New BITMAIN ASIC Mines Equihash = 15x1080Ti GPUs at 300 Watts

[Enkephalin]

Hey everyone,

 

It is a sad day for GPU miners with the release of the Antminer Z9 mini (https://shop.bitmain.com/product/detail?pid=00020180503154806494uGcSyiu806FD#2607) can perform as well as 15 1080Ti GPUs at a mere 300 Watts. The price point of only $1999 + a few hundred in other costs. Equihash is the algorithm used for coins like Zcash, Zencash, Bitcoin Gold, BitcoinZ, Bitcoin Private, and many more popular and uprising coins. Equihash has been one of the bread and butter algorithms that Nvidia GPUs hashed very well on and outperformed AMD which has worn the crown on mining Ethash for coins like Ethereum (with one recent exception of the Eth Enlargement Pill just released that boosts the GTX 1080 and 1080Ti in Ethash significantly).  Bitmain is generally on point with their performance specs, and while this is obviously an incredible piece of technology, I think this causes more agony for GPU miners (most of whom are also gamers) than what the gaming community ("no-coiners") had to deal with inventory and pricing problems. I would like to reiterate, for about $2350, you can buy their mini version (a full version must be on its way out too) and it can mine as well as 15 1080Ti GPUs @ 300 Watts. INCREDIBLE AND HEARTBREAKING AT THE SAME TIME.

 

Fortunately, many projects are getting together and deciding the best way to deal with this, by either forking their coin and using a different algorithm. As many projects announced at launch to be ASIC resistant and include that in their whitepapers, we will see who sticks to their guns and resists BITMAIN and follows through with their promise. As much as people hate on GPU miners,  having a decentralized group of miners where many people can participate is one of the main premises and security aspects of cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies are most definitely here to stay because the technology and utility behind them and the blockchain are revolutionary. I have nothing against people that use ASICs to mine, but I dislike the monopoly and unfair distribution practices of BITMAIN.

 

*Disclaimer, I am myself a GPU miner but I also love gaming.*

 

Let us discuss our thoughts and opinions (with civility) and maybe this will get into the WAN show!  I have gathered a lot of knowledge about GPU mining over the past year or so and can offer further info on GPU mining, but it is just too much to put in one post.

 

Here is the link once again to where you can buy one if that is your thing: https://shop.bitmain.com/product/detail?pid=00020180503154806494uGcSyiu806FD#2607

 

-Enkephalin

[ravenshrike]

You'll never get ASIC proof or probably even significantly(More than 5 years of concerted effort on the part of the ASIC companies) resistant currencies.The moment any real money starts moving it signals the death knell of GPU driven mining.

[Enkephalin]

I would agree with you in part for certain coins that just stick to 1 simple algorithm, but new GPU minable coins are now coming out that employ many, randomly alternating algorithms that GPUs can switch between but an ASIC obviously could not. Take Ravencoin for example which uses the x16r algorithm. This means that is randomly switches to one of 16 algorithms in between each block. Ravencoin devs can decide to add/remove/alternate algorithms at their discretion to remain ASIC resistance. I do not believe this is the death of GPU mining because of how bad of a reputation ASICs have within the mining community (unless you have a mining farm, uber cheap electricity, and a special deal with BITMAIN).  For the moment, I have to disagree with you. Additionally, now that this is becoming bigger, more cryptographers and programmers will enter this space that will make it more difficult for "big money" to annihilate any sort of encryption. If that were the case, encryption as a whole would be in very bad shape, not just for cryptocurrencies.

[porina]

There's a difference between ASIC proof and ASIC resistant. Like on Ethereum, they made it so it was relatively expensive to implement in ASIC. It doesn't mean it can't be done, just harder to do for useful gain.

 

From a gamer perspective, ASICs could help "free up" GPUs as they become non-profitable for mining, although you still have to look at the market as a whole.

[Enkephalin]

1 minute ago, porina said:

There's a difference between ASIC proof and ASIC resistant. Like on Ethereum, they made it so it was relatively expensive to implement in ASIC. It doesn't mean it can't be done, just harder to do for useful gain.

 

From a gamer perspective, ASICs could help "free up" GPUs as they become non-profitable for mining, although you still have to look at the market as a whole.

ASICs certainly may free up GPUs for gamers, but these ASICs will also need to be beefing up their memory specs as that is what one of the obstacles for ASICs. As I'm sure you know, the memory market is a mess at the moment and if companies are entering an arms race for even more memory as cryptocurrencies are becoming so valuable, that might be bad for GPUs and our DRAM. It is really interesting to see where this will go. We already know Samsung has decided to start making ASIC miners - at least they aren't as shady of a company as BITMAIN.

[porina]

I don't know the details of how the various mining algorithms work, but I do wonder if at least in some cases, might Xpoint be a viable alternative? It's much cheaper than ram, although the performance isn't as good either. Ethereum and related are quite sensitive to ram performance so it might not be suited as an example, but maybe other coins could.

[BuckGup]

Annnnnd then it forks and people wasted $2000

[laminutederire]

Why is this an issue? ASIC's make for a better world!

Less energy consumption is good for the environment.

[mynameisjuan]

2 minutes ago, laminutederire said:

Why is this an issue? ASIC's make for a better world!

Less energy consumption is good for the environment.

Or how about not waste power at all on an a fake currency?

[Enkephalin]

6 minutes ago, BuckGup said:

Annnnnd then it forks and people wasted $2000

I sort of feel bad for the people that spent 10grand on the cryptonight ASIC for Monero, but at the same time they should have known about the discussion of forking the network against ASICs and for spending too much on 1 machine from BITMAIN of all people.

[hconverse02]

3 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

Or how about not waste power at all on an a fake currency?

