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

[Vayra86]

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

No.

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

Wrong. Even playing computer games creates objective value. People develop something. Like carpal tunnel syndrome.

No but really, entertainment for example has a distinct function in society. Its something we need as much as bread. Even the Romans knew

 

[Vya Domus]

there's so much hardware mining, the difficulty goes up considerably

Except that's why Bitcoin rises so much in value, every time the difficulty goes up the influx of new coins diminishes and so the price of each of individual coin goes up.

large investors in crypto decide to sell huge amounts of their cryptocurrency.

They wont, Bitcoin is still projected to reach monstrous prices. By 2024 it could be worth as much as half a million, that's not a guess by the way it's a deterministic estimation because of the way it's mined, it's something every major long term investor fully expects to happen.

 

[Space Lynx]

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.

Wrong again. It starts at the government level, like in UK for example or Ireland, where everyone is forced to recycle. It has to work from the top down. It can work, and it will work, and is working in many many countries. The problem is not everyone is on board yet. Acceleration of climate change due to added things is only slowing us down even more.

I just hope Congress passes more taxes on cryptocurrency and y'all pay more in fees and taxes double that of cigarettes' users pay. I think it will happen eventually. In the end, the IRS always gets its money

 

[RedelZaVedno]

These small guys are not the real problem... These are:

100MW crypto farm in Russian Bratsk... and there are A LOT of similar farms in China, Iceland and all around the world being build atm, wherever electricity is cheap.

 

[Vya Domus]

These small guys are not the real problem... These are:

I mean they all buy cards, so what does it matter.

 

[Space Lynx]

wherever electricity is cheap.

or wherever its easily stolen.

 

[RedelZaVedno]

I mean they all buy cards, so what does it matter.

It does matter, because big guys don't buy 100 GPUs but a few airplanes of GPUs at once directly from AIB, so even large retailers don't get them. I also read a story on Bloomberg that some big miners now buy directly from factories, even circumventing AIBs. It's a wild, wild east in the supply chain. Whoever buys and pays more, gets them. Even Nvidia has no control over it atm. Greed is a b***

 

[SomeOne99h]

Haha, funny plot twist

 

[mouacyk]

These small guys are not the real problem... These are:
View attachment 188570
100MW crypto farm in Russian Bratsk... and there are A LOT of similar farms in China, Iceland and all around the world being build atm, wherever electricity is cheap.

From: Inside Russia's Largest Bitcoin Mine - Bloomberg

A team of on-site engineers work 24/7 to monitor and perform routine diagnostics on the application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) devices and power units. They wear hearing-protection devices to guard against the noise of the mining rigs and cooling fans.

The Russians do not have our GPUs. With dedicated power infrastructure, it's natural to want max efficiency for the long haul, hence their choice of ASIC's here.

 

[RedelZaVedno]

From: Inside Russia's Largest Bitcoin Mine - Bloomberg

The Russians do not have our GPUs. With dedicated power infrastructure, it's natural to want max efficiency for the long haul, hence their choice of ASIC's here.

But they are the problem, because large farms like that rise bitcoin value, so mining becomes profitable on more and more mining setups.

 

[trog100]

But they are the problem, because large farms like that rise bitcoin value, so mining becomes profitable on more and more mining setups.

market demand creates the price of bitcoin not miners.. the other thing is gpus dont mine bitcoin they generally mine etherium.. having said that mining ehterium is profitable enough to suck up the gpu supply..

market forces generate the price though.. nothing else.. the people who buy it must think its worth the price they pay else they would not buy..

trog

 

[kapone32]

It does matter, because big guys don't buy 100 GPUs but a few airplanes of GPUs at once directly from AIB, so even large retailers