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TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

asia.nikkei.com

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Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#351

Post by bigfudge »

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #301
mrRandomGuy wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bitcoin gang doesn't like it when people point out that the entire thing is fucking useless.

I'm sorry you don't find it useful. I do find it useful, in fact millions more like me do. Usefulness is a subjective measurement. If you think we are crazy, that's OK. Bitcoin is opt-in. You can choose to ignore it, you can think its fucking useless, but in my opinion, you are wrong.

What problem is it solving for people? Especially people who are going to disproportionately suffer the impact of climate change (ie poor people)?

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#352

Post by babypuncher »

machiaweliczny wrote: post #347
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #32

Supply shortage is another way of saying demand excess. I don’t see much evidence that TSMC ever really slowed production, at least for their most advanced processes that are in high demand. This is yet another way we’re all forced to pay the price for cryptocurrency. As long as GPUs are profitable for mining, they will be purchased and put to work. The saddest part is that each additional GPU added to the mining net…

Yes, but efficiency is opposite of roboustness/resiliency.

This is just plain untrue

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#353

Post by bigfudge »

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #333
bodyfour wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great news... so how do I opt-out of the CO₂ that BTC is generating?

How do I opt-out of the CO₂ exhaled by the 7 billion other humans on the planet, or the CO₂ from Facebook or TikTok data centers (as IMHO both are very harmful for the planet)? Same way?

Whatahoutism doesn’t make Bitcoin useful.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#354

Post by bodyfour »

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #333
bodyfour wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great news... so how do I opt-out of the CO₂ that BTC is generating?

How do I opt-out of the CO₂ exhaled by the 7 billion other humans on the planet, or the CO₂ from Facebook or TikTok data centers (as IMHO both are very harmful for the planet)? Same way?

What a non sequitur.

The claim being put forth is that crypto's environmental cost FAR outweighs its utility.

Your counterargument is that such concerns are unraisable simply because one can avoid personally using BTC. Or to put another way "if WE destroy the environment it's none of YOUR business"

And that is wrong -- the atmosphere is shared by all. Changes to its composition are everybody's shared concern.

If you want to argue that some other business's activity are too damaging to the environment to be allowed to continue... fine, make those arguments. But don't bat away concerns about crypto's absurd environmental cost as "none of your darn business"

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#355

Post by babypuncher »

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #324
colinmhayes wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost none of bitcoins usage is by the people that need it.

What makes you say this? Nigeria, a country with a currency that loses purchasing parity power every year, has the highest per capita usage of Bitcoin in the world. Sounds like the people that need it ARE using it...

Are you suggesting that most Bitcoin users live in Nigeria (or a place like it)?

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#356

Post by vmception »

formerly_proven wrote: post #344
hackingforfun wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's cheaper for them to just flare the gas. The only thing that has made economic sense, as an alternative to flaring it, is to mine Bitcoin. I understand the energy criticism, but flare gas is an example where Bitcoin mining actually makes something less polluting.

Three points - It's approximately a 180° pivot to go from "unused renewable energy" to "flare gas for green bitcoins" - It doesn't reduce the emissions. Whether you flare it or burn it in a gas turbine / engine driving a generator to mine bitcoin, the CO2 released is exactly the same, as you are burning ~100 % of the hydrocarbons either way. The difference is that one generates bitcoins, the other does not. This is o…

> - It's approximately a 180° pivot to go from "unused renewable energy" to "flare gas for green bitcoins"

I wrote earlier to avoid this specific derailing. Renewable and captured are not synonymous but usually the same. This is one of the cases where it is not the same. To my knowledge, the only other captured sources are at hydroelectric plants, while some parties are interested in geothermal as well.

Noteworthy is that “captured” seems to be also called “rejected” energy in some circles.

> And overall, creating the equipment to mine bitcoins with flare gas, and deploying that to remote oil fields w/ no use for gas, creates a bunch of emissions that simply don't exist if you just flare the gas.

Once. I’m not sure how a one time event is remotely comparable to ongoing issues. Please elaborate?

