Ethereum Mining No Longer Profitable For Many Miners As Energy Prices, ETH Dip Cause Perfect Storm (cryptoslate.com) 107
For the first time since 2020, Ethereum mining has become unprofitable for many miners connected to a traditional energy grid. CryptoSlate reports: The price of Ethereum has dropped below $1,250 while energy prices are skyrocketing. The average cost of electricity in states such as New England, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island is over $0.22 per kWh. Using a single Nvidia 3090 overclocked to generate 130mh/s will cost miners around $1.85-$2.13 per day in electricity. The Ethereum reward for the same GPU is just (0.001625 ETH) $2.03 at today's price. Therefore any miner paying more than $0.245 for electricity is now paying more for electricity than the value of Ethereum being mined. At this point, it becomes more cost-effective to turn off the mining rig and buy Ethereum spot using the money that would otherwise be used on electricity. [...]
There are plenty of alternative cryptocurrencies that can be mined with a GPU. However, the others are also down considerably. At $0.245kwh, Ergo yields -$0.06, RavenCoin -$0.58/day, Ethereum Classic -$0.66, and Firo -$0.70 using a single Nvidia 3090. These are the contenders for GPU hashrate when Ethereum finally goes to proof of stake. The issue is that an increase in miners on the network will dramatically increase the mining difficulty meaning that, to be remotely profitable, the price of the tokens will also have to increase considerably. For Ethereum to become profitable again, either the difficulty needs to decrease or the price needs to rise above $1,400. Alternatively, should energy prices drop below $0.24kwh to match average costs in other parts of the United States, Ethereum would also become profitable.
There are plenty of alternative cryptocurrencies that can be mined with a GPU. However, the others are also down considerably. At $0.245kwh, Ergo yields -$0.06, RavenCoin -$0.58/day, Ethereum Classic -$0.66, and Firo -$0.70 using a single Nvidia 3090. These are the contenders for GPU hashrate when Ethereum finally goes to proof of stake. The issue is that an increase in miners on the network will dramatically increase the mining difficulty meaning that, to be remotely profitable, the price of the tokens will also have to increase considerably. For Ethereum to become profitable again, either the difficulty needs to decrease or the price needs to rise above $1,400. Alternatively, should energy prices drop below $0.24kwh to match average costs in other parts of the United States, Ethereum would also become profitable.
A glut of cheap video cards (Score:2)
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But considering that 3090s will probably be going for like 200 bucks used soon when the cryptards need money badly to soften the crashing and burning, it's gonna take a long, long time before those 4090 become interesting. 3090s are absolutely sufficient to run anything today and for the foreseeable future, by the time 4090s get interesting, they also get affordable.
Re:A glut of cheap video cards (Score:5, Informative)
Buying a card used for mining? Not a good idea. No way of telling how the firmware was messed with and no way of telling how long it will live in the first place due to overclocking.
Re:A glut of cheap video cards (Score:4, Interesting)
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Interesting. Why do they do that? Better computing to power ratio?
Re:A glut of cheap video cards (Score:4, Interesting)
Their goal isn't to compute as fast as possible, it's to try and beat the electricity bill.
Re:A glut of cheap video cards that work perfectly (Score:2)
I'm using imaginary numbers here to illustrate the principle.
Let's say you pay 100$ for 100Wh each day.
Your card at stock uses 500Wh each day and mines at 1000 hash/day which translates to 1000 coins per day for $500 cost. $0.50 per coin.
If you overclock it to 600Wh you will mine at 1100 hash/day, which translates to 1100 coins for $600 cost. $0.54 per coin - your costs are higher per coin.
If you underclock to 250Wh and mine at 900 hash/day which translates to 900 coins for $250 cost. $0.27 per coin - you a
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Your card at stock uses 500Wh each day and mines at 1000 hash/day which translates to 1000 coins per day for $500 cost. $0.50 per coin.
If you overclock it to 600Wh you will mine at 1100 hash/day, which translates to 1100 coins for $600 cost. $0.54 per coin - your costs are higher per coin.
If you underclock to 250Wh and mine at 900 hash/day which translates to 900 coins for $250 cost. $0.27 per coin - you are making WAY more coins per dollar than stock.
