Internet Cafes Are Turning To Cryptocurrency Mining As "Profits are Higher"

[Uskompuf]

An internet cafe in Vietnam has turned to mining cryptocurrency as the pandemic has affected their business. Internet cafes have been ordered to close to limit the spread of COVID-19 forcing the owners to find an alternative use for their computer hardware. The owner of Star Computer computer cafe in Ho Chi Minh city has announced that they will be switching to cryptocurrency mining as the "profits are higher". The cafe is owned by a Vietnamese computer store and has managed to secure a significant number of RTX 3080 GPUs for the mining operations. Star Computer internet cafe has also encouraged other internet cafe owners to contact them about setting up similar operations.

Switching business season, Profits are higher than net business, whoever wants to do, contact me for free.

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[evernessince]

Nvidia was right, it did have a big shipment of 3000 series cards coming it. It just neglected to say that 0 of them are going into the hands of gamers.

 

[the54thvoid]

What next?

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory turns its Volta system to crypto : breaks Bitcoin overnight...

Jokes aside, I don't think there's an end to this scenario until something changes hardware or software wise.

 

[8BitZ80]

The crypto mining trend is becoming more of a "craze" when everyone wants a piece of the action like this. It's like Black Friday except with crypto.

 

[hat]

What next?

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory turns its Volta system to crypto : breaks Bitcoin overnight...

Jokes aside, I don't think there's an end to this scenario until something changes hardware or software wise.

Thinking this through...

• We won't see reasonable hardware prices until mining slows down. Miners will continue to buy more and more hardware until it no longer makes sense to do so.
• We won't see mining slow down until profitability goes to shit.
• Profitability will only go down until either one of two things happen: 1. there's so much hardware mining, the difficulty goes up considerably or 2. large investors in crypto decide to sell huge amounts of their cryptocurrency.

Neither of these scenarios look likely any time soon because the value of crypto only continues to go up and up and there's not enough mining happening to make the difficulty go up enough to disinterest anyone. In fact profitability only seems to be going up along with the prices, attracting more attention, but the hardware isn't coming fast enough to counter-balance it. Supply and demand, just like the physical hardware.

Anyone who wants this to end is essentially waiting for the day the fat cats dump their crypto and drive the value way down.

 

[ZoneDymo]

What next?

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory turns its Volta system to crypto : breaks Bitcoin overnight...

Jokes aside, I don't think there's an end to this scenario until something changes hardware or software wise.

Something lik that did happen though right, one supercomputer that was sorta hacked to farm up some cryptocurrency

 

[Space Lynx]

Something lik that did happen though right, one supercomputer that was sorta hacked to farm up some cryptocurrency

professors at universities rent time on supercomputers for their research, I don't think there is much oversight though on it, I wouldn't be surprised if there are a couple rich professors out there, just hodling away.

 

[Sithaer]

Thinking this through...

• We won't see reasonable hardware prices until mining slows down. Miners will continue to buy more and more hardware until it no longer makes sense to do so.
• We won't see mining slow down until profitability goes to shit.
• Profitability will only go down until either one of two things happen: 1. there's so much hardware mining, the difficulty goes up considerably or 2. large investors in crypto decide to sell huge amounts of their cryptocurrency.

Neither of these scenarios look likely any time soon because the value of crypto only continues to go up and up and there's not enough mining happening to make the difficulty go up enough to disinterest anyone. In fact profitability only seems to be going up along with the prices, attracting more attention, but the hardware isn't coming fast enough to counter-balance it. Supply and demand, just like the physical hardware.

Anyone who wants this to end is essentially waiting for the day the fat cats dump their crypto and drive the value way down.

Yup, that sounds about right imo.

