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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?

#231

Post by throwaway6734 »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #140
barkingcat wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Short the currency?

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#232

Post by jrockway »

dagaci wrote: post #205
jcranmer wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I walked into a computer store last night. There were shelves full of CPUs and SSDs and HDDs, and buying several of them at once would have no one batting an eye. Yet there was a policy: only 1 graphics card per customer per month, and that applies solely to graphics cards (and prebuilt computers containing graphics cards). In other words, there is visibly a shortage of graphics cards that is not affecting any other…

I waited 6 months for delivery of my CPU, then immediately had to wait for the RAM.. HEDT woes..

Yeah, I couldn't find ECC memory when I was building my Threadripper workstation mid 2020. I ended up with consumer-grade memory which was ridiculously cheap, however. (I think I got 128GB for less than $400.)

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#233

Post by jrockway »

neogodless wrote: post #120
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

And those are all LHR cards. So in that specific case they were probably mostly gamers tired of waiting for an upgrade.

Wasn't the LHR DRM instantly broken?

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#234

Post by squarefoot »

One word: yes.

https://www.hardwaretimes.com/gpu-mining-farm-w-over-4000-ge...

https://hothardware.com/news/a-look-inside-a-massive-rtx-307...

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-shortages-worsen-crypt...

And energy prices, of course. More demand = higher prices.

Also keep in mind that cryptocurrencies become harder to mine with time, therefore the pursuit of more powerful hardware and more energy isn't going to stop, therefore there's absolutely no way prices of hardware and energy will return to normal until governments won't stop this nonsense.

Pushing for nuclear or carbon is just hiding the problem under the carpet: we don't need more energy because we already have plenty, but we must stop wasting it, especially in a way that is clearly bringing us to a path in which we will need more and more every year.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#235

Post by ctoth »

sdenton4 wrote: post #191
capableweb wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, why would they? They only stand to lose on it, so why do it in the first place?

NVIDIA would reduce demand, but for the FAANG companies it's a neutral proposition, aside from the cost of doing the work to crash the currency. And there's plenty of reasons to want to do so: Proof-of-work currencies are what make ransomware payments possible, and there's a large daily CO2 cost for proof of work currencies. The question is simply when is the cost of the externalities greater than the cost of acting?

> One of the first ransomware attacks ever documented was the AIDS trojan (PC Cyborg Virus) that was released via floppy disk in 1989. Victims needed to send $189 to a P.O. box in Panama to restore access to their systems[0]...

[0]: https://www.crowdstrike.com/cybersecurity-101/ransomware/his...

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#236

Post by littlestymaar »

groone wrote: post #213
barkingcat wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The part where you say "cash out" is hilarious. There is no cash in it. You only get to keep the bits. Any cash comes from buyers and if there is any attack all the buyers are scared away.

> Any cash comes from buyers and if there is any attack all the buyers are scared away.

Well, assuming any kind of rationality in the crypto market is always hazardous: meme coins (doge coin, shiba inu) are worth billions in market cap, so do hard forks of bitcoin, and Ethereum didn't not collapse after they decided to rollback a bunch of things they didn't like during the DAO “hack” while they are advertising Ethereum as immutable and tampering resistant.

You can never be sure how this market will react in any event (well, except Elon tweets I guess)

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#237

Post by XorNot »

dehrmann wrote: post #183
short12 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting concept Why doesn't Nvidia use the cards themselves to mine? Not for the attack but for the profit? Each card is obviously cheaper to produce than they are selling it for. Why not maximize all the profit?

Just guessing, but there's probably more risk to running a mining operation than miners realize, and Nvidia doesn't want that risk. There are also PR issues with energy use. There's enough money in selling pickaxes.

This is exactly it. NVIDIA are also not building more factories to meet the demand because they are (correctly) assessing that a bigger risk for them is demand collapse and a glut of used hardware.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#238

Post by squarefoot »

brokensegue wrote: post #195
cinntaile wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a circular argument. Why are CPU prices a confounding factor?

one can imagine factors that would cause both CPU and GPU prices to increase together. for example general purpose computing demand or supply-side constraints might cause all chip prices to rise. if those non-crypto factors were confounding (say also happened to correlate with crypto-prices maybe due to some third unknown factor) then we would see CPU and GPU prices rise in response to crypto prices. we do not see th…

> for example general purpose computing demand or supply-side constraints might cause all chip prices to rise.

This. Those who can't afford anymore powerful video cards now fall back to CPUs with decent integrated graphics, so that the higher than normal demand is therefore affecting their prices too.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#239

Post by hnaccount_rng »

trulyme wrote: post #217
sdenton4 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NVIDIA would reduce demand, but for the FAANG companies it's a neutral proposition, aside from the cost of doing the work to crash the currency. And there's plenty of reasons to want to do so: Proof-of-work currencies are what make ransomware payments possible, and there's a large daily CO2 cost for proof of work currencies. The question is simply when is the cost of the externalities greater than the cost of acting?

Am I missing something? Why would NVIDIA want to reduce demand for their graphic cards?

There is actually a good case to make here. Nvidia currently is in the tough spot of a) not having the capacity to saturate the market and b) not being able to expand the production to match. B is because they don’t have enough confidence that the crypto people will be there as costumers in 5 years. And A is a problem, because their traditional user base (ie gamers) won’t match the spending, but will still get their fix (just not from Nvidia). And that breaks the strangle hold that they had a couple of years ago on that market.

So short term: having the high prices paid by crypto people is nice. But it destroys their relationship to their old customer base. Depending on where the crypto market will be in 5, 10, 15 years, this can be the 5x of their market cap or the 0.2x

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#240

Post by orasis »

squarefoot wrote: post #234

One word: yes. https://www.hardwaretimes.com/gpu-mining-farm-w-over-4000-ge... https://hothardware.com/news/a-look-inside-a-massive-rtx-307... https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-shortages-worsen-crypt... And energy prices, of course. More demand = higher prices. Also keep in mind that cryptocurrencies become harder to mine with time, therefore the pursuit of more powerful hardware and more energy isn't going to st…

"therefore there's absolutely no way prices of hardware and energy will return to normal until governments won't stop this nonsense." It will stop once the crypto prices reach parity with the hardware investments plus or minus further speculation.
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