How does using 1/2 as much energy only result in a 10% decrease in computation (hashes)?
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The power used doesn't scale linearly with clock speeds and performance. Manufacturers usually push the power as much as possible to get the biggest numbers in reviews, way past the point of diminishing returns.
I had this CPU article handy, I think the idea would work the same for GPUs too.
https://chipsandcheese.com/202... [chipsandcheese.com]
In some cases you have to double the chip power to get 10-20% more performance.
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So I am not an expert in how the computation works.
A typical gaming load where you're rendering all this stuff uses clock speed quite heavily. I assume it needs fast memory speed to minimize latency as much as possible and a GPU is probably tuned to maximize performance for gaming users more than anything.
The hashing functions of a GPU are bottlenecked by the memory speed. Hashing is intended to be computationally simple, so perhaps the math being done is trivial for a GPU but the comparison requires a grea
A breakthrough! (Score:2)
>I'm using imaginary numbers here to illustrate the principle.
ah-HAH!!!
The long awaited breakthrough that lets us figure out the economics of crypto!
why didn't we think of the square root of the value to society of crypto before? Complex numbers to the rescue!
So sqrt(crypto_wortgh), and . . . whoops . . . real(sqrt(crypto_woerth)) turns out to be zero for all values of crypt_worth
Max coins per watt (Score:2)
Interesting. Why do they do that? Better computing to power ratio?
Yes, their target is not max coins per day, its max coins per watt. A wattage focus maximizes profitability. Otherwise you might as well just buy coins directly rather than buy electricity.
Re:A glut of cheap video cards (Score:5, Informative)
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The fans sure take a beating though.
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The fans sure take a beating though.
Yes, cleaning and fan replacement should be part of the plan and accompanying calculations.
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You can save money on new cards as well. There is one card I've been looking at that has dropped to half it's price from a few months ago.
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I don't think so (Score:5, Interesting)
This means real regulation, and crypto can't survive that. Add cops finally catching up to the tech and putting a few money launders in jail and the floor is gonna drop out. All that'll be left is ponzi schemes, and when everybody loses everything except the rug pullers in the coming crash word'll get around.
Crypto doesn't even decentralize. It's completely centralized around the exchanges and mining pools. And proof of stake don't fix that, since all it does is centralize it around the big holders.
It's a completely failed experiment. At the point the only reason the gov't hasn't killed it is they're trying to let the air out of the bubble slowly so the pop doesn't hurt as much.
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Interesting take. Mine is that if cryptocurrencies ever take off it will be Etherium switching to proof of stake after the bubble bursts. They do provide [limited] functional benefits over traditional money transfer mechanisms as long as the transaction speeds are fast and costs are low, and prices are stable. The idealogical objections to it go away with proof of stake, and the practical and regulation issues don't really impact "normal people" that much.
We keep stupid amounts of cash. It is a holdover
Re:I don't think so (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing any crapcoin becomes actually useful is if it becomes impossible or very, very hard to use it for crime and gambling. That directly implies stability and traceability and scalability and low (!) transaction fees. The Etherium people still cling to that vision and they may eventually get there, but not anytime soon. All the others are just in it for the Ponzi-fest.
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Which is kinda ironic, considering that the original intention for crypto to get invented at all was to have a tool to facilitate gambling.
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It was?
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Allegedly (like a lot that surrounds the origin of crypto) the idea was born when online gambling needed a way to handle money without having to deal with pesky legality issues surrounding gambling in certain jurisdictions. They needed something that can be handled safely and securely online, cannot be easily forged or manipulated and where there isn't a single entity holding and issuing it, which can be pressured by certain jurisdictions that don't like gambling to take place.
Whether true or not, who knows
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Invented for online gambling? That's not the history I remember at all. I remember crypto being born in the wake of the 2008 crash as a "sound money" idea that would let its users escape the corruption of the existing financial system. It was born in (and for) a very libertarian, Ron Paul, Austrian school economics, fuck-the-federal-reserve moment. It was a way for people who didn't trust institutions to not have to trust institutions.