I honestly don't expect things to get much better this year or at least later the second half.
Already spent most of my saved up '~330$' GPU money on other things instead and only kept enough to buy another second hand RX 570 '4GB' in case mine dies on me before this craze is over/calms down.
Whats more annoying is that even mid range cards are affected and gone, actually its easier to buy high end/enthusiast cards in my country than the previously affordable ones. 'exactly the ones I was interested in'

Someone offered me help/money to buy a card in 2020 October or so when the prices were still fairly normal but I refused 'I don't like to accept such', now I kinda regret that since I could pay it back by now.

 

[Tartaros]

Jokes aside, I don't think there's an end to this scenario until something changes hardware or software wise.

I think I remember nvidia trying to gimp the performance on their gpus computing wise a long time ago because they wanted their quadro line to do that or something? But software always makes its way, I don't think unless goverments take party to do regulations there is any form to change the crypto scenario.

 

[PapaTaipei]

Gonna be hilarious when all those cards hit second hand market. Are they going to sell them for 10 bucks?

 

[Dammeron]

I can see the reason behind virtual currencies existence, but I absolutely loathe the act of "mining it", which is nothing else but a giant waste of resources, electricity power etc. Especially since the whole mining doesn't create anything useful for the society, just generates more of the said currency, but we have to ask one question here: At what cost?!

 

[the54thvoid]

I can see the reason behind virtual currencies existence, but I absolutely loathe the act of "mining it", which is nothing else but a giant waste of resources, electricity power etc. Especially since the whole mining doesn't create anything useful for the society, just generates more of the said currency, but we have to ask one question here: At what cost?!

I know little of mining but does it not serve the purpose to validate the digital transactions? Does mining not contribute to the blockchain?

 

[PanicLake]

The mining part in the Cryptocurrency system has to change! It should be something on the line of a fee for maintaining your actual crypto deposit (from real money) transactions secure instead of making money out of "thin air".
At the moment it is a flawed system, and some day in a way or another it is going to blow up.

 

[TheUn4seen]

(...)a giant waste of resources, electricity power etc. Especially since the whole mining doesn't create anything useful for the society, just generates more of the said currency, but we have to ask one question here: At what cost?!

The same can be easily said about almost all human activities which don't generate objective value, which is almost all of them.

 

[ARF]

I think I remember nvidia trying to gimp the performance on their gpus computing wise a long time ago because they wanted their quadro line to do that or something? But software always makes its way, I don't think unless goverments take party to do regulations there is any form to change the crypto scenario.

It is a good idea that AMD gimps the mining performance on its gaming lineup in order to protect these two quite distinct market segments.
It is not fair that gamers cannot buy gaming graphics cards because some users steal them from them.

 

[Space Lynx]

The same can be easily said about almost all human activities which don't generate objective value, which is almost all of them.

which is why most human activities are moving green as fast as possible... China is number 1 pro-green country right now. massive solar and wind farms and nuclear energy investments. adding to the problem is exactly what we as a species can not afford to do, even if we do everything right we are cutting it close on climate change. humans can't afford to have crypto mining contributing to the carbon output. the whole idea is to reduce carbon not add to it. LED lights are now very efficient, 7nm and lower nodes are more energy efficient for phones, pc's, game consoles, etc. the idea is that we can live a decent life if we all work together. but cryptocurrency fuels greed beyond imagination and it will not stop unless governments ban exchanges, businesses, and banks from allowing its use.

clock is ticking. humans will regret not taking climate change more seriously 30-50 years from now.

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

Gonna be hilarious when all those cards hit second hand market. Are they going to sell them for 10 bucks?

Nah, horny gamer kids will be all over them like flies and will take them maybe even at original MSRP or more.

I can see the reason behind virtual currencies existence, but I absolutely loathe the act of "mining it", which is nothing else but a giant waste of resources, electricity power etc. Especially since the whole mining doesn't create anything useful for the society, just generates more of the said currency, but we have to ask one question here: At what cost?!

As far as I can tell, mining part is designed so that people cannot create arbitrary amounts of it, leading to hyperinflation. That is actually one of the main allures of cryptocurrencies and energy use for mining is the cost of it. Until one comes up with more energy efficient but just as robust inflation prevention method that is.

