becomes a game of diminishing returns. Is less than $1 a day worth it? That's basically the choice.

32 minutes ago, rkv_2401 said:

Not to mention, the value of the coin you're speaking of has gone up 6x in that time-frame.

Plus this bull market has been going for so long now. My general sentiment is that it's a bad time to get into mining, because of that. Honestly I also don't know, however, so this could also be a stabilising sign, but well do you want that uncertainty in the middle of a pandemic lol.

[jwwagner25]

On 12/5/2021 at 6:23 AM, BondiBlue said:

It's not silly at all. Unless you already have a nice, high end GPU it's absolutely possible to make less with mining than you pay in electricity costs. If you think that's somehow silly then you're wildly misinformed. Not everyone has access to cheap electricity that can make mining viable. But go ahead and laugh at my comment if you want, or feel free to do some research about it online. It's a very real barrier to entry for lots of people in the world. 

you completely missed the point. the silly part is that someone would be so clueless as to be unaware of those aspects and let a miner run anyway, thinking they are making money, when they aren't.  

[jwwagner25]

On 12/5/2021 at 7:25 AM, tikker said:

There is interest in mining here. There's just not that much to it? All we can say is oh look at my <insert number> Mh/s. Other than that it's set it and forget it, and discussing your holdings and profits on the internet is just a bad idea.

It does take money to set up. The problem is the unpredictability. Currently we are deep into a bull market, making it an ever riskier bet to purchase expensive mining equipment than it normally already is. You are looking at ROIs of 6-12 months if you buy a GPU and that is assuming the market remains as profitable as it is now. Since we do not know what the crypto market will be in 6 months, it's quite a gamble to lock up $1000, which you won't see back until a year later, for mining.

 

Secondly there's the old adage about time in the market. If you are only in it for the profits and not the GPU, then you might as well invest that $1000 directly by simply buying crypto. Easier, faster and more profitable if the market continues to go up over the subsequent months.

I mean it's true for old cards and it depends on how expensive your electricity is. Some places it's dirt cheap at <$0.1 per kWh and other palces it's much more expensive. Over here it's $0.27 per kWh and in Germany it's even $0.36 per kWh. The market is favourable at the moment, making most GPUs profitable, so it becomes a game of diminishing returns. Is less than $1 a day worth it? That's basically the choice.

Plus this bull market has been going for so long now. My general sentiment is that it's a bad time to get into mining, because of that. Honestly I also don't know, however, so this could also be a stabilising sign, but well do you want that uncertainty in the middle of a pandemic lol.

thanks for the post

[tikker]

1 hour ago, jwwagner25 said:

you completely missed the point. the silly part is that someone would be so clueless as to be unaware of those aspects and let a miner run anyway, thinking they are making money, when they aren't. it's common sense. went over your head, it's okay. 

That is more often than not how it's sold though. The "turn your PC into a free money printer!" gets pushed hard, but all the details such as electricity cost, card and computer power usage, heat output and very importantly the not straightforward process of actually getting your profits tend to be pushed into the fine print. Things like "All it takes is one GPU to start" and "it's passive income that takes minutes to set up" are true, but although arbitrary do imply some significant amount (i.e. not $1-2 a day). All profits are also unrealised until you move it to an exchange, exchange it for fiat and get it in your bank account. That is not straightforward with crypto and then people get surprised by the massive fees of ETH, for example, when they discover it'll cost them half their earnings simply to transfer their money to an exchange.

[BondiBlue]

1 hour ago, jwwagner25 said:

you completely missed the point. the silly part is that someone would be so clueless as to be unaware of those aspects and let a miner run anyway, thinking they are making money, when they aren't. it's common sense. went over your head, it's okay. 

Except lots of people are. You're the one who missed the point there. @tikker wrote a good explanation of what I was getting at, so rather than type it all again just go read their comment. 

 

And you can drop the sarcasm. It just makes you look like a jerk rather than someone who wants to engage in a productive discussion. 

[Alder Lake]

On 12/5/2021 at 8:09 AM, jwwagner25 said:

With such an active overall forum I'm surprised there aren't more people into mining. Is there not enough awareness or are people really just bitter on the subject? TIA

there's not much to it, you just look at your hash rate and power usage, then you're done, you leave it running, make money, and take away from people just trying to have a good time

 

 

I don't recommend talking too much about mining here, as lots of people (somewhat including myself) have a grudge against you and scalpers for taking all the GPUs, and some people might want to start a flame war

[jwwagner25]

21 hours ago, Alder Lake said:

there's not much to it, you just look at your hash rate and power usage, then you're done, you leave it running, make money, and take away from people just trying to have a good time

 

 

I don't recommend talking too much about mining here, as lots of people (somewhat including myself) have a grudge against you and scalpers for taking all the GPUs, and some people might want to start a flame war

how is it taking away from people trying to have a good time? that is painting with an awfully broad brush. If you are talking about the people who are using more than 2 or 3 cards then I would agree. People who are using resources they already would have had lying around, cannot possibly be causing harm to anyone. I am in the latter category. Thanks for your input. 

