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Used GPUs flood the market as Ethereum's price drops below $150

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Re: Used GPUs flood the market as Ethereum's price drops below $150

#211

Post by [deleted] »

canoebuilder wrote: post #193
jstanley wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1) Surely we can come up with a less wasteful solution to this 10 years ago people would have told you there is no possible solution to this. Proof-of-work cryptocurrency is a tremendous breakthrough. It will certainly be surpassed one day, but it's currently our best available option for a system of money.

What? Why isn't everyone using "our best available option"? What are the benefits of thousands of different systems keeping a record of every single transaction , and how is this not a hindrance to widespread use of our best available option? Crypto-currencies have utility and uses but they are rather niche and specialized. Crypto-currencies aren't a mass market system. And they're not structured in a way that they c…

[deleted]

Re: Used GPUs flood the market as Ethereum's price drops below $150

#212

Post by ebcode »

canoebuilder wrote: post #193
jstanley wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1) Surely we can come up with a less wasteful solution to this 10 years ago people would have told you there is no possible solution to this. Proof-of-work cryptocurrency is a tremendous breakthrough. It will certainly be surpassed one day, but it's currently our best available option for a system of money.

What? Why isn't everyone using "our best available option"? What are the benefits of thousands of different systems keeping a record of every single transaction , and how is this not a hindrance to widespread use of our best available option? Crypto-currencies have utility and uses but they are rather niche and specialized. Crypto-currencies aren't a mass market system. And they're not structured in a way that they c…

One benefit of having a distributed ledger (your thousands of different systems) is that it decentralizes trust. With fiat currency, you have to trust the government (or private company, in the case of the U.S.A.) that issues it, not to print so much that they debase it. I have no trust in my government, or fellow private corporations, given what I've been through. Bitcoin, on the other hand, well, at least I can read the source code and compile the executable myself.

Given a choice between trusting a person/corporation and trusting a mathematical equation, I would rather place my trust in the mathematics.

The internet is a mass market system, and it was designed with biological growth in mind. Bitcoin is built on top of the internet. So I don't see why you would think it couldn't see widespread adoption. It's just another program.

Re: Used GPUs flood the market as Ethereum's price drops below $150

#213

Post by a_imho »

aerique wrote: post #204
a_imho wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Miners currently use approximately only 0.0012% of the energy consumed by the world. Actually if that number is accurate, is quite shocking.

I assume you mean shockingly high?

Indeed, though I have to admit I do not really pay attention to crypto currencies.

Re: Used GPUs flood the market as Ethereum's price drops below $150

#214

Post by marblar »

DanBlake wrote: post #7

Just took a quick look at this. If you are located in the 'mining valley' of Washington where power is ~2c/kwh you are still getting healthy profits. A computer with 7 GTX 1070 graphics cards should produce ~230 mh/s and draw 1 kw. This would cost approximately $30/month in power factoring in kw demand + cooling. The above setup will currently generate $385/month in ETH. So basically for miners who are in the right s…

It seems like if you were located in a "mining valley" the last thing you would want to do is have it mentioned in a top comment on Hacker News.

Re: Used GPUs flood the market as Ethereum's price drops below $150

#215

Post by chillingeffect »

walterstucco wrote: post #196
mrb wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) No there is no other way. (An alternative, proof-of-stake, is still an active research area. Even Ethereum abandoned the idea of completely switching away from proof-of-work because they realized PoS isn't completely workable.) 2) Because a permission-less censorship-resistant decentralized financial system has the potential to truly improve society, hence worth spending energy on it. I have presented multiple arg…

> a permission-less censorship-resistant decentralized financial system has the potential to truly improve society It is dependent on a huge amount of cheap energy I wouldn't call it censorship resistant yet Raise the cost of the energy and only the ones with deep pockets can decide what is true

This comment led me to compare crypto mining with the American Gold Rush in the 1800s.

An intriguing difference might at least some miners struck it big due after finding huge geographical deposits of gold. In cryptocoins, though, the flatter distribution of the space means people tend to get out what they put in.

Re: Used GPUs flood the market as Ethereum's price drops below $150

#216

Post by ucho »

DanBlake wrote: post #22
pfooti wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's 385 / month revenue? On a setup that's what, $3400 to buy, for seven 1070s? Seems like asking for 10 months to cover capex is a bit thin, given the price instability.

