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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?

#271

Post by acdha »

0x0nyandesu wrote: post #268
naruvimama wrote: post #263

Just waiting for the EU and US to restrict, crackdown or regulate bitcoin and other private crypto. At the minimum ban regulated institutions from dealing in it. Problem is too many people are already heavily invested in the pyramid scheme.

Most capitalists see crypto and the GPU market as just capitalism working as intended. There's nothing stopping gpu manufacturers from producing more product. Given that crypto is already 10 years old and has other things depending on it you sound like an old man yelling at some kids on their lawn.

What “other things” depend on cryptocurrencies which are about something other than selling cryptocurrencies? NFTs are the most common example but their valuations depend on people using the art as a loss leader to sell tokens.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#272

Post by kingo55 »

ip26 wrote: post #254
kingo55 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There are forks of Ethereum already running PoS consensus (e.g. Binance Smart Chain, Songbird and an upcoming fork called PulseChain to name a few). I hear the difficult part is getting the sharding to work.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#273

Post by toolz »

kingo55 wrote: post #266
toolz wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We're seeing evidence for a preference for PoS already [1]. Proof of Work only makes sense if you'll have majority hash rate. Would you trust PoW in the case of Ethereum Classic? 1: https://coinmarketcap.com/view/pos/ Edit: Also I should highlight I'm not arguing to shift away from PoW where it makes sense.

> We're seeing evidence for a preference for PoS already

This isn't evidence of proof of work going away. I'm not sure why you think it is. More coins will be made with PoW and the ones that have PoW today likely will stay PoW. There's no reason to believe PoW is going to shrink, just because PoS is growing.

> Would you trust PoW in the case of Ethereum Classic

No, but I trust PoW with coins that have ASIC/FGPA resistant hashing algorithms. PoS isn't without trust issues either. What do you do if/when defi starts offering greater returns than staking? Obviously there will be a large exodus in staking making it more vulnerable to majority attacks as well.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#274

Post by bittercynic »

itsoktocry wrote: post #270
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…

> 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. So they're going to manage to not sell any cards (without disclosing that as a public company), set up the infrastructure and do a 51% attack on bitcoin in front of everyone, then "cash out" as if there would be pe…

I hadn't considered this before, but that's a really compelling reason that a 51% attack would not be worth anyone's while. Seems like a successful 51% attack would just wreck bitcoin, and there wouldn't be any way to cash out.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#275

Post by ikt »

falcolas wrote: post #262
ip26 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

At this point, it feels like the corporate perpetual “13 months out“. i.e. never coming, always on the horizon.

this is a major update to a system that handles trillions in transactions, i'm happy they're taking their time on it.

tbh though very seriously likely this year, all the major infrastructure is in place

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#276

Post by rasz »

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?

Relying on single customer can have quite severe negative consequences (walmart crushing whole businesses is a good example). GPU shortage is destroying PC position as a viable gaming platform. Give it couple more years of GPU shortages and Nvidia will irrevocably lose whole market segment, leaving it with compute and shaky scam riddled crypto.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#277

Post by kelseyfrog »

itsoktocry wrote: post #267
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. For all its faults, the market is great at solving these problems. Though I suppose it depends on what you mean by "normal".

The problem is that miners are buying GPUs. Without denying the problem, how can the market fix this?

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#278

Post by musha68k »

ip26 wrote: post #254
kingo55 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I gave up on crypto because of the failed promise of proof of stake in ethereum especially. We are talking 2015 here. AFAIR it’s been minimum 6 years. Tezos has been looking interesting though I never looked in detail anymore. OCaml based, COQ checked code base and truly proof-of-stake last time I checked? Did anyone play with it in here? I know Ubisoft jumped on the lets-create-artificial-scarcity-where-we-can NFT hype train for some DLC. A terrible idea on the whole which should never find traction but interesting to me again because it’s apparently built on greater Tezos “stack”.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#279

Post by rasz »

toolz wrote: post #260
stouset wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

Wouldnt 51% attack allow you to rewrite contracts?

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#280

Post by NotVerstappen »

dave333 wrote: post #229
rasz wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The cost of power is about to drop significantly. A leased 250 KW Suncell generator could mine a lot of crypto. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100011186387437

Well thanks, that's a good couple of minutes of hilarity. You should really use an /s though; I was hoping for a breakthrough in solar concentrators or something similar.
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