[Alder Lake]

14 minutes ago, jwwagner25 said:

how is it taking away from people trying to have a good time? that is painting with an awfully broad brush. If you are talking about the people who are using more than 2 or 3 cards then I would agree. People who are using resources they already would have had lying around, cannot possibly be causing harm to anyone. I am in the latter category. Thanks for your input. 

it's kind of the picture mining has painted itself

Eutherium price goes up, GPU price goes up

 

ofc if you're just using your daily driver PC to mine, then there's no reason for fuss, but I can really understand the frustration of people who spent long hours of work to try to be able to afford a GPU, only for people to buy them all in less than a second then just use them for mining, or even worse, scalping

[jwwagner25]

16 minutes ago, Alder Lake said:

it's kind of the picture mining has painted itself

Eutherium price goes up, GPU price goes up

 

ofc if you're just using your daily driver PC to mine, then there's no reason for fuss, but I can really understand the frustration of people who spent long hours of work to try to be able to afford a GPU, only for people to buy them all in less than a second then just use them for mining, or even worse, scalping

I can definitely see that. If you look at the chart for past 24+ months, as soon as ETH price began to rise was the same time scarcity began. A lot of people point to 'silicon shortage' but I haven't seen clear, hard numbers for what that actually means. I think most of it is from all second hand cards being bought up. 

 

A small YT channel focused on mining showcased his different setups, one of them had nearly 20 RX 470 cards in two separate mining rigs. Every one of those could be used by 20 different people in the traditional way; instead those 20 people had to look elsewhere. Except multiply that by (who knows how much) tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands?  I can understand bitter feeling toward these people 100%

 

As far as scalping I am also curious what percentage of people are doing that versus taking cards for mining. Is it half, a third, etc of the new supply. And regarding that, if people stopped buying at inflated rates than scalping would end. And there's no incentive for manufacturers to increase supply ( i believe they could if they wanted) because good old supply vs demand. have a good day

Jake

[tikker]

24 minutes ago, Alder Lake said:

it's kind of the picture mining has painted itself

Eutherium price DEMAND goes up, GPU price goes up

ofc if you're just using your daily driver PC to mine, then there's no reason for fuss, but I can really understand the frustration of people who spent long hours of work to try to be able to afford a GPU, only for people to buy them all in less than a second then just use them for mining, or even worse, scalping

I still haven't seen seen much proof of a causation that mining has been the driving factor behind the shortage, and that it's not just a correlation between mining and GPU prices, which is easier to explain. It makes perfect sense that if people hear about this magic internet money more and more, seeing its high price, that people go out and buy GPUs more and more, which drives the prices up. Combine that with the pandemic and global shortages in other things and the price climbs even more. Then scalpers note that GPUs are wanted and they start scalping. People get desperate and will buy them anyway, and there you go.

1 minute ago, jwwagner25 said:

And there's no incentive for manufacturers to increase supply ( i believe they could if they wanted) because good old supply vs demand.

This is the other "conspiracy" that I don't yet believe. AFAIK production lines are completely filled to the proverbial 110% already so there is hardly room for more.

[jwwagner25]

9 minutes ago, tikker said:

I still haven't seen seen much proof of a causation that mining has been the driving factor behind the shortage, and that it's not just a correlation between mining and GPU prices, which is easier to explain. It makes perfect sense that if people hear about this magic internet money more and more, seeing its high price, that people go out and buy GPUs more and more, which drives the prices up. Combine that with the pandemic and global shortages in other things and the price climbs even more. Then scalpers note that GPUs are wanted and they start scalping. People get desperate and will buy them anyway, and there you go.

I think we posted too close; what about the guys like I mentioned in above post that are buying up all the used cards for massive mining rigs? It seems like that must play a huge role? 

 

And no one is talking about conspiracy theories. Just simple supply vs demand chart. Respectfully, unless you have some sort of inside knowledge, you know no more than I or any other regular joe regarding true capacity. They can say what they want to. Of course the other side of the coin is that, as mentioned recently shipments are up year over year by quite a bit. This would tend to back my theory that it's largely mining to blame for shortage and not supply as people (myself included) like to think. 

source

[Alder Lake]

23 minutes ago, tikker said:

I still haven't seen seen much proof of a causation that mining has been the driving factor behind the shortage, and that it's not just a correlation between mining and GPU prices, which is easier to explain. It makes perfect sense that if people hear about this magic internet money more and more, seeing its high price, that people go out and buy GPUs more and more, which drives the prices up. Combine that with the pandemic and global shortages in other things and the price climbs even more. Then scalpers note that GPUs are wanted and they start scalping. People get desperate and will buy them anyway, and there you go.