 

[Arjai]

There's at least 71 GPU's pictured there. Great.

 

[ARF]

Nah, horny gamer kids will be all over them like flies and will take them maybe even at original MSRP or more.

I hope gamer kids can be educated that mining cards cannot game because there is extremely high risk of failure due to wear.
And the demand won't be as high as the availability, so indeed the prices should be low.

Mining is evil in this form - it completely distorts the whole PC industry.

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

I hope gamer kids can be educated that mining cards cannot game because there is extremely high risk of failure due to wear.
And the demand won't be as high as the availability, so indeed the prices should be low.

Oh, I'd hope that to be the case as well.

I also hoped after Holiday's market situation will improve. But yeah, things went other way...

So now I just assume worst case scenario and anything better than that is a plus.

 

[Caring1]

Gonna be hilarious when all those cards hit second hand market. Are they going to sell them for 10 bucks?

I hope so.

 

[TheUn4seen]

which is why most human activities are moving green as fast as possible... China is number 1 pro-green country right now. massive solar and wind farms and nuclear energy investments. adding to the problem is exactly what we as a species can not afford to do, even if we do everything right we are cutting it close on climate change. humans can't afford to have crypto mining contributing to the carbon output. the whole idea is to reduce carbon not add to it. LED lights are now very efficient, 7nm and lower nodes are more energy efficient for phones, pc's, game consoles, etc. the idea is that we can live a decent life if we all work together. but cryptocurrency fuels greed beyond imagination and it will not stop unless governments ban exchanges, businesses, and banks from allowing its use.

clock is ticking. humans will regret not taking climate change more seriously 30-50 years from now.

I really don't think so. People claim to be "green" mostly because it became fashionable and virtue signalling requires them to do so. They still generate waste as fast as they can, throwing away old electronics as soon as something new is available and they can afford it. Big corporations (ahem, Apple) are using child labor and forced labor to saturate the market as fast as possible. Entertainment industry wastes more energy in a day than all of the world's crypto mining farms use in a year.
Honestly, I prefer honest greed to eco-hypocrisy and virtue signalling.

 

[kapone32]

Yup, that sounds about right imo.

I honestly don't expect things to get much better this year or at least later the second half.
Already spent most of my saved up '~330$' GPU money on other things instead and only kept enough to buy another second hand RX 570 '4GB' in case mine dies on me before this craze is over/calms down.
Whats more annoying is that even mid range cards are affected and gone, actually its easier to buy high end/enthusiast cards in my country than the previously affordable ones. 'exactly the ones I was interested in'

Someone offered me help/money to buy a card in 2020 October or so when the prices were still fairly normal but I refused 'I don't like to accept such', now I kinda regret that since I could pay it back by now.

Why don't you plug the 2nd one into your PC.? If you play Jedi Fallen order you will enjoy it.

 

[Sithaer]

Why don't you plug the 2nd one into your PC.? If you play Jedi Fallen order you will enjoy it.

Ah, kinda worded that wrong 'was still half sleeping'.
I meant that I kept enough money to buy a secondary one if the one in my PC dies, I don't have 2. 'their price seems to be stable around 130$ on the second hand market where I live'
Not really interested in dual card systems tho, would hardly fit my case due to the bottom fans and way too high power draw for my taste.

I hope gamer kids can be educated that mining cards cannot game because there is extremely high risk of failure due to wear.
And the demand won't be as high as the availability, so indeed the prices should be low.

Mining is evil in this form - it completely distorts the whole PC industry.

Depends on how the miner treated the card and for how long.
My ex miner 'mined for ~6 months' 570 is still working in my PC since 2018 September, it had 2 and half years warranty when I bought it from the previous owner so it was alright.

 

[Relixo]

This is my opinion on this whole gpu situation: Bullsh*t
I can't wait for the many miners to go bankrupt as soon as possible! (I know we have to wait patiently this time for that)
These miners are the lowest of humanity who serve criminals and pedophiles with money/bitcoin.