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Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

blog.libove.org

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Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#61
post #48
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems odd to single out greedy sellers when the key demand here is people hoping to print money. It's all greed here.

For the matter of price, i don't care what other buyers do with their purchased goods. I care how the seller treats the customer. If we were to discuss other aspects of mining then yes, i would point to other greedy participants in this chain

If a seller has limited capacity to produce, is it better for a motivated buyer to be able to buy one, albeit at a price higher than they’d like? Or is it better if the price is what all buyers would like, but many motivated buyers can’t get one at all?

Neither is perfectly “right”; it’s a direct trade off between “they’re available if you want one” and “they’re as inexpensive as you’ve come to expect from history”.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#62
post #8

Assuming everyone commenting here has read the post, if it is 'cryptocurrencies' 'like' Bitcoin and Ethereum that use PoW? Then, that is an undeniable, and an undisputed; Yes. However, if you are talking 'cryptocurrencies' that means you are talking about all of them. Not all cryptocurrencies are like Bitcoin, and Ethereum and not all of them use PoW. So the title should be: 'Is Bitcoin, and Ethereum to blame for Hig…

It's a bit funny that the blogpost found a higher correlation between bitcoin and GPU prices than between ethereum and GPU prices. You don't mine bitcoin with a GPU. Just because it correlates doesn't mean it's a causal effect. Looking at shop prices is probably suboptimal compared to looking at auction prices, shop prices lag too much. This summer you could almost see demand shifting in real time based on the ethere…

The argument is that bitcoin ASIC manufacturing takes capacity away that could be devoted to GPUs. I don't know enough about chip manufacturing to know if that's true.

Seems plausible, as does the fact that high end gpu crypto mining drives up low end gpu card prices as well. No one is using a 1030 to mine anything, but those prices are up too.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#63
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mention anything about the cloud, deep learning training on GPUs and the impact on the environment that has and the increasing costs of training and fine tuning your neural net, they won't care at all, they will still do it after all these years. As you know it is still a valid point.

> If you mention anything about the cloud, deep learning training on GPUs and the impact on the environment that has and the increasing costs of training and fine tuning your neural net, they won't care at all, they will still do it after all these years. There is a recent trend to discuss environmental impacts of training deep learning models in papers. See e.g. Latent Diffusion Models (Heidelberg), RETRO (Deepmind)…

[deleted]

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#65

Might have also been ML

Better an AI researcher or scientist get one of these cards than some scumbag miner.

I’m annoyed as the next guy that my deep-learning rigs are costing 5 figures, but “scumbag” might be a little strong for people who arbitrage NVIDIA’s repeated failures to effectively segment their GPU offering?

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#69
The article only attempts to show there's correlation, and ends up by saying "correlation doesn't imply causation, but maybe there's causation". So basically, we don't know.

I'm not blaming the author, because determining causation is hard, and checking there's correlation between two variables can still be interesting, but the article falls short of answering the question.

Re: Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?

#70
post #8

Assuming everyone commenting here has read the post, if it is 'cryptocurrencies' 'like' Bitcoin and Ethereum that use PoW? Then, that is an undeniable, and an undisputed; Yes. However, if you are talking 'cryptocurrencies' that means you are talking about all of them. Not all cryptocurrencies are like Bitcoin, and Ethereum and not all of them use PoW. So the title should be: 'Is Bitcoin, and Ethereum to blame for Hig…

> Assuming everyone commenting here has read the post Proof of stake is mentioned at the end of the article. > Other mechanism for securing blockchains exist and successfully used (see Proof of Stake). Proof of Work creates external costs (environmental impact, higher electricity prices, GPU scarcity) to benefit a small group of miners.

How beneficial blockchains are is a separate question, but proof-of-work is popular because proof-of-stake has serious issues.
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