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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?

#301

Post by ByteJockey »

Retric wrote: post #293
ByteJockey wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be true if only the US was using the dollar. Given the number of countries using the dollar as their reserve currency, value could collapse quite a ways without the US doing anything. It's not likely, but neither is a 50 + 1 attack on bitcoin given the amount of computing power currently tied up there.

That’s less significant than you might think as US GDP is almost 1/4 of global GDP and foreign countries don’t keep that many USD on hand. Aka even in global terms US GDP is vast. Also, Bitcoin has significantly more vulnerabilities than just a 51% attack or a crash as nodes need to be connected to the internet and therefore can at least in theory be hacked. What exactly happens after that point is anyones guess, but…

> That’s less significant than you might think as US GDP is almost 1/4 of global GDP and foreign countries don’t keep that many USD on hand. Aka even in global terms US GDP is vast.

Sure, but the value of the dollar (like everything else) is in how easy it is to get (supply). The US GDP is not a measure of the supply of dollars on the market, it is a measure of how often those dollars are exchanged.

> Bitcoin has significantly more vulnerabilities than just a 51% attack or a crash as nodes need to be connected to the internet and therefore can at least in theory be hacked.

That's fair, if we're including implementation vulnerabilities, it does expand the potential problems quite a bit. The post I was responding to was specifically about a 50 + 1 attack. Though if we include these, we should probably also expand physical currencies' problems to include counterfeiting in that case.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#302

Post by chii »

roenxi wrote: post #297
jokethrowaway wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is not enough competition, people got conditioned to high prices for 10 years - once prices are raised they are not coming back. Good luck starting your GPU company

> Good luck starting your GPU company There is a chance you may mean that sarcastically, so... Yes, if you think sale prices are going to stay much higher than manufacturing costs it is a great time to start a new GPU factory. Mass produce 5-10 year old tech in bulk, soak up enough of the market to survive and move as quickly as possible into modern manufacturing techniques. We've seen in the last number of years tha…

> Mass produce 5-10 year old tech in bulk

I really wonder if the tech/equipment to do this is actually also unavailable - preventing any competition from starting up. I think it's the same logistical bottleneck that is hitting everything, not some monopoly conspiracy, and if that's the case, by the time bottlenecks clear up, the demand for such items would also drop (as the higher end stuff becomes available again).

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#303

Post by Acrobatic_Road »

toolz wrote: post #273
kingo55 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 resis…

Even if no existing coins switch to PoS (spoiler: many will), the PoS coins will suck up fee-paying users from the PoW coins, reducing the returns on mining, which will result in lower network hashpower. It may also bring a second-order effect of reducing the prices of PoW coins, which will reduce dollar-denominated block rewards on those networks, and that will bring hashpower down even farther.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#304

Post by ip26 »

chii wrote: post #284
kelseyfrog wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

GPUs are manufacturable. The market is meant to signal to manufacturers that this is profitable to make more of, and thus, more would become available in the future. Unfortunately, the current world events conspired to not allow this balance to happen - chip shortages and logistics problems etc. Give it a few more years, and it will balance back out.

Crypto is carefully designed to model Parkinson's Law. (Proof of) Work always grows to fill the compute available.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#305

Post by drdeca »

falcolas wrote: post #281
ikt wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And, as ever, the exact same thing was said early last year, too. And the year before, if my memory serves me. I’ll have more faith that it’s actually coming once Star Citizen comes out. Until it’s actually released, skepticism’s the safest bet.

Speaking of betting,

What do prediction markets say about whether it will be out by what times?

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#306

Post by toolz »

Acrobatic_Road wrote: post #303
toolz wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 resis…

Even if no existing coins switch to PoS (spoiler: many will), the PoS coins will suck up fee-paying users from the PoW coins, reducing the returns on mining, which will result in lower network hashpower. It may also bring a second-order effect of reducing the prices of PoW coins, which will reduce dollar-denominated block rewards on those networks, and that will bring hashpower down even farther.

ETH continues to grow its hashrate every day. Even in the face of growing competition, hashrate grows. It's an interesting theory, but there's no evidence of you being right. We already have many extremely high market-cap PoS coins, many with more features than ETH will have even after it's PoS transition, yet PoW hash continues to skyrocket.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#307

Post by bnegreve »

throwaway55421 wrote: post #298
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…

But we do need more energy. Energy can fix essentially any problem we have. Need to desalinate water? Energy. Need to heat your Arctic home? Energy. Being able to use energy in crazy and inefficient ways is a feature, not a bug. Everything you ever do outside of subsistence level agriculture is proof of that. The ideal state of being would be one in which we have limitless fusion power or similar and we basically jus…

> The ideal state of being would be one in which we have limitless fusion power or similar and we basically just do whatever we wish. If we get that and alchemy we win the Universe.

No, using energy inevitably changes the state of world we live in (that is actually the point). Use crazy amounts of energy in a distributed and unregulated manner, and the world will be nowhere like the one we evolved in, and we will die.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#308

Post by NicoJuicy »

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?

First POS was in 2012. Ethereum mentioned it in 2015.

So it's been 7 years since announcement.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#309

Post by abraxas »

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…

Crypto currency is an instantiation of Bostrom's paperclip maximizer running on a hybrid human/machine topology.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#310

Post by zarzavat »

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?

Proof of stake has been running for a year already. https://beaconcha.in

They are currently working on merging the v1 and v2 chains.

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