I keep seeing this number again and again. 20%. Sometimes 25%. Sometimes 15%. Usually no lower than any of the three.
TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage
241–250 of 620 posts
Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, thank you for providing fast and cheap remittance payments to poorer countries.
> fast and cheap ???
Bitcoin onchain payments are still faster and cheaper than using something like Western Union.
The lightning network is even faster and cheaper than that.
https://twitter.com/jackmallers/status/1428429890957848591
(tweet text, also includes a video and some more info) "With @Bitnob_official's Lightning Network integration, we now have free, instant, non-reversible remittances of any size to and from the United States, Nigeria, and Ghana.
$10 in my US bank account became spendable NGN for @bernard_parah in seconds.
Monetary history."
Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the short term, sure, I'll buy that. In the long term, monopoly or near monopoly of any sort will turn toxic.
That depends on if someone else gets in. AMD or Intel could if they wanted to - without the expertise it will be hard, but a few expensive years of research and they can get back into it. Hire a few TMSC people. Or it could be someone completely new. The problem is hard, but solvable. TMSC does have incentive to keep prices low enough that that doesn't happen. They also have other incentives to treat good customers w…
>a few expensive years of research and they can get back into it.
I haven't kept up much in the last couple of years, but back when I did, I was under the impression that AMD couldn't actually afford to do this. I know their condition has improved with the good fortunes of Zen, but is it enough that they could get back into semiconductor fabrication?
I have no doubt Intel can afford to, though.
Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not for Bitcoin. PoS is a broken system that reinvents oligarchies. Proof of Work is the only secure protocol that works today -- possessing the real, desirable properties like decentralization and censorship resistance. Don't tell me about vaporware ETH2. The end goal for Bitcoin is Dyson spheres around stars. And it can be no other way.
A Kardashev Type III civilization, but all it does is mine bitcoin at the same rate as today.
Lol, this got me good
Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the short term, sure, I'll buy that. In the long term, monopoly or near monopoly of any sort will turn toxic.
That depends on if someone else gets in. AMD or Intel could if they wanted to - without the expertise it will be hard, but a few expensive years of research and they can get back into it. Hire a few TMSC people. Or it could be someone completely new. The problem is hard, but solvable. TMSC does have incentive to keep prices low enough that that doesn't happen. They also have other incentives to treat good customers w…
I am not an expert, but I thought it was more like a few expensive decades than years. Intel is already in this business and they have only been able to fall farther behind TSM even given billions in investment.
Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
You really may be waiting a good while. And if a desirable used model is ever a decent price, it’ll be a unit burnt out from mining fake money that’s only used to buy real money or a mail order of LSD.
Mining usually does not "burn out" a GPU. Most miners cool their cards adequately and undervolt them. If a GPU is somehow damaged from mining then it’s typically observable - it either does not work or it artifacts quickly, making it easy to detect and avoid.
Even if they do that, they’re still running it 24/7/365 for possibly years at a time. Wouldn’t that be some serious wear and tear? Genuine question - I have no clue.
Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with this but it's even worse than that. Estimates on Bitcoin energy usage put it at over 1TW now. I believe it was comparable to the energy consumption of Argentina. Advocates will defend this by saying most energy usage is renewable. This conjures the image of someone with a bunch of solar panels but the reality is that it's primarily hydro power because that's the cheapest. Thing is, in regions with cheap…
Pandora’s box has been opened. There will always be another coin to pump and dump and thus there will always be another coin to mine.
Don't you think it could be aggressively regulated against? I doubt it could be completely stopped, but demand could be sharply reduced if using and mining cryptocurrency carried sharp legal penalties.
Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage
#248Supply shortage is another way of saying demand excess. I don’t see much evidence that TSMC ever really slowed production, at least for their most advanced processes that are in high demand. This is yet another way we’re all forced to pay the price for cryptocurrency. As long as GPUs are profitable for mining, they will be purchased and put to work. The saddest part is that each additional GPU added to the mining net…
Can we say "Bitcoin" when we're talking about Bitcoin and not lump all proof of stake and other very efficient systems in with proof of work coins?
Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don’t see much evidence that TSMC ever really slowed production, at least for their most advanced processes that are in high demand. One thing I heard is that the drought (worst one in 50 years in Taiwan) has really affected them, and various sources seem to confirm it, here's one : https://fortune.com/2021/06/12/chip-shortage-taiwan-drought-... And while I wholeheartedly agree with the crypto/GPU issue, all in a…
> One thing I heard is that the drought (worst one in 50 years in Taiwan) has really affected them ... This is the one aspect of manufactuing of chips that many are actually ignorant about - it needs huge amounts of pure water. This is the main reason why India doesn't yet have any fab, despite having the human resource for it and investors and government showing great interest to setup one. Two or three decades back…
What happens to the water the plants use? Is it polluted and unusable, or just tied up temporarily and can be released [safely] back into wherever it was diverted from?
Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
The energy use is of captured energy that would be lost in transport to other energy users, because it uses just as much energy or more to transport it. This means that “renewable energy more than the output of Argentina was always being wasted for over a century every day because it was uneconomical to transport it” Crypto mining has been unique in that it only needs power and housing to stay dry, low infrastructure…
If your first paragraph is about rejected energy, then there's not a lot to say here except that rejected energy doesn't mean what you think it does. If not, then I don't know what it is supposed to be about. No one builds power plants in places where there is no demand for power. Electric power can be carried over pretty large distances though with very low losses, so having say a few hundred km between a hydro-dam…
> (and from what we're able to tell, it is not, instead we see coal and natural gas plants being ramped up to power bitcoin farms)
like I said, advocate against those specific mining sites. those made headlines in your world, while others did not.
A lot of captured energy mining occurs at remote flare gas sites, where those sites are in the business of pumping oil and flaring off byproducts and not in the business of moving power a few hundred km. These are highly polluting places, and crypto mining is ironically (to you) their sustainability solution, as they provide a use for the energy that would have been flared into the atmosphere as hydrocarbons instead. As these are also fracking sites, the machines can use the polluted water for cooling. Those kinds of sites are only captured and not necessarily renewable, an important distinction because your example was limited to imagining uneconomical solar. There is much more energy like this able to be tapped while reducing hydrocarbons in the atmosphere, and if it was economical for other use cases that you respect more to tap into that energy, you and others had several decades to do so.