This is the other "conspiracy" that I don't yet believe. AFAIK production lines are completely filled to the proverbial 110% already so there is hardly room for more.

even if you are right and miners are negligibly affecting prices (which they're not, some miner have hundreds of cards) and it's just people getting scared and panic buying them, that's still related to miners and wouldn't happen without them

[tikker]

2 hours ago, jwwagner25 said:

I think we posted too close; what about the guys like I mentioned in above post that are buying up all the used cards for massive mining rigs? It seems like that must play a huge role? 

 

And no one is talking about conspiracy theories. Just simple supply vs demand chart. Respectfully, unless you have some sort of inside knowledge, you know no more than I or any other regular joe regarding true capacity. They can say what they want to. Of course the other side of the coin is that, as mentioned recently shipments are up year over year by quite a bit. This would tend to back my theory that it's largely mining to blame for shortage and not supply as people (myself included) like to think. 

source

They would be shooting themselves in the foot by limiting supply now. Everyone and their mom wants or wanted GPUs and they sell like hot buns. There is no incentive for them to limit availability, because 1) GPUs are a rapidly depreciating asset that'll be relatively worthless next year or sooner 2) there is no guarantee this insane demand will last beyond the pandemic, which is an important reason not to scale up on a whim (which they can't anyway) and 3) it's a huge risk if they're stuck with a massive supply afterwars. GPU companies are shipping more than ever and yet somehow with GPU shipments through the roof we have a shortage and all these years before on their "artificially limited capacity" it was fine?

 

Orders at chip fabs are made in advance and they make more than our GPUs. They can't just hit the turbo button and start producing more on a whim. Sure they can try and pull a fast one on people, but if the fabs are all saying they're at or very close to capacity I'm not inclined to believe that. I'd like to believe we are still sane enough that we're not wasting many many tens of billions of dollars on building new foundries while operating the current ones at "half" capacity to keep up the facade of a shortage.

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/30/globalfoundries-ceo-were-sold-out-of-semiconductor-chip-capacity-through-2023.html

https://hexus.net/business/news/components/144379-amd-intel-battle-tsmc-capacity-says-report/

https://www.androidheadlines.com/2021/08/tsmc-7nm-5nm-chip-production-full-capacity.html

https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/apple-claims-half-of-tsmc-5nm-production-capacity-for-2021.html

https://www.techradar.com/news/intel-locks-down-all-remaining-tsmc-3nm-production-capacity-boxing-out-amd-and-apple

https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20201211PD200.html (transcript on reddit)

Quote

Nvidia's new GeForce RTX 30 GPUs have been in tight supply due to unsatisfactory 8nm process yield rates at its foundry partner Samsung, according to industry sources.

The supply of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 30 GPU family has been insufficient since its launch, said the sources, who blamed lower-than-expected yield rates at Samsung's 8nm process for the supply constraints.

On the other hand, TSMC has seen its 5nm and 7nm process capacity fully utilized thanks to orders placed by Apple, AMD, MediaTek and other major customers, according to industry sources. The foundry is poised to see its fourth-quarter revenue outpace the guidance given previously, with revenue for all of 2020 meeting its growth estimate of 30%.

https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/tsmc-semiconductor-capacity-manufacturing-automotive-chip/603525/

Quote

• TSMC has already increased the production of microcontroller units, or MCUs, by 30% YoY in the first half of 2021 with plans to bring that to 60% YoY for the full-year 2021, or about 30% over pre-pandemic levels in 2018, Wei said.
• Even with expanded production and investment in increased capacity, the high demand for the company's product is expected to test its production infrastructure. "We expect our capacity to remain tight throughout the year and into 2022 fueled by strong demand for our industry-leading advanced and special technologies," Wei said.

 

 

1 hour ago, Alder Lake said:

even if you are right and miners are negligibly affecting prices (which they're not, some miner have hundreds of cards) and it's just people getting scared and panic buying them, that's still related to miners and wouldn't happen without them

Miners are a factor, nowhere did I say they were negligible. The were not the driving factor however. People were faced with months of sitting at home, working from home, causing a massive demand for everything. The only reason scalpers can exist is because we are willing to buy at multiple times MSRP. The effect of miners may now be bigger, as most people probably have gotten their hands on a GPU over these two years one way or another and the world is slowly coming back. Even for a miner it's harder to justify $3000 on a card that makes $8 per day though. Availability is also much less of an issue now. I can go to a local shop and buy anything from a 3070 to a 3080 Ti. They're just super expensive. Finally, companies aren't idiots either. So yeah, I'm not denying that miners are certainly contributing to it. They're just not the end al be all of it. By buying at these inflated prices we have proven to Asus, Gigabyte etc. as well that we're fine throwing down $2500 for a 3080 Ti. People are also partly blaming them for taking profit from the fact that we're happy to do so.