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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

#321

Post by MereInterest »

mrb wrote: post #151
Fej wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't seriously be comparing those the entire rest of the world economy. Cryptocurrency doesn't even register as a drop in the metaphorical bucket.

That's not the comparison I'm making. Compare the ratio of energy spent over jobs created. It makes sense to spend a few hundred megawatts on a system that created thousands of jobs.

Jobs created is a complete misdirection. Productive jobs created is the correct measure. I could pay thousands of people to repeatedly dig holes and fill them in, and it would be an utter waste. I don't believe that Bitcoin serves a useful purpose, and so until convinced otherwise, I consider Bitcoin jobs as less useful than the hole-digging jobs. At least the hole-diggers don't waste electricity in the process.

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

#322

Post by raverbashing »

Zpalmtree wrote: post #312
raverbashing wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Barring natural disasters and other extreme events, your real estate risks losing (let's say) 50% of value if you made a good purchase The intrinsic value of 1 BTC is ZERO

But you bought the GPU not the BTC? Even if BTC becomes worthless, you still have the GPU to sell

True, that applies for investing in mining

(there's also the electricity you used, but if you live in a cold place you saved on heating so that could be something not lost as well)

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

#323

Post by CyberDildonics »

MereInterest wrote: post #317
mrb wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" We cannot decide if an activity is valuable or not based solely on if it creates jobs. " You are right. However Bitcoin is not pointless and comparable to digging holes and filling them up. The simple fact that this financial network is censorship-resistant is a huge benefit to society, already positively impacting many people.

I'd see that as a negative, rather than a positive. Being resistant to censorship means that it is also resistant to correction. With Bitcoin, there is no way to reverse a fraudulent transaction. If a debt is owed, one could not put a lien on bitcoins to prevent them from being spent, as one could with regular currency.

It depends on your application. You are thinking about this from the view of someone who spends money on common every day items with a credit card. Money is used for much more than that. One example is the ability to go to another country and take money out of an ATM with bitcoin. Suddenly cash and available money is more ubiquitous and you can use your money without permission.

Many people don't realize the value of these things until they experience a hiccup in their current routine.

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

#324

Post by keredson »

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…

I've had this thought too, but the counter argument is gold. Spending millions in fuel to dig up chunks of gold, just to go "re-bury" them in a bank vault somewhere is an equally appalling, use of the world's energy resources, but that hasn't stopped it from being a profitable venture for thousands of years.

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

#325

Post by keredson »

IanCal wrote: post #185
KVFinn wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A cryptocurrency enthusiast would tell you that the energy consumed is not "wasted" because it is necessary to secure the block chain. Note that this is zero-sum. If a device is invented tomorrow that is 100x more efficient per dollar/watt to mine, the cost to 'secure the blockchain' remains the same because people will just buy 100x more computing power for the same investment and the difficulty ramps up to compens…

This is not correct unless you factor in the hardware cost. If you changed graphics cards to use 0.1% of their current power, then miners would not immediately buy 1000 times more graphics cards.

you're right about the detail of his point (people won't buy 100x just because a 100x increase in efficiency), but the point he was trying to make is correct. given a fixed global investment, a 100x increase in efficiency won't reduce costs. it will just increase the difficulty level to compensate.

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

#326

Post by MereInterest »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #323
MereInterest wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd see that as a negative, rather than a positive. Being resistant to censorship means that it is also resistant to correction. With Bitcoin, there is no way to reverse a fraudulent transaction. If a debt is owed, one could not put a lien on bitcoins to prevent them from being spent, as one could with regular currency.

It depends on your application. You are thinking about this from the view of someone who spends money on common every day items with a credit card. Money is used for much more than that. One example is the ability to go to another country and take money out of an ATM with bitcoin. Suddenly cash and available money is more ubiquitous and you can use your money without permission. Many people don't realize the value of…

Ubiquity and the inability to correct the record are two different properties. As it is, I already can take money out of an ATM in a different country, with my ATM card. Yes, there is a fee applied. No, I don't consider that a large downside, as currency exchanges are the price a society pays in order to avoid getting into Greece's current situation, where the currency can't be adjusted to help the economy.

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

#327

Post by my_ghola »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #135
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…

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…

I think mining should not be a way to profit. The rewards are so mining doesn't cost anything to miners. Bitcoin/Ethereum users should be compelled to mine because it means more security that no one controls the blockchain.

I wonder if there's an algorithm that could deter people from building mining farms?

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

#328

Post by my_ghola »

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…

There was a coin called Primecoin that looked for prime numbers rather than useless hashes. It also went up in the last few months and is going down now like the rest.

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

#329

Post by my_ghola »

mejin wrote: post #222
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…

isn't one of the main reasons that people like ethereum is because instead of solving random hashes, miners run programs that people want solved? or maybe I'm confusing it with another thing

They do but in order to run those programs people pay with Ether, the Ethereum coin. And for mining Ether you solve the random hashes.

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

#330

Post by TeMPOraL »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #298
ExcilSploft wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it that far fetched? Right now most disk encrypting ransomware demands bitcoin for decryption.

Are biological weapons being used to mass murder people a natural extrapolation of ransomware?

We're not that far yet, but the potential is there. The closest thing are the current bitcoin-powered dark markets, where people buy various kinds of drugs (of various levels of harm and legality), including custom-made chemicals.
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