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Bitcoin

GPU Mining No Longer Profitable After Ethereum Merge (tomshardware.com) 163

Just one day after the Ethereum Merge, where the cryptocoin successfully switched from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS), profitability of GPU mining has completely collapsed. Tom's Hardware reports: That means the best graphics cards should finally be back where they belonged, in your gaming PC, just as god intended. That's a quick drop, considering yesterday there were still a few cryptocurrencies that were technically profitable. Looking at WhatToMine, and using the standard $0.10 per kWh, the best-case results are with the GeForce RTX 3090 and Radeon RX 6800 and 6800 XT. Those are technically showing slightly positive results, to the tune of around $0.06 per day after power costs. However, that doesn't factor in the cost of the PC power, or the wear and tear on your graphics card.

Even at a slightly positive net result, it would still take over 20 years to break even on the cost of an RX 6800. We say that tongue-in-cheek, because if there's one thing we know for certain, it's that no one can predict what the cryptocurrency market will look like even one year out, never mind 20 years in the future. It's a volatile market, and there are definitely lots of groups and individuals hoping to figure out a way to Make GPU Mining Profitable Again (MGMPA hats inbound...)

Of the 21 current generation graphics cards from the AMD RX 6000-series and the Nvidia RTX 30-series, only five are theoretically profitable right now, and those are all just barely in the black. This is using data from NiceHash and WhatToMine, so perhaps there are ways to tune other GPUs to get into the net positive, but the bottom line is that no one should be using GPUs for mining right now, and certainly not buying more GPUs for mining purposes. [You can see a full list of the current profitability of the current generation graphics cards here.]

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GPU Mining No Longer Profitable After Ethereum Merge

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  • Not dead yet (Score:5, Insightful)

    by leathered ( 780018 ) on Friday September 16, 2022 @08:11PM (#62888527)

    Lots of evidence that miners are turning to other ponzi coins. Ethereum Classic, arguably the 'true' Ethereum, has seen a surge in its hash rate in recent days.

    You also have to consider that many miners steal electricity, or mine at a loss in the hope that number goes up in the future.

    Sadly we can't celebrate the death of GPU mining just yet.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Well, the more sketchy things get, the less the "greater fool" approach works. Lets hope all these assholes go bankrupt soon.

      • by Kaenneth ( 82978 )

        Last person to accept the new reality is the greatest fool of all.

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          What new reality? That old scams, dressed up prettily in new clothes still work? That most people still have no clue how reality works? That there are lot sand lots of fools? Here is news for you: That is the old reality, in fact the ancient one.

    • Few people mine where power costs 10 cents (the number used in TFA to calculate "breakeven").

      There are plenty of places with retail power at 4 cents and wholesale at half of that. That's where the miners are.

    • Re:Not dead yet (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Friday September 16, 2022 @09:55PM (#62888705) Homepage

      You also have to consider that many miners steal electricity

      This. They're using company electricity, college campus electricity, their parent's electricity, ...

      Anywhere there's a socket that they don't personally pay the bill for they'll go right on doing it.

    • Are buying new GPUs, or just trying to get some use out of the ones they already have?

    • They're trying and they're spending money to try and pump them up but so far it's really not working. What you have is a lot of businesses that we're making a lot of money and now aren't falling for some costs. I can't say I blame them since some of these guys are looking at getting regular day jobs.

      What's hilarious is as a thread floating around a guy who bought a bunch of gpus recently and somehow didn't know this was coming. Do you want from making several hundred dollars a month to less than a dolla
    • You also have to consider that many miners steal electricity

      The word "many" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. One could say many drivers don't obey the road rules but in the grand scheme of society it works rather well.

      Same here. Many miners are still mining, but that doesn't change the fact mining plummeted the last few days, and it doesn't require a complete stop of mining for there to be massive repercussions in the GPU market. Heck we've seen a massive change this year already before the merge.

    • mine at a loss in the hope that number goes up in the future.

      If you are mining at loss and hold, why you don't buy and hold instead? It seems a lot easier.

      Sadly we can't celebrate the death of GPU mining just yet.

      Big scale GPU mining looks dead to me. You may find short lived mining opportunity among shitcoins but they will never have enough transactions to absorb the same level of miners ETH had. GPU prices drop seems to validate GPU mining death.

    • Re:Not dead yet (Score:4, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Saturday September 17, 2022 @08:53AM (#62889347) Homepage Journal

      I see lots of GPUs hitting eBay already.

      One of the reasons EVGA cited for effectively exiting the GPU market is that Nvidia didn't do enough to stop miners, which made the price even more volatile and meant they ended up competing with eBay selling used GPUs for less than half of what their new ones cost.