> It doesn't reduce the emissions. Whether you flare it or burn it in a gas turbine / engine driving a generator to mine bitcoin, the CO2 released is exactly the same, as you are burning ~100 % of the hydrocarbons either way. The difference is that one generates bitcoins, the other does not.

Hmm. Is there anything we can do about that then? Like does that format allow for further processing towards sustainability? The generating of bitcoin making it economical to do more with the CO2 that the oil guys just threw their hands up on decades ago? If this issue has nothing to do with bitcoin mining and the alternative is just business as usual with it going directly to the atmosphere like it already was, then why point fingers at the bitcoin mining?

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#357

Post by AnthonyMouse »

cwkoss wrote: post #334
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is yet another way we’re all forced to pay the price for cryptocurrency. Bitcoin has existed for more than a decade. This is yet another way we're all forced to pay the price for COVID-19. When everybody started working from home, companies whose employees had desktops had to buy them all laptops. People with old home computers bought newer ones once they started using them 14 hours a day instead of two. Deman…

Cryptomining incentivizes green energy investment

Honestly the effect is probably not very large.

People like come up with "Bitcoin uses more electricity than !" as a shock headline, but that's just statistical chicanery. A very small percentage multiplied by the whole world is a large absolute number. It's like saying "the global paper industry uses more electricity than all of Australia!" People think of Australia as being big, but as a percentage of the whole world, not that big.

The primary advantage is that cryptocurrency mining is highly price sensitive, so if you have something like wind turbines that produce more at night even though there is more demand during the day, it can be profitable to only mine cryptocurrency at night. Which increases the revenue for the wind farm and makes it more profitable, which means we can have more wind farms and fewer coal power plants. But only by like a half a percent of the power grid, because that's how much is going into Bitcoin.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#358

Post by FairlyInvolved »

Taek wrote: post #336
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that crypto mining is the only system designed to have negative marginal utility for each GPU consumed. It literally pays people to take energy and GPUs away from the open market for zero incremental gain to the network. The difference is that each additional iPhone or ML accelerator or cloud server CPU provides incrementally more utility. More ML accelerators means more ML processing. Proof-of-work mini…

The amount of value extracted by the person mining reduces as more compute power starts mining, but that's actually a negative feedback loop that will reduce the total spending on chips for crypto mining. The amount of security provided to the network is constant in the number of GPUs. As you add more GPUs, the network gets harder to attack. Does the network need as much security as it's paying for? Nobody is really…

I really don't see how the current hashrate is required to prevent a 51% attack, that seems way beyond what is necessary.

These Proof of Waste systems aren't really a negative feedback loop, ultimately asset prices determine mining yield. Capacity will keep being added to the network until the difficulty rises such that you are required to destroy $99.99 of resources for $100 of crypto. Until that point it's worth buying more hardware and energy as you get a positive expected return.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#359

Post by noelsusman »

njovin wrote: post #288

Forgive the naive question but why doesn't the US government fund several foundries in the US immediately? $20B over 3 years is a drop in the bucket compared to a lot of military spending and these chip shortages surely have downstream impact on the defense industry, no? At this point I'd be much happier subsidizing chip manufacturing than most of the other ways this country spends money overseas.

The US Senate recently passed $52 billion for domestic chip manufacturing.

Re: TSMC hikes chip prices up to 20% amid supply shortage

#360

Post by [deleted] »

formerly_proven wrote: post #344
hackingforfun wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's cheaper for them to just flare the gas. The only thing that has made economic sense, as an alternative to flaring it, is to mine Bitcoin. I understand the energy criticism, but flare gas is an example where Bitcoin mining actually makes something less polluting.

Three points - It's approximately a 180° pivot to go from "unused renewable energy" to "flare gas for green bitcoins" - It doesn't reduce the emissions. Whether you flare it or burn it in a gas turbine / engine driving a generator to mine bitcoin, the CO2 released is exactly the same, as you are burning ~100 % of the hydrocarbons either way. The difference is that one generates bitcoins, the other does not. This is o…

[deleted]
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