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Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

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Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#131

Post by IshKebab »

bvaldivielso wrote: post #69

The article only attempts to show there's correlation, and ends up by saying "correlation doesn't imply causation, but maybe there's causation". So basically, we don't know. I'm not blaming the author, because determining causation is hard, and checking there's correlation between two variables can still be interesting, but the article falls short of answering the question.

They provide decently good evidence of causation, because of the lack of correlation with CPUs. Correlation doesn't prove causation, but it is evidence for it.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#132

Post by sokoloff »

gtsop wrote: post #97
sokoloff wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a seller has limited capacity to produce, is it better for a motivated buyer to be able to buy one, albeit at a price higher than they’d like? Or is it better if the price is what all buyers would like, but many motivated buyers can’t get one at all? Neither is perfectly “right”; it’s a direct trade off between “they’re available if you want one” and “they’re as inexpensive as you’ve come to expect from history”.

My personal answer on this question is the later. Price stays the same. Eventually the produced products will get into some people's hands. The only difference is how much of their money will end up in the seller's pocket. The motivation you have doesn't scale linearly with the amount of money you can spend. Eg you may have very poor people who would make great use of product X and are very motivated, but they can't…

There’s an additional wrinkle in that this choice tends to lead to intermediate sellers who take the latter choice and turn it into the former choice with additional friction and fraud risk (and no additional profit to the producer, which might give them incentive to scale up production to meet the overage of demand.)

High end GPUs are readily available on EBay and other secondhand markets and I’ve resorted to buying them there to get them in for ML training machines. (Same with consoles, concert and sporting event tickets, and other limited production, desirable items.)

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#133

Post by bdcravens »

mirekrusin wrote: post #124
atarian wrote: post #101

One of the craziest videos I saw last year was a mob of people rushing a Micro Center to get their hands on a 3080 TI: https://youtu.be/UNcx9JdC9VM?t=239

We've seen same thing happening with toilet paper.

And yet only one is a requirement for life (sans bidet)

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#134

Post by ShamelessC »

1-6 wrote: post #126
speedgoose wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was told that the Nvidia Tesla cards are easier to buy.

It still doesn’t help that the Ethereum hashrate limiter is not imposed on the highest-end card (it’s FHR not LHR). The 3090 (aka 30-series Titan cards) are still really hard to find. The the 24GB of double-sided GDDR6x gets super hot though and all implementations of the card did not take that into account. The 3080ti’s are easier to find as they’re LHR and price per hashrate ratio isn’t good. What I mean by easier…

Please don't buy GPU's to mine cryptocurrency, you're contributing to a global chip shortage and I really want to play Halo Infinite in 4k.

For real though, cut that out.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#135

Post by shash »

cryptica wrote: post #26

And what's to blame for Bitcoin's high price? A broken fiat monetary system. I can't believe some people still think that Bitcoin is more speculative than major tech stocks. Facebook, Twitter, Google, Uber, Snapchat... All propped up by money printing. I think if we ran a simulation using hard (non-fiat) money, the net losses of these big tech companies would be even more significant than Bitcoin's losses on electric…

Actually what's to blame for Bitcoin's high price is the finite supply of Bitcoin, and the fact that there's wild speculation on its price (which incidentally is what makes it really horrible as a currency, but that's another topic).

And you're mixing up profitability with stock price speculation, which are two very different things - witness the Gamestop incident. Once the stock is sold to the public, its price fluctuations don't actually affect the bottom line of the company unless there's a buyback.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#136

Post by barkingcat »

m_ke wrote: post #72

I work in deep learning and had to camp out in front of a best buy to get my hands on some 3090s. A good portion of the people in line with me were crypto miners who were waiting to get more GPUs to add to their collection because they're making money on each one and as long as it's profitable it makes perfect sense for them to buy up more.

If nvidia straight up just stopped selling any cards, declined all their client/customer base, and just put 100% of their global output to mining cryptocurrencies, I think it's a good chance nvidia can do a 50%+1 attack on both bitcoin and ethereum at the same time.

Once they successfully do the attack, they can take over the blockchains and allocate all cryptocurrencies to themselves, cash out, and it'd probably register as a good profit on their income statements.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#137

Post by capableweb »

barkingcat wrote: post #136
m_ke wrote: post #72

I work in deep learning and had to camp out in front of a best buy to get my hands on some 3090s. A good portion of the people in line with me were crypto miners who were waiting to get more GPUs to add to their collection because they're making money on each one and as long as it's profitable it makes perfect sense for them to buy up more.

If nvidia straight up just stopped selling any cards, declined all their client/customer base, and just put 100% of their global output to mining cryptocurrencies, I think it's a good chance nvidia can do a 50%+1 attack on both bitcoin and ethereum at the same time. Once they successfully do the attack, they can take over the blockchains and allocate all cryptocurrencies to themselves, cash out, and it'd probably reg…

Yeah, they could do that, but what most of these claims ("X could easily profit Y by doing 50%+1 attack") miss, is that once that attack has been made, who'd trade anything with the currency that was attacked? Lets say nvidia does "conquer" Bitcoin and have all the bitcoins, who'd in the right mind would continue to buy/sell Bitcoins after that? The market for Bitcoin would collapse faster than nvidia could excitedly scream "PROFITS!" to their shareholders, making the whole attack unnecessary in the first place.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#138

Post by dagaci »

PC Hardware can come from an Era with so many manufacturers and true-actual fierce competition, resulting in complete commoditisation of components. However, now in 2022, there are only 2 CPU vendors,2 GPU vendors and even with storage the number of manufacturers is small. Only TSMC can deliver 5nm and Mr Cook has all that capacity on lock (AMD and Intel will get a look only when he is done with it)

Mining like with politics is just some easy target to blame, the problem is Monopolies and duopolies.

Events have catalysed a market rife with monopolies and duopolies: these rule the supply chain, they have seen the true prices the market will accept, how can we expect prices to go back to "normal"?

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#139

Post by lottin »

gtsop wrote: post #105
lottin wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably has something to do with the fact that crypto is perceived as having no social value, and therefore people are less inclined to accept negative consequences that may result from such an activity.

Yes this is probably it. But if we walk down that route, what prevents anyone from having a say into what everybody else does with their products. Eg: If think there is no social value in crafting wooden cups, do I have a say in what you do with your purchased wood?

Not you, as an individual, but as a society, absolutely. There are plenty of laws that regulate or forbid certain activities.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#140

Post by cjbgkagh »

barkingcat wrote: post #136
m_ke wrote: post #72

I work in deep learning and had to camp out in front of a best buy to get my hands on some 3090s. A good portion of the people in line with me were crypto miners who were waiting to get more GPUs to add to their collection because they're making money on each one and as long as it's profitable it makes perfect sense for them to buy up more.

If nvidia straight up just stopped selling any cards, declined all their client/customer base, and just put 100% of their global output to mining cryptocurrencies, I think it's a good chance nvidia can do a 50%+1 attack on both bitcoin and ethereum at the same time. Once they successfully do the attack, they can take over the blockchains and allocate all cryptocurrencies to themselves, cash out, and it'd probably reg…

Who would they cash out too, they would have destroyed the market that cost them so much to acquire.
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