High risk, high reward. If you buy the average piece of real estate and rent it out, you are looking at 30+ years to cover the cost. You can also lose it all (housing bubble) or quadruple your investment (investing in SF 10 years ago)

Buying ASICs is high risk and (probably) high reward - in event of crash you are left with worthless machines. GPUs will still have some value, even after all crypto currencies drop.

Re: Used GPUs flood the market as Ethereum's price drops below $150

#217

Post by shoo »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #184
mrb wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) No there is no other way. (An alternative, proof-of-stake, is still an active research area. Even Ethereum abandoned the idea of completely switching away from proof-of-work because they realized PoS isn't completely workable.) 2) Because a permission-less censorship-resistant decentralized financial system has the potential to truly improve society, hence worth spending energy on it. I have presented multiple arg…

I read your arguments and unfortunately most don't hold water. > 1. Miners currently use approximately only 0.0012% of the energy consumed by the world. This doesn't change the fact that you're using energy. The second argument is basically the same, just extrapolating into the future. > 3. Mining would be a waste if there was another more efficient way to implement a Bitcoin-like currency without proof-of-work. This…

> 4. Bitcoin is already a net benefit to the economy. Venture capitalists invested more than $1 billion into at least 729 Bitcoin companies which created thousands of jobs. You may disregard the first three arguments, but the bottom line is that spending an estimated 150 megawatt in a system that so far created thousands of jobs is a valuable economic move, not a waste.

We cannot decide if an activity is valuable or not based solely on if it creates jobs.

e.g. suppose the government spends $1b on some entirely useless activity, such as employing people to dig holes and fill them in again. From the metrics of job creation and GDP this program can be regarded as a success. But there is a big opportunity cost in that resources and peoples' time has been spent on something utterly pointless when they could have been focused on a less useless or indeed a genuinely useful activity.

The world still has many genuine problems that still need to be solved. The time and resources could be directed to: maintain infrastructure, better educate people, roll out family planning programs, eradicate disease vectors, draft and enforce environmental regulation, build low cost housing, refit systems to improve energy efficiency, ...

Re: Used GPUs flood the market as Ethereum's price drops below $150

#218

Post by ChoGGi »

dawnerd wrote: post #175
jrockway wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he just wants the video card to play games. Gamers have suffered from low supply of graphics cards because of the mining fad. With that dying down, they should be able to buy a card now.

Kinda, I needed a new card to power two 4k monitors for my office setup. Needed it that day, so amazon was out of the question. All the local stores had 1060s for basically what 1080s run at. Ended up just buying a 1080 for a few bucks more, because why not. Apparently the 1060s are really good for ethereum...

1060/70s (GDDR5) use faster ram than the 1080s (GDDR5X).

Faster for mining ETH that is.

Re: Used GPUs flood the market as Ethereum's price drops below $150

#219

Post by angus-prune »

nodamage wrote: post #146
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me naive, but am I the only one who looks at mining as one of the worst inventions for consuming energy possible? Almost all of society functions on energy, some of the largest breakthroughs in society have been on sudden abundance of cheap energy and the machines, vehicles products they can create. Entire economies can be crippled by rising costs in energy (oil shocks of the 70s) and boom by sudden drops in cos…

A cryptocurrency enthusiast would tell you that the energy consumed is not "wasted" because it is necessary to secure the block chain. Personally I find this argument unconvincing and somewhat tautological. 1) Surely we can come up with a less wasteful solution to this and 2) why should we assume that securing the block chain is a actually good use for the energy spent? Especially if you consider that the process of…

It is worth comparing this against the cost of minting money.

A brief search showed that the US mint used 694,462.4 gigajoules in 2011[1] (~0.2Twh). The US is ~25% of world GDP, so lets times this by 4 for a naive cost of minting across the whole world.

This gives a cost of ~1Twh annually for minting the entire world's supply of money, with a total Gross world product of ~$80 trillion[2].

Bitcoin is using ~1.3Twh[3] for a market cap of ~$35 billion[4].

Overall this means that bitcoins are ~3000x less efficient than physical money.

After writing this I've realised I should perhaps limit to the cash based economy.

The amount of US dollars in circulation is ~$1.3 trillion[5].

This gives a slightly better ratio of 222x less efficient.

Bitcoin is 222 times less efficient than a physical system of metal coins and paper/fabric/plastic.

[1] http://www.designlife-cycle.com/us-penny/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product [3] http://blog.zorinaq.com/bitcoin-mining-is-not-wasteful/ [4] https://coinmarketcap.com/ [5] https://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/fedpoint/fed01.html

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