So far it hasn't worked out that way at all (how many crypto transa
Re: I don't think so (Score:2)
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That's a truly strange take on Nakamoto's white paper.
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Allegedly (like a lot that surrounds the origin of crypto) the idea was born when online gambling needed a way to handle money without having to deal with pesky legality issues surrounding gambling in certain jurisdictions.
According to whom? I don't see anything about that in here [hit.bme.hu].
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Whether true or not, who knows?
Indeed. Thanks anyways.
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In the early/mid 1990s, when cryptocurrencies were mentioned, they were mainly a way to do 3-4 things:
1: A way to have a payment go through via a transaction, either two parties, or three parties (escrow). Once it was finalized, no way to reverse it. Get paid, stay paid.
2: A way for it to be anonymous. You want to know a transaction completed, but not go to jail 20+ years down the line because you bought a lid of pot.
3: Mechanisms to prevent double-spending.
4: Completely decentralized.
However, modern
Bitcoin was absolutely not decentralized (Score:2)
#4 (Completely decentralized) is sort of in place
Not really, although it is slightly better than a few years ago. Until recently we did NOT have decentralized mining. We had 70% of mining located in a single country. They outlawed mining so things are in flux as miners relocate but they have obviously shown they don't care about the security model that requires decentralization. In that 1990s design the idea was average users with average computers would be mining and maintain the blockchain. Not commercial operations designing their own special purposes
Cash is king (Score:2)
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The only thing any crapcoin becomes actually useful is if it becomes impossible or very, very hard to use it for crime and gambling.
The irony of that statement being you find no problem with bank notes and coins even though they're what are used in the vast majority of gambling and crime.
The problem is without the crime (Score:2, Insightful)
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The main thing that gives intangible or not very useful assets value is persistent shared belief in their value. Their value is a meme.
Examples: Gold, and diamonds. Yes, they have marginally valuable uses like making space telescope mirrors, ugly false teeth, or for grinding or cutting things, but it is only the meme that they are very valuable that keeps them valuable.
In the case of Ethereum, its smart contract capability actually gives it considerable utility for automating and eventually
So that's what brought in the really crazy value (Score:2)
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Smart contracts are pointless because they're not anymore enforceable than a regular contract and what's worse they can be manipulated.
You really are an idiot
An 18 year old kid figured out how to take 20 million some odd dollars out of one of the distributed finance blockchains just by manipulating the code of those smart contracts
OMG! Some kid exploited flawed code! HACK THE PLANET!
Now he's a dumb kid so our legal system will probably screw him over becaus
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He personally keeps "stupid amounts of cash" on hand, because he grew up poor, he holds on to cash.
He wasn't talking about anyone but himself and partner...
Proof of Stake is so crazy (Score:1)
Proof of stake is just going to create another fia
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"... as long as the transaction speeds are fast and costs are low, and prices are stable."
Uh. Yeah. About that.
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Honestly, why do you think that is the difficult part... after a crash? Mining creates speculation, lack of utility fosters it as well; by making it boring it becomes easier to make it stable.
Re:I don't think so (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. The morons convinced themselves that they could have a finance system that is immune to regulation, while having a primary use of money laundering and financing organized and non-organized crime. That could never have worked. The primary use for crime merely accelerated things.
Crypto doesn't even decentralize. It's completely centralized around the exchanges and mining pools. And proof of stake don't fix that, since all it does is centralize it around the big holders.
And that is the other big lie: Centralization and scalability. I mean, how could something like BC, with its transaction rate of less than 10/second ever scale? Even the interbank exchange of a small country does that domestically and BC can do it _globaly_. That is something like 1000 times too slow for interbank and something like 100'000 times (or more) too slow if you actually want to support regular purchases. Hence you need exchanges to make it work at all. And thereby decentralization and immunity to regulation goes right out the windows. And nothing of that is secret or hard to find out. This thing was a non-starter for anything practically useful right from the start.
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I've beaten up rsilvergun for this before, yet somehow you're also convinced that crypto is used almost exclusively for money laundering and crime. Where do you come up with these ideas?