Well technically any fiat money is fake currency if that is your thinking.  Cryptocurrency is backed by paper currency, but paper currency has no real value, we value it based on how the economy is.

[asus killer]

@Enkephalin

 

so you defend people should continue to f' up the gpu market and spend a stupid amount more of energy to mine even if there is a tool that does this without pissing off everyone else that needs a gpu and they aren't all gamers, there were news of research projects also affected (search for aliens was mentioned in the forum) and save insanes amounts of energy at the same time?

 

sorry but... asic miners FTW 

[Enkephalin]

8 minutes ago, laminutederire said:

Why is this an issue? ASIC's make for a better world!

Less energy consumption is good for the environment.

ASIC's are good if they are available for people like you and me. Unfortunately though there is a monopoly and tight control over the ASIC market and it keeps cryptocurrencies less decentralized and gives more power to miners in China.

[Brooksie359]

Honestly if this screws over big minners I will be happy. Such a waste of hardware and energy. I don't care at all about what they are trying to accomplish with cryptocurrency. That being said if they find a way to do that while consuming less energy with these miners then it's a good thing. 

[hconverse02]

Just now, asus killer said:

sorry but... asic miners FTW 

^^ For sure, frees up gpus and I don't mind another memory shortage if people are going to waste money on asic miners that won't pay them back in 5 years.

[Enkephalin]

6 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

Or how about not waste power at all on an a fake currency?

Technically all currency is just a token of some sort, representing something of value that is stored away. Gold is no longer a good store of value and we don't have enough to even cover our costs (speaking as the US) to support all of the money we have printed and given to banks for free. Runaway inflation with no real backing is a MASSIVE problem that cryptocurrency can solve. Among other things.

[hconverse02]

Just now, Brooksie359 said:

Honestly if this screws over big minners I will be happy. Such a waste of hardware and energy. I don't care at all about what they are trying to accomplish with cryptocurrency. That being said if they find a way to do that while consuming less energy with these miners then it's a good thing. 

I'd be ok if we moved away from paper money entirely, but I don't think mining is the way to do it, because it is just a wasteful way of trying to make your own money.  I like cryptocurrencies because they give a more secure way to buy things, but I don't like the mining situation.

[mynameisjuan]

1 minute ago, hconverse02 said:

Well technically any fiat money is fake currency if that is your thinking.  Cryptocurrency is backed by paper currency, but paper currency has no real value, we value it based on how the economy is.

No I mean in terms of one day they just decided, hey look, took me a few seconds to crack this code, sweet, ill give you $20,000 for that number.

 

Its a waste of power that is used to dump money into the economy with no work behind it essentially not benefiting society

[Brooksie359]

1 minute ago, hconverse02 said:

Well technically any fiat money is fake currency if that is your thinking.  Cryptocurrency is backed by paper currency, but paper currency has no real value, we value it based on how the economy is.

The economy in which is legally enforced to take. With a government currency is it required that people except it to pay debts. The same can not be said about crypto currency. The whole fact that people think normal currency isn't backed by anything is dumb af.

[hconverse02]

Just now, mynameisjuan said:

took me a few seconds to crack this code, sweet, ill give you $20,000 for that number.

Yeah crypto is not that easy to crack.  Paypal accounts on the deep web are easier to buy and crack than another person's crypto wallet.  A wallet with money in it is only found in 1 spot, stored as 1s and 0s in a hard drive somewhere, so you can't just 'download' someone's money  

[hconverse02]

1 minute ago, Brooksie359 said:

With a government currency is it required that people except it to pay debts. The same can not be said about crypto currency. The whole fact that people think normal currency isn't backed by anything is dumb af.

That's because crypto currency is not legally secured by the government, but neither is paypal, because you are taking paper money and converting it into a number on a computer.

[mynameisjuan]

Just now, hconverse02 said:

Yeah crypto is not that easy to crack.  Paypal accounts on the deep web are easier to buy and crack than another person's crypto wallet.  A wallet with money in it is only found in 1 spot, stored as 1s and 0s in a hard drive somewhere, so you can't just 'download' someone's money  

Not talking about cracking someones wallet, talking about how mining works. Essentially cracking a hash.

[Brooksie359]

3 minutes ago, Enkephalin said:

Technically all currency is just a token of some sort, representing something of value that is stored away. Gold is no longer a good store of value and we don't have enough to even cover our costs (speaking as the US) to support all of the money we have printed and given to banks for free. Runaway inflation with no real backing is a MASSIVE problem that cryptocurrency can solve. Among other things.

Even with gold as backing runaway inflation was still an issue. The whole theory that having good as backing makes the currency invulnerable from inflation issues is flawed.

[laminutederire]

3 minutes ago, Enkephalin said:

ASIC's are good if they are available for people like you and me. Unfortunately though there is a monopoly and tight control over the ASIC market and it keeps cryptocurrencies less decentralized and gives more power to miners in China.

To be fair, it tends to be like GPUs aren't available to us as well anyway... so overall, China will still mine a lot more but will ravage the environment doing so.

 

3 minutes ago, hconverse02 said:

I'd be ok if we moved away from paper money entirely, but I don't think mining is the way to do it, because it is just a wasteful way of trying to make your own money.  I like cryptocurrencies because they give a more secure way to buy things, but I don't like the mining situation.

To be fair in an ideal world we wouldn't need money. Trust would suffice. But as we all know, the human kind is untrustworthy so we have to have money to compensate...

[Brooksie359]

1 minute ago, hconverse02 said:

That's because crypto currency is not legally secured by the government, but neither is paypal, because you are taking paper money and converting it into a number on a computer.

PayPal is the equivalent of a bank transaction like a debit card only with some added security. To compare it to a currency is a huge stretch.