Bitcoin miners are pricing us plebs out from the GPU market.

During a gold rush, the real moneymakers are the ones selling the spades. The big GPU vendors must be having a field day right now.

Original post by ChaoticButterfly

Basically poeple who can afford to pay £500+ on a graphics card to mine thier cryptocurrencies and convert electricity into money and humanity destroying climate change are making it immpossible for Joe Smuck gamers like me from being able to get my hands on low and mid range graphics cards to play computer games on.

You know we've hit peak capitalism when even energy waste has a price attached to it.

Reply 2

> Muh gaming

Complaining about the decentralisation of currency through the blockchain revolution, just because it makes it harder to game? Disappointed in you, I thought you'd be excited about this development, being a leftist libertarian.

Bitcoin isn't mined on GPUs. It is mined on Chinese ASICs.

Cryptocurrencies have the potential to be an immense leap forwards for mankind. People complaining about the energy waste should consider that it takes a lot more energy efficient to mine coins on a GPU than to mint physical currency; and a lot more energy to cart around physical currencies than to verify transactions on the blockchain.

If you could limit the number of GPUs sold to each individual, there wouldn't be a problem. It is the big mining organisations who take products directly off the production lines in China who are to blame for the price rise.

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 3

Ikeo

16

Don't NVIDIA have a 2 item per customer rule?

Reply 4

centraltrains

15

Original post by Ikeo

Don't NVIDIA have a 2 item per customer rule?

Doesn't stop retailers they sell in bulk too having different rules.

Reply 5

OP

Original post by FriendlyPenguin

Bitcoin isn't mined on GPUs. It is mined on Chinese ASICs.

Cryptocurrencies have the potential to be an immense leap forwards for mankind. People complaining about the energy waste should consider that it takes a lot more energy efficient to mine coins on a GPU than to mint physical currency; and a lot more energy to cart around physical currencies than to verify transactions on the blockchain.

If you could limit the number of GPUs sold to each individual, there wouldn't be a problem. It is the big mining organisations who take products directly off the production lines in China who are to blame for the price rise.

So then why do GPU manufactorers market their stuff for cryptocurrency mining?

It's also totally relaint on electricity, so all you need to do is find green ways to generate the electricity.

I'm no luddite, but as usual with all this stuff, it's the capatalist nature of it that causes the problems and our reliance on none green forms of energy.

The comparison to regualr money production doesn't really work since we are not going to be abondoning that anytime soon. This currency mining is very energy costly at a time when we are at a potential extinction event due to our ability to burn through so much energy... at for what benefit? The wallets of tech liberatarians?

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 6

Original post by ChaoticButterfly

The comparison to regualr money production doesn't really work since we are not going to be abondoning that anytime soon. This currency mining is very energy costly at a time when we are at a potential extinction event due to our ability to brun so much energy... at for what benefir? The wallets of tech liberatarians?

We'll abandon it eventually. Those cryptocoins will have to be minted one way or another.

Cryptocurrency mining isn't consumerism. Consumerism is what is destroying the planet. Cryptomining is quite literally creating an entirely new currency.

Bitcoin might be a pyramid scheme "to line the wallets of tech liberationarians", but the most promising altcoins aren't.

Reply 7

Dez

Original post by FriendlyPenguin

Cryptocurrencies have the potential to be an immense leap forwards for mankind. People complaining about the energy waste should consider that it takes a lot more energy efficient to mine coins on a GPU than to mint physical currency; and a lot more energy to cart around physical currencies than to verify transactions on the blockchain.

Rubbish. Do you think all the normal currency (as in dollars and pounds etc.) exists as physical notes and coins? AFAIK only something like 3% of the world's cash actually has any physical form, the rest is just numbers in a database.

So cryptocurrency is most certainly not gonna be leading the revolution in energy conservation. Even the most inefficient banks are gonna be wasting a lot less resources managing their non-physical cash compared to the energy cost needed to process an equivalent amount of crypto-based transactions.

Reply 8

Original post by Dez

Rubbish. Do you think all the normal currency (as in dollars and pounds etc.) exists as physical notes and coins? AFAIK only something like 3% of the world's cash actually has any physical form, the rest is just numbers in a database.

Enough of it does. I hope you realise that 3% of the world's cash is an immense figure.

So cryptocurrency is most certainly not gonna be leading the revolution in energy conservation. Even the most inefficient banks are gonna be wasting a lot less resources managing their non-physical cash compared to the energy cost needed to process an equivalent amount of crypto-based transactions.

Paragraph A does not imply Paragraph B.

Reply 9

OP

Why?

Because I'm not a gamer gate fascist? :tongue:

Reply 10

Tempest II

16

As Friendly Penguin said, GPUs aren't enough to actually be successful anymore at least. They were a few years ago. It seems to be ATI rather than Nivida cards but even so, I paid circa £560 for my GTX 980TI about 18 months ago & the 1080TIs are going for circa £900.

Reply 11

OP

Original post by FriendlyPenguin

> Muh gaming

Complaining about the decentralisation of currency through the blockchain revolution, just because it makes it harder to game? Disappointed in you, I thought you'd be excited about this development, being a leftist libertarian.