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Miners have no significant impact on cost of each coin. Investors are the ones who decide that because they're the one that trade tokens for actual money. You can have every graphic card in the world mine some random no name coin tomorrow, and it wouldn't increase its price as long as there aren't enough people that are willing to pay actual money for said no name coin.

      And investors already made their choice on Ethereum. They're staying with ETH. ETHW, the "proof of work fork" is rapidly dying on the vine a

    • Not everyone pays 10c/kWh. Itâ(TM)s still relatively profitable with a 3060LHR below 8c/kWh. There is also a use for the âoewasteâ heat in many cases.

      • I'll keep my old vega64 mining in the basement this winter since there's no heat vents down there and it makes it livable. Costs exactly the same as running a space heater, without the payout. the payout cuts the costs down even if it's not fully paying the elec
    • It's still nice to hear crypto is suffering. Also, thanks for being the first on topic post of the entire thread! Hopefully crypto continues to suffer and people will avoid it going forward.

    • ... or mine at a loss in the hope that number goes up in the future ...

      Not really. Even most newb miners understand that they would acquire more coins if they take the money they would have spent on electricity and just buy the coins directly.

      Some might consider offsets, like in the winter the heating of their room/office. Yet again, they will typically know when just buying regular heating is less expensive.

      For GPU mining to continue beyond some hobbyists / coin creators some new "profitable" speculative instrument will have to arise. Like etherium did in 2020/2021. GP

  • With so much of computing power exiting the mining pool, who controls the public ledger? Can someone control 50%?
  • Accoring to Forbes:
    1. Bitcoin (BTC) Market cap: $383 billion (Still Proof-of-Work)
    2. Ethereum (ETH) Market cap: $192 billion (Now Proof-of-Stake)
    etc.

    So, I do not believe that the "profitability of GPU mining has completely collapsed." Bitcoin MIGHT have plateau'd, but . . .

  • From PoW to PoS (Score:2, Informative)

    by ballpoint ( 192660 )

    From Prisoner of (energy) War to Piece of Shit.
    They aren't even hiding it anymore.

  • For decades, gamers and CAD/Science workstation owners have paid to keep video cards technology on the cutting edge, and keep them affordable. Blockchain, other than being a subversive form of money, destabilized the video card market, made video cards both expensive and scarce, as well as wasting more power than a gamer would ever use.
    • by Rei ( 128717 )

      The timing for this change however is perfect for everyone who's into AI art to get good GPUs on the cheap.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Um, China could probably have taken control of Bitcoin temporarily by seizing mining farms back when there were a lot more of them in mainland China. Before they were run out of business.

      The PRC opted to take no such action.

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Not only could governments take control of it should they have cared enough, but there was at least one event when a single mining pool de facto took control of it (had over half of the total hash rate of the network, at which point they can do whatever they want with any of the existing bitcoin).

      Though that was indeed an accident, and in the aftermath, mining pool immediately fractured because no one in the pool wanted to crash bitcoin's value.

  • by CptJeanLuc ( 1889586 ) on Saturday September 17, 2022 @03:17AM (#62889031)

    Mankind is creative, if nothing else. I am sure there are lots of other ways to make money off people who have poor understanding of the "product" they are buying, by producing something of zero value while killing the environment in the process.

    Maybe we could have a brainstorming here for the next big thing to replace cryptocurrency mining?

    Here is one random idea. With crypto mining, putting an electricity generator on top of a natural gas source, and having to build an expensive data center, is lots of work and takes starting capital to set up. Why not use gas flames as currency directly? You create lots of little flames directly from the natural gas, and keep them burning. You sell the ownership of each flame, and people can sell their flame to other people. Make a NFT of the flame, and make even more money. Charge a fee for some guy or gal to walk around making sure the flames keep burning, and you can make even more money. Charge more for "special flames" where you mix in a little powder withi the flame to give it special properties like different colors or obnoxious fumes (ideally using rare earth minerals for the powder, to hurt the environment as much as possible).

    And that is just the first idea that comes to mind, there must be thousands more! Come on folks ... we can do better than cryoptomining. There must be ways to make money by hurting the environment faster with less effort.

  • Why do they make it sound like ALL cryptocoin mining is no longer profitable?
    • Power costs have been rising recently. Combined with lower prices on many coins, the investments in equipment no longer have a reasonable break-even time.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Because it's (apparently) true? At least all the ones tracked by NiceHash.

      Many of the non-ethereum coins are actually processed on the etherium blockchain. Many of the rest weren't profitable to start with. And the ones that were left have probably seen an influx of miners who were previously mining the others and are now fighting over the scraps.

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