Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's sarcasm
Hopefully oriolid's comment was, too?
The British understatement variant.
Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?
331–340 of 352 posts
Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?
#332Earlier 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.
That's not true. This time last year, the Beacon chain had only been running for a little more than a month. Also the code was not complete to merge Pow/PoS chains. The merge has already happened on Testnet, so literally the full merge could be done on Mainnet tomorrow if the Ethereum core team wanted to.
Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not for ETH. ethash is memory controller bound, not chip bound. This is why older generation GPUs are higher ROI than buying latest and greatest.
Why would Bitmain be releasing the Antminer E9 if it has no benefit over GPU? Ethash is bounded by memory bandwidth, sure, which is why HBM-based ASICs and FPGAs will be better than non-HBM GPUs in almost every case for mining ETH.
It isn't just hash/watt, it is $/hash. HBM is expensive. This is also why the bitmain boxes only come with 6gb. The dag will eventually grow and render them useless, just like we saw with 4gb gpus...
The ethash asic's are not that much better than GPUs as they are all bound by memory controller speed. Even with faster memory, the gate is always how fast you can move through the DAG. That red circle is the issue...
https://www.vijaypradeep.com/blog/2017-04-28-ethereums-memor...
The only benefit of the bitmain boxes is that they are plug and play. You buy one box, stick it on the shelf, plug it in and that's it. GPUs are significantly more difficult to tune and run, especially at large scale.
The ROI on these boxes is terrible... imaging you buy one and it burns out... zero chance for repairs on any sane timeline.
Why does bitmain sell it? Easy money for a company that has a long history of ethics violations. When I was buying L3+'s directly from bitmain, they'd come clearly used.
Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, not following. Can you explain how efficiencies in GPU production interact with network difficulty to produce lower GPU prices? I'm not finding much in the literature.
What makes hash-based proof of work function is that to produce some number of hashes you need to use some amount of real-world resources. In practice, the two main resource inputs are electricity and computational hardware. If hardware is scarce, as it is now, the hardware will be a large proportion of mining cost, while the more efficiently hardware can be produced, the more of the cost is electricity.
How does that make miners not buy GPUs?
Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 sig…
> 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. The US GDP directly translates into the amount of taxes paid. Suppose a 50% drop in the value of USD happens. If nothing else happens taxes increase by 100%, and people need to acquire more USD whi…
> If nothing else happens taxes increase by 100%, and people need to acquire more USD which drives the value of the currency up.
Oh definitely. I did not mean to imply that taxation in USD does not have a modulating effect (and if I came across that way, I apologize). I'm just trying to say that you can have some pretty wide swings even with that.
> but there is a reason you don’t see huge swings without the government printing money.
You don't generally see it, no. Mostly because other countries use the dollar as a store of wealth, and they don't want to tank the value that they've squirreled away. I'm bringing it up as a hypothetical with the same likelihood as a 50 + 1 attack on bitcoin.
China, for example, seems to hold ~2 trillion in USD (~60% of 3.5% trillion total reserves).[0] I assume most of this is held as digital assets, as there's only ~2 trillion physical dollars in circulation.[1] Dumping that much on the market would cause some pretty wacky inflation (as well as destroy China's stability). In a similar vein a 50 + 1 attack on bitcoin would allow an actor to give themselves all of the bitcoins, but would also destroy the value of those bitcoins because nobody is going to trust the network after that.
Both of these attacks are really only useful if you value hurting other actors more than you value your own resources/your own sense of self-preservation.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign-exchange_reserves_of_C... [1]: https://www.uscurrency.gov/life-cycle/data/circulation
Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
As I mention above: I’ve got no special love for Ethereum miners. But why you’re trying to lay your municipality’s busted, corrupt-ass utility’s issues at their feet is perplexing. Ethereum miners at their worst are the maggots crawling around in your community’s failure to form a voting bloc to reform utilities. At best they provide an arbitrary demand for electricity that makes solar panels obvious. So I missed the…
After that "troll" bit I have no desire to engage with you. Have a look at the guidelines, old-timer.
I apologize for being rude. I have my reasons for being touchy about this but taking it out on you is unfair.
Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?
#337The article mentioned causation isn't shown, but can be inferred. However the inference comes down to "they happen at the same time and are related", so just correlation. All work enabled by new generations of GPUs happened at the same time and is related in the same way. Someone would have to come up with some real numbers of the actual number of cards used in specific scenarios. Mining will be in there, but so will scientific and engineering modelling, design applications, and obviously gaming, as well as some others I may be missing. What percentage of cards was purchased primarily for what applications?
Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> 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. So then as PoW difficulty increases, demand for GPS increases. Necessitating more factories until the primary output of world industry is GPU factories. Does nobody see how absurd this is? The market is stuck in a feedback loop. People are naievely looking at this and saying "Aha, just…
> So then as PoW difficulty increases, demand for GPS increases. Necessitating more factories until the primary output of world industry is GPU factories.
it's not absurd. If you replace GPU with food, and PoW with population, then you will see that it is not absurd. It is only absurd because of the a priori assumption that having more PoW is worthless - an assumption you wouldn't make with population.
And i would think that if in the future, demand for PoW crypto grew, it means it must be satisfying a demand (for example, currency collapse). As long as a demand is being satisfied, and paid for by individual's earned money, it should be fine (as opposed to being paid for by somebody else's money - aka, externalization of cost).
Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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.
Can you be more specific here? I see no mechanism for this to happen. Difficulty will simply increase from that point.
I believe they mean that once is gets to a point where crypto mining is no longer profitable (revs < costs) the demand for more powerful machines / tech will decrease
Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. So then as PoW difficulty increases, demand for GPS increases. Necessitating more factories until the primary output of world industry is GPU factories. Does nobody see how absurd this is? The market is stuck in a feedback loop. People are naievely looking at this and saying "Aha, just…
> So then as PoW difficulty increases, demand for GPS increases. Necessitating more factories until the primary output of world industry is GPU factories. it's not absurd. If you replace GPU with food, and PoW with population, then you will see that it is not absurd. It is only absurd because of the a priori assumption that having more PoW is worthless - an assumption you wouldn't make with population. And i would th…
> it's not absurd. If you replace GPU with food, and PoW with population, then you will see that it is not absurd. It is only absurd because of the a priori assumption that having more PoW is worthless - an assumption you wouldn't make with population.
> And i would think that if in the future, demand for PoW crypto grew, it means it must be satisfying a demand (for example, currency collapse). As long as a demand is being satisfied, and paid for by individual's earned money, it should be fine (as opposed to being paid for by somebody else's money - aka, externalization of cost).
I'm not even certain how to respond to this. I called out that it's becoming evident that the growing problem with crypto is a collection of people who fundamentally don't understand markets and society. That the understanding is as simplistic as "if someone is willing to pay money for it, then it must be good for society". Which is beyond naieve. And how people need a deeper understanding of what's happening.
And the response "countering" my argument is essentially saying I'm wrong because paraphrasing: "If someone is willing to pay for it, it is good for society". And equating GPU production with food production because in this hypothetical they are both things people pay for.
I'm not certain we can have a productive discussion. The goal of society isn't to create markets. Markets are a tool society uses to improve life for people. Markets aren't the goal.
Making legal murder for hire is not a net positive for society, even though you could create a market place for it and people would pay for it. Arguing something is good because people will pay for it is so beyond flawed that I don't have a way to describe it.