Do some actual research. Here, I'll paste the same link that torpedoes all these claims again because obviously this will need to be done repeatedly:
https://blog.chainalysis.com/r... [chainalysis.com]
"Cryptocurrency-based crime hit a new all-time high in 2021, with illicit addresses receiving $14 billion over the course of the year, up from
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You are correct that it really isn't ransomware and theft transfers to illegal addresses (which is how Chainanalysis is defining "crime"), or even money laundering (which will not show up as "criminal activity" in their analysis) that is driving crypto. It is speculation - a mostly legal (except for attempts at tax avoidance) but profoundly unwise and dangerous activity.
The amazing transaction volume cited, which is claimed to be "adoption", $15.8 trillion (an amount equal to 20% of the world GDP) should be
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There will plenty of centralized shitcoins that drown, like there always is and always has been in these events. But Bitcoin and Ethereum are here to stay. They have utility and value, even if *you* choose to ignore it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbZ8zDpX2Mg
GPU mining ends with proof of work (Score:2)
This is my take on this and I for one will stock up since this burst little bubble won't last.
You may want to keep in mind etherium is planning on moving from proof of work to proof of stake. GPU mining ends with proof of work.
Those are really cheap energy prices (Score:2)
In the UK most people are currently on the country-wide energey price cap which currently is:
Unit rate: 0.2834 GBP = 0.3457 USD
Standing charge per day: 0.4534 GBP = 0.5531
And these prices are expected to raise by a furter 32% in October to $0.46 and $0.73 respetively.
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Doing anything to improve your home energy efficiency before October?
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Nah. I live in a rented property so I can't do anything structural to improve it so I've accepted my fate. On the other hand, maybe the new prices will force me into eating fewer takeaways so perhaps it's for the better. :-P
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per unit?? Um. Wazza unit?
A problem in calculating price per KWHr are the various rate plans and tiered pricing. But I was reading about the special price hike for mining in Washington, which really sucks -- as you DON'T want your energy company telling you what you can use your energy for. If you have a tiered rate plan, and miners get hit by the highest rate -- that's *neutral* as it is going by usage (not what you use it for).
In the US, since utilities in most areas are *public utilities* (i.e. gove
Wait (Score:3)
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There goes my nest egg.
It has already been replaced by the cuckoo birds [wikipedia.org].
So Ethereum will be dead by crypto standards? (Score:2, Insightful)
One of the requirements is that there be a continuing (if increasingly difficult to obtain) supply of new blockchains to be added and used, if I understood what the crypto bros have been trying to tell everybody. No new blockchains means no more opportunity for growth. With the inherent value of a blockchain being, what, zero? Yeah, there's a solid investment for people in search of a tax write-off.
Re: So Ethereum will be dead by crypto standards? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: So Ethereum will be dead by crypto standards? (Score:4, Informative)
He referenced a notorious crypto-bro and the archetypal scammer. It hardly seems random.
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Yes, as long as people
a) remember to monitor the profitability
b) don't speculate on the price
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The problem is that it is expensive to stop mining and still keep the data center space. There are a lot of associated costs with mining, be it the data center, security, network connections, stuff that someone has to pay for 24/7 even when mining isn't happening. Yes, energy may be saved when the ASIC miners are off, but there is still a ton of other overhead that has to be accounted for. If mining companies shut down and leave a data center, it will be expensive to start up again, so they are unlikely
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You are mixing up blockchains with coins.
Blockchains are unlimited.
And cloins get split, so basically they are close to unlimited, too.
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They are not mined?
Excellent (Score:1)
Let the madness stop. And those that fueled it lose out big. Maybe next time this has a chance working, this time the usual mix of greed, arrogance and incompetence sabotaged it right from the start.
Re: Excellent (Score:1)
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I'm just here looking forward to cheaper GPUs.
And of course the show. Here's your bag of popcorn, pass the soda.
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Not below 20k yet, but I guess some people have been sweating blood for some days now. Well, the day is young.
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Forget the soda, I'll get us some Pina Coladas fixed.
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Not below 20k yet, but I guess some people have been sweating blood for some days now. Well, the day is young.
According to Google, it dropped below $20k about an hour before your post.
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According to coindesk it did not. But now it has.
