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Mining Ethereum on M1 Mac GPU

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Re: Mining Ethereum on M1 Mac GPU

#101
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few (mostly Bitcoin forks), and you can probably make some profit mining them, but they are not big enough to have a significant impact on the global demand for GPUs. At this point, most crypto projects with any real traction (with the obvious exception of Bitcoin) are either ERC-20 tokens running on Ethereum, or other PoS chains that claim to be better than Ethereum (i.e. Cardano). Bitcoin isn't mined wi…

As I said, there are plenty of profitable coins for GPU mining besides Ethereum [0]. Ethereum moving to PoS will not move the needle, people will just move on to something else. [0]: https://whattomine.com/

The hash rate for all the other projects beside Ethereum is minuscule.

Sure, some of it will move to other currencies, but my guess would be it won't be anywhere near 100% as you're suggesting.

Re: Mining Ethereum on M1 Mac GPU

#102
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said, there are plenty of profitable coins for GPU mining besides Ethereum [0]. Ethereum moving to PoS will not move the needle, people will just move on to something else. [0]: https://whattomine.com/

The hash rate for all the other projects beside Ethereum is minuscule. Sure, some of it will move to other currencies, but my guess would be it won't be anywhere near 100% as you're suggesting.

Why is the current hashrate relevant? The market will readjust to changes in hashrate.

Re: Mining Ethereum on M1 Mac GPU

#103
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hash rate for all the other projects beside Ethereum is minuscule. Sure, some of it will move to other currencies, but my guess would be it won't be anywhere near 100% as you're suggesting.

Why is the current hashrate relevant? The market will readjust to changes in hashrate.

It is relevant because I don't think the rest of the projects will end up absorbing all of Ethereum's hashrate. First of all, some of the current miners will sell their hardware and stake ETH instead, becoming validators.

Secondly, I tend to think there'll be a mass extinction event, where most useless projects will eventually die off. You can mine all you want, but if there's no real utility in yet another PoW project (and there isn't), you won't be able to sell the coins at a price that justifies running the operation.

Re: Mining Ethereum on M1 Mac GPU

#104
post #62
post #2

> Is it worth it? > Um. Not really. At current Ethereum prices (2021-02-26), it generates $0.14 of profit per day. It’s still a profit, but very miniscule. The real question is if it makes more money than it costs in electricity. Apple claims it uses 39 W max. That adds up to 0.936 kWh of electricity per day, which we can approximate at 1 kWh. Electricity prices range from ~4¢ to ~20¢ per kWh in the USA, which means…

Re the capital cost: Assuming profit of 10c/day and that an M1 mac is about $1000 it'll be about 274 years before you pay that off.

Presumably you already have an M1 mac and mine only while you have no use for it.

Re: Mining Ethereum on M1 Mac GPU

#105
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pick up a 50 W solar panel pretty cheap nowadays so compared to the cost of the laptop that's nothing. Hopefully its battery will charge up enough on the extra 11 W to last during the night.

You must mean, watt hours or amp hours.

I must

Re: Mining Ethereum on M1 Mac GPU

#106
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live (southeastern US) it's $0.089/kWh. There's additional taxes on it that make it functionally closer to $0.10. But yeah, fairly cheap. Which is a good thing because we have electric heat and it's been a very cold month. I'm expecting an about $350 bill.

It is also a bad thing because it makes it reasonable to live in houses that are not properly insulated and just run the air heater on full blast all winter, like I did when I was living in the US. In Denmark the kWh price is around 0.5$ (the wast majority of that is taxes), and the energy efficiency of the house is a key data point in any house purchase and is always listed next to the price.

This is only true if you don't enforce building codes that ensure everything is built with good insulation.

In Canada (Quebec) we pay 0.06$/kWh but the government gives incentive for energy efficiency as a tax deductible.

Re: Mining Ethereum on M1 Mac GPU

#107
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We pay about $0.10 in British Columbia, Canada. There is a $0.20 daily base rate and over a certain amount it steps up to $0.14. It’s 95% hydro electric so it’s green too. https://app.bchydro.com/accounts-billing/rates-energy-use/el...

hydro is really not that green: salmons are losing their spawning runs for an example in your area. Also not renewable, because dams get filled with sediment and lose capacity over time.

Hydro has a big upfront cost because you submerge a lot of land which usually was covered with trees. It also adds a bunch of mercury to the water. However over the lifespan of the dam this is not a real concern especially compared to gas/oil. Furthermore if you need to account for energy stockage with batteries for wind/solar as they are conditional to the weather the environmental cost analysis becomes much closer as you have to account for all the manufacturing externalities. Hydro on the other hand can increase and reduce production by drawing from its reservoir which makes it at least as green as other renewables that we have right now.

Re: Mining Ethereum on M1 Mac GPU

#108
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of other cryptocurrencies to mine

There are a few (mostly Bitcoin forks), and you can probably make some profit mining them, but they are not big enough to have a significant impact on the global demand for GPUs. At this point, most crypto projects with any real traction (with the obvious exception of Bitcoin) are either ERC-20 tokens running on Ethereum, or other PoS chains that claim to be better than Ethereum (i.e. Cardano). Bitcoin isn't mined wi…

What is bitcoin mined with now?

Re: Mining Ethereum on M1 Mac GPU

#109
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> dams get filled with sediment and lose capacity over time I'm struggling to believe this. Can you name one dam on Earth that has lost over 10% capacity due to sediment?

Dams all over the world capture sediment. This not only reduces their capacity, it deprives downstream areas of sediment needed for natural habitat, to fertilise wetlands and to buffer against oceanic incursion. The Sanmenxia Dam in China lost 17% of its capacity in the first 18 months of its operation due to sediment accumulation [1] Countless other dams have already been dismantled due to sediment build up, and man…

Honestly this sounds like mostly poor engineering planification and analysis. If you look at the dams with a lot of sediment it's mostly in South-East Asia and Africa while Europe/North America have little of it.

Re: Mining Ethereum on M1 Mac GPU

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With free power? iirc the RTX 3080 draws 200+ W.

I mined Ethereum about 3 years ago using the Nvidia 1060 and they never drew max power. Conversely, you could use nvidia_smi to limit their power draw without making much of an impact on hash rate. I’d be surprised if it was any different with the current lineup of cards. It would be really interesting to see what the M1 draws doing this. Probably not much. But then it’s not doing a whole lot of hashing either.

Was there any critical reason you stopped mining?
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