the mining craze - what exactly happened?

[KenjiUmino]

ok, last time i checked, the general consent was that GPU cryptocurrency mining is essentially dead because of ASICs and how the dificuly level has been driven up to oblivion. 

 

but now everybody and their dog seems to have caught a case of the mining craze, clearing entire warehouses of their radeon stock and driving prices of these cards to oblivion. 

 

electricity prices have not dropped AFAIK and GPU power has not suddenly magically increased to a level where it can overthrow ASICs ... the RX 400 series existed long before the recent mining craze started if i remember correctly ... so ... 

 

... can someone explain to me what. exactly. happened.

 

did bitcoin difficulty drop (if this is even possible) ?

 

did another currency show up where there are no ASICs for it yet ?

 

should i dust off my HD6450 and try to get a piece of the pie ?

[RuLeZ]

Etherium mining is now good to mine with a AMD card, but HD 6450 is way too weak to compensate.

[jeffmeyer5295]

I don't know what exactly happened to cause this change, but I know I have build numerous machines for clients lately. I know one person that I built 6 6xrx480 rigs for was renting a business space with free power(we'll see how long that lasts). another was already an avid bitcoin miner just looking to expand. didn't realize there was a trend.

[Starelementpoke]

2 minutes ago, KenjiUmino said:

ok, last time i checked, the general consent was that GPU cryptocurrency mining is essentially dead because of ASICs and how the dificuly level has been driven up to oblivion. 

 

but now everybody and their dog seems to have caught a case of the mining craze, clearing entire warehouses of their radeon stock and driving prices of these cards to oblivion. 

 

electricity prices have not dropped AFAIK and GPU power has not suddenly magically increased to a level where it can overthrow ASICs ... the RX 400 series existed long before the recent mining craze started if i remember correctly ... so ... 

 

... can someone explain to me what. exactly. happened.

 

did bitcoin difficulty drop (if this is even possible) ?

 

did another currency show up where there are no ASICs for it yet ?

 

should i dust off my HD6450 and try to get a piece of the pie ?

Certain currencies, such as etherium, became very profitable.

[Anjelllo]

Afaik ethereum burst onto the scene and runs better on radeon gpus rather than nvidia ones, miners bought the rx gpus, then started buying nvidia ones to mine with other cryptocurrencies (but those have been around for longer than eth, so i guess people have just gone crazy with the revival of cryptocurrency mining?

[jeffmeyer5295]

4 minutes ago, Anjelllo said:

Afaik ethereum burst onto the scene and runs better on radeon gpus rather than nvidia ones, miners bought the rx gpus, then started buying nvidia ones to mine with other cryptocurrencies (but those have been around for longer than eth, so i guess people have just gone crazy with the revival of cryptocurrency mining?

It is probably a bunch of people trying to jump on before they miss the chance like the last time there was a profitable crypto currency. People trying to make quick money relying on previous trends. Luckily not betting my money ;P

[KenjiUmino]

8 minutes ago, RuLeZ said:

...but HD 6450 is way too weak to compensate.

thats what i thought ... i wasn't really serious about that but i just meintioned it because i do have one complete in box just taking up shelf space ...