Normal plebs getting shut out of a market so techies can make a load of money is not exactly communism.

When blockchain is being used to distribute wealth according to need and ability through a federation of autonomous communes then we can talk leftist blockchain. At the moment it's not doing anything other than being something for silicon valley types to get rich off whilst they walk to work over homeless poeple.

Although I'm open to anything like the above :beard:

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 12

OP

The gaming intelligentsia ( :tongue:

) tends to be pretty liberal. It's pretty easy to surround yourself in a bubble of none sexism and kindness in gaming (if you are male anyway, I admit it is harder if you are a woman and want to say anything feminist etc, or just exist as a woman). Like outlets such as Rock Paper Shotgun are pretty good.

The Gamer Gate stuff was like a right wing grass roots reaction against sections of the gameing media (especially feminist female writers) starting to talk about things like representation of women in video games. As gameing matured in some respects it started to get critqued in the way other art forms do, ie a lot of it is political. This provoked a big reaction by poeple who wanted it to remain "apolitical" and didn't want the womenz to take away thier lady warriors in bakini armour.

It's no real suprise that gameing and nerd culture in general tended to involve a lot of people who were in some respect social outcasts and found it hard to get girlfriends (me included). But instead of this leading to an empathy with other people who are exlcuded in society (like me and my commie ways) it seems to have resulted in a load of men who hate women in some way and are deeply sexist and reactionary to any feminist or progressiveness to seep into their culture of choice. This is probably why there is so much overlap between Gamer Gate and what became the alt-right.

I never for a moment thought the horrible toxic parts of the culture of my Team Fortress 2 teenage years was going to follow me and beomce mainstream politics in 2016. Why is a stupid ****ing cartoon frog now the symbol of fascism? -___-

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 13

JordanDaniel

6

Original post by FriendlyPenguin

People complaining about the energy waste should consider that it takes a lot more energy efficient to mine coins on a GPU than to mint physical currency; and a lot more energy to cart around physical currencies than to verify transactions on the blockchain.

Based upon what evidence have you based those claims off? All leading evidence suggests different - and it is only to get exponentially worse then it is currently.

Reply 14

Dez

Original post by FriendlyPenguin

Enough of it does. I hope you realise that 3% of the world's cash is an immense figure.

Not the point. The point is cashless transactions are clearly not dependent on the use of inefficient cryptocurrencies, so comparing the cost of minting coins to the cost of mining BTC is bunk.

Original post by FriendlyPenguin

Paragraph A does not imply Paragraph B.

What, you think bank transactions would be more efficient with cryptocurrencies involved? Don't be so ridiculous.

Reply 15

Original post by JordanDaniel

Based upon what evidence have you based those claims off? All leading evidence suggests different - and it is only to get exponentially worse then it is currently.

Minting $1 worth of ethereum AFAIK takes on average around 5 hours of a 90W GPU constantly hashing. That translates to 630Wh, or under $0.1 with current electricity prices.

In contrast, it costs $1.62 to make a dollar's worth of nickels, $1.66 to make a dollar's worth of pennies, 36 cents to make a dollar's worth of quarters, and 40 cents for a dollar's worth of dimes (and before you argue "thats just the cost of materials, not of electricity use" - all that metal has to be mined, extracted, transported, and molded, and therefore the cost of materials is likely largely in line with the cost of electricity and petrol burnt used to extract it).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/12/15/it-cost-1-7-cents-to-make-a-penny-this-year-and-8-cents-to-make-a-nickel/

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 16

Original post by Dez

Not the point. The point is cashless transactions are clearly not dependent on the use of inefficient cryptocurrencies, so comparing the cost of minting coins to the cost of mining BTC is bunk.

Ah, I see what you mean.

I wonder how much resources are spent in regulating regular currency. I suppose that is where the bulk of the costs will lie, while cryptocurrencies you can think of as exchanging power consumption for self-regulation.

But I wasn't talking about BTC, I'm talking about the coins that are actually useful for something.

Reply 17

JordanDaniel

6

Original post by FriendlyPenguin

Minting $1 worth of ethereum AFAIK takes on average around 5 hours of a 90W GPU constantly hashing. That translates to 630Wh, or under $0.1 with current electricity prices.

In contrast, it costs $1.62 to make a dollar's worth of nickels, $1.66 to make a dollar's worth of pennies, 36 cents to make a dollar's worth of quarters, and 40 cents for a dollar's worth of dimes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/12/15/it-cost-1-7-cents-to-make-a-penny-this-year-and-8-cents-to-make-a-nickel/

Rather selective statistics - were we not talking about cryptocurrencies as a whole and not just Ethereum? I'm pretty sure factoring in Bitcoin will not have the same $0.1 result.

Furthermore, that $1.62 statistic factors in wages, metal prices, machinery cost, rent, water and gas bills etc, whilst your Ethereum price of $0.1 only factors in energy use, and so it is absurd to compare the two when comparing energy efficiency.

Reply 18

AperfectBalance

21

Yeah I wish we lived in a communist world because I am sure that when they cannot afford basic bread for everyone they will surely be able to give everyone a 970 atleast when society collapses due to communism I will be able to play pubg at 60fps. What a pitiful and childish ideology

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 19

OP