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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?

#251

Post by kingo55 »

andy_ppp wrote: post #241
groone wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is the terrifying thing about a bug in one of these systems or some other kind of attack. The whole network can suddenly drop to zero in the blink of an eye.

As with any software, bugs can be fixed or forked out. The risk of it going to zero is smaller than most people think. Remember the inflation bugs Bitcoin had in it's early days? [1]

1: https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/itcoin-unhackable-it-h...

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#252

Post by svara »

rasz wrote: post #172
svara wrote: post #158

A game theoretically designed paperclip maximizer is growing so large that we're starting to see collateral damage in the broad economy; car prices and availability issues, just to name one example.

Forget car prices, look at overall energy prices this winter.

I don't see the direct link between energy prices and PoW mining. At least not beyond the theoretical supply and demand argument, and PoW mining energy demand is still relatively small. Care to elaborate?

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#253

Post by cultofmetatron »

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…

as a thought experiment, lets say I had a time machine.

I go back in time with a super computer and mine all the coins the first year and lock them up in my wallet. I then return to the present day.

Are they worth anything?

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#254

Post by ip26 »

kingo55 wrote: post #248
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…

At least on the ethereum side they are moving to a Proof of Stake system which doesn't require the insane hardware and energy that Proof of Work consensus requires. So there will be some relief on the horizon. Also, I expect over time that fewer cryptos will use Proof of Work. Unless you're Bitcoin/Ethereum, proof of work chains get attacked all the time. Look at Ethereum Classic.

How many years has etherium been putting off proof of stake now? Two? Three?

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#255

Post by toolz »

kingo55 wrote: post #248
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…

At least on the ethereum side they are moving to a Proof of Stake system which doesn't require the insane hardware and energy that Proof of Work consensus requires. So there will be some relief on the horizon. Also, I expect over time that fewer cryptos will use Proof of Work. Unless you're Bitcoin/Ethereum, proof of work chains get attacked all the time. Look at Ethereum Classic.

As someone deeply interested and invested in crypto I strongly disagree. Proof of work has it's place in the ecosystem and isn't going anywhere. Plenty of modern chains are utilizing proof of work for various reasons.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#256

Post by ByteJockey »

andy_ppp wrote: post #241
groone wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is the terrifying thing about a bug in one of these systems or some other kind of attack. The whole network can suddenly drop to zero in the blink of an eye.

Sure, but basically every currency has some theoretical problem.

Usually it's just about the currency becoming worthless (usually only a problem in government controlled currencies that have loans in foreign currencies), or people just not accepting it anymore.

There's no inherent value in any currency, it's just a useful fiction because it's really hard to go get five goats to trade somebody for a laptop.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#257

Post by cryptica »

surfmike wrote: post #47
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…

It wouldn’t matter if Google or Facebook’s profit was denominated in ETC, BTC, or fiat; those companies are massively profitable.

It would matter if all of their customers' earnings were also denominated in BTC. It would dramatically affect their customers' spending habits. For example, while they might be willing to borrow fiat to pay for ads, they might not want to borrow BTC for this same purpose because they know that they may not be able to meet repayments (e.g. BTC's scarcity means that it may not be possible to acquire back that borrowed BTC in the future; cost of BTC is likely to be higher due to the deflationary dynamic). Hard money would affect behavior in profound ways.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#258

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#259

Post by Retric »

ByteJockey wrote: post #256
andy_ppp wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the terrifying thing about a bug in one of these systems or some other kind of attack. The whole network can suddenly drop to zero in the blink of an eye.

Sure, but basically every currency has some theoretical problem. Usually it's just about the currency becoming worthless (usually only a problem in government controlled currencies that have loans in foreign currencies), or people just not accepting it anymore. There's no inherent value in any currency, it's just a useful fiction because it's really hard to go get five goats to trade somebody for a laptop.

Currencies are propped up by taxes. The IRS wants a significant percentage of the US GDP paid in USD, as long as the economy exists and the government doesn’t print truly vast amounts of money from thin air the USD can only move within a fairly narrow range.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#260

Post by toolz »

stouset wrote: post #221
capableweb wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the whole point of using a blockchain is to have a publicly verifiable ledger of all transactions. If anything goes wrong, there will be so many alarm bells ringing across the world that probably it'll be a hearable event for most people living in places that resembles modern civilization.

You can sell your cryptocurrency for real dollars before openly performing your 51% attack.

The idea that you could buy a real-world item worth half as much as the amount of ETH/BTC you would mine in an hour or two or 51% is simply unrealistic.

ETH mining at 500TH (a solid chunk over 51% just for ease) would net you 300 ETH an hour...that's 1.1 million USD, which means you would have to be able to purchase millions of dollars worth of real world items that would be released to you within the time-frame of your attack (in this case an hour) to make this even approaching "worth it" from a risk/reward viewpoint and even that calculation is ignoring just how profitable they'd be just mining normally for the foreseeable future.

No one is waiting for just an hour worth of confirmations for millions of dollars of real world goods exchanged for ETH.

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