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I agree that tit looks like this is it.
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Now the day is old, and we're below 20k. How far you think the value limbo is gonna go?
ETH Mining is Game Over soon (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:ETH Mining is Game Over soon (Score:5, Insightful)
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I wonder how that will change things, when Ethereum moves from PoW to PoS. I do know it further ensures that Ethereum might be regarded as a pyramid scheme where the more you have, the more you get, which definitely will discourage people who want to enter that market, as they have to pay to play, while early adopters obtained their currency in far cheaper ways.
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At this point they've been "testing" proof-of-stake for nearly twice as long as it took them to develop the damn coin in the first place. It was supposed to be merged "in the next few months" back in December 2020, after originally missing their January 2020 deadline. Here we are 18 months later and there's still no hard-and-fast switch date (which would be pointless, because they'd just let it slip again.)
If they're going to switch, switch. No one's buying the hype anymore. At this point it's the carro
bUy ThE DiP !|!!! (Score:1)
Re: bUy ThE DiP !|!!! (Score:1)
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Found the person desperately trying to get rid of their shitcoins.
"New England" is a state? (Score:2)
Good riddance (Score:4, Insightful)
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I find it amusing how nukeheads keep claiming every day that civilian nuclear power has absolutely nothing to do with military nuclear power, no sir, never...and then one day they inevitably remark that "oh, yeah, military nuclear education is ackshually vital for civilian nuclear sector growth, always has been, you didn't know?".
Actually I was assuming it would be civilian schools training people in nuclear power to satisfy the need for nuclear engineers and technicians in the military. It works the other way too though. We are going to see a lot of people trained in nuclear power from experience on nuclear submarines, experience that will be useful for civilian nuclear power.
I recall reading somewhere that 70% of airline pilots are former military pilots. Does this mean military training is vital to the airline industry? Perha
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You ignore distribution costs, which is where rooftop solar has its advantages, even if you add battery to the equation. You are also dealing with an entity (building) that tends to have a life in excess of 30 years. Where I live, the energy portion of the bill is about 15-20% including O&P. Distribution is the bulk of what they charge you for.
Sure, you can co-locate a crypto-farm with a power plant and buy power at ~10% above spot price which will always be cheaper, but your risk profile at that sca
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You ignore distribution costs
You are ignoring the order of magnitude gap in labor and material needs between nuclear fission and solar PV. Rooftop solar PV takes us down the path of energy shortages. Nuclear fission takes us down the path of lowered CO2 emissions, lowered energy costs, and so many other benefits.
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If some politician is talking up an offshore wind power project then just remember that there is a near certainty that the electricity produced by this offshore wind farm would cost more than if they built a nuclear fission power plant instead.
However the big difference which you ignore is that an offshore wind turbine can be thrown up in a matter of weeks, literally only being delayed by how long it takes the base to cure and the weather giving them long enough to put the thing up. A nuclear power plant can take several years to a decade to build.
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offshore wind turbine can be thrown up in a matter of weeks
The Kennedy Clan would like a word with you [foxnews.com].
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However the big difference which you ignore is that an offshore wind turbine can be thrown up in a matter of weeks, literally only being delayed by how long it takes the base to cure and the weather giving them long enough to put the thing up. A nuclear power plant can take several years to a decade to build.
Then do both. We can do more than one thing at a time. A nuclear power plant can be expected to last for 60 years once it is complete, but a wind farm may last only 20 to 30 years.
Offshore wind is one of the most expensive energy sources we have because of the large amount of material and labor involved. Because of the intermittent nature of wind power we see copious amounts of natural gas burned to fill in where wind power fails us. We'd likely be better off long term to skip the building of the offsho
grumpycatgood.jpg (Score:2)
doing it wrong if on conventional grid (Score:1)
New England (Score:3)
Who's going to tell the author that New England isn't a state?
I'm sure the rest of the article is spot-on, though ...
POS (Score:1)
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Once an investor class is burnt on a commodity type, they shy aware until better than half of the investor class has been changed out with new individuals.
Sports Betting, Crypto, BioTech, BRICK, House Flipping all have undergone a spike and then light markets.