Earlier quoted context omitted.
the vast majority of mining happens off renewable energy, because it doesn't make economic sense to mine on non-renewables. its why 'mines' cluster near hydro plants and places that have good solar.
> because it doesn't make economic sense to mine on non-renewables That's not true at all. You can enter a power cost into this calculator: https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator/nvidia-rtx... It comes out positive using energy prices from virtually anywhere. The idea that mining is powered purely by renewables that would somehow otherwise go to waste (that is, not take fossil fuel plants offline) is pure…
Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half
721–730 of 762 posts
Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half
#722Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there any reliable data on the actual environmental harm? I've heard so many times that it's renewable energy being used because it's so cheap. There was something about mining near dams.
> I've heard so many times that it's renewable energy being used because it's so cheap. It's a myth from the pro-cryptocurrency crowd. With recent price spikes, mining is profitable even if you have to pay relative high prices for electricity. You don't need to have cheap energy. Also, it's another myth that we have an abundance of hydroelectric power that would otherwise go to waste if not for Bitcoin. With modern p…
Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half
#723Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there any reliable data on the actual environmental harm? I've heard so many times that it's renewable energy being used because it's so cheap. There was something about mining near dams.
The upper bound on environmental harm is the damage that would be done by the most harmful energy production method used: any renewable energy spent on mining could be used instead to replace that harmful production. (It's only an upper bound because energy isn't perfectly fungible.) Renewable energy is also better than fossil energy in terms of environmental damage, but it's not free from damage. A dam is a massive…
Or is there energy being "stolen" from other uses?
As I wrote: is there any reliable data?
Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half
#724Earlier quoted context omitted.
> what is that actually useful for? Ownership. It's the difference between "I own 20 quatloos because the Bank of Endor says so" vs. "I own 20 quatloos". It supports actual ownership instead of representative or proxy ownership. In the same way that you can have $20 in the bank or $20 in your wallet. When it's in your wallet, it's actually yours and you own it. When it's in your bank account, then you don't actually…
I was hoping someone would give this answer. OK... so what exactly is "ownership"? A buddy of mine mined ~160 BTC (currently about USD $8.1m) back when it was fairly worthless. He left it on a hard drive on one of his many machines. BTC became worth something. He look for said machine and HD. Couldn't find it. That BTC is effectively gone forever. So... who owns it? There are a not small amount of stories like the on…
Really? Ignoring the philosophic debate, ownership in terms of BTC deals with the capacity to modify the ledger using an agreed-upon protocol -- but you already know this, and I don't know why you're asking that question. What do _you_ think ownership means in terms of BTC? Do you think you can implement a public system for ownership of digital assets without a distributed consensus system? Or Verifiable transactions? Maybe you can, and if you do I'd love to see it. Good Luck.
>So... who owns it?
The person who has the key.
Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half
#725Gamers hate miners, they're driving the price up, make hardware impossible to get ect ... It's a really problematic situation. Almost 6 month after launching new graphic cards from AMD / NVIDIA good luck gettting an RTX 30xx or 6800. On a side note all those virtual currency are just plain wrong on the environment side, it does not make any sense in 2021 to have a currency that need heavy computation thus increasing…
> it does not make any sense in 2021 to have a currency that need heavy computation thus increasing power consumption Because it makes so much sense to dedicate equal or if not vastly greater resources to playing games?
So no, not equal, not greater, in fact lower. And I think the Graphics Processing Unit should process graphics, don't you?
Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half
#726Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If they start penalizing uncommon workloads, this kills innovation in many areas, videogames included. I'm not too worried about that. Nvidia has track record of releasing driver updates to address issues in end-user applications. If a legitimate application got accidentally flagged, people will report it and nvidia will whitelist them.
> people will report it and nvidia will whitelist them That approach doesn’t work in general. Look at “Manage 3D settings / Program settings” in nVidia’s control panel. They only have presets for very popular software like Adobe After Effects or Premiere, benchmarks like 3D mark, or AAA videogames.
Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half
#727Earlier quoted context omitted.
I bought them through a IT reseller, at more or less retail price around here.
Honest question: Have you calculated your profits now VS what your profits would have been if those same $$ purchased the cryptocurrency of your choice on the day you bought the cards instead? Which would have been more profitable (taking selling the equipment after into consideration as well).
Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half
#728Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm trying to imagine what you think went through the mind of Satoshi Nakamoto. Do you imagine he just woke up one day and said "You know what I like? Carbon emissions! For no reason but carbon emissions! Somehow, I benefit from carbon emissions!". I really just don't think that's how it panned out.
Does it matter? The reality is the same.
Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half
#729Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nvidia is effectively incentivizing the cracking of their driver and firmware security signing with millions of dollars. Because a person who cracks it can build a more profitable mining farm It's a sort of accidental bug bounty and I wonder if Nvidia have really thought this through?
If you crack it, you haven't found a bug though. You managed to do a bit of circumvention.
Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half
#730Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is the thrust of this story any different from someone losing paper cash? How many millions/billions have been lost from physical currency becoming inaccessible?
The issue at hand is the potential value of “distributed consensus and verifiable transactions with no central trusted authority”. My point is that most people seem to prefer having a central trusted authority, specifically for custodianship. That’s why most people put money that is significant to them somewhere in the banking system rather than a shoebox or a tin can somewhere. They want that money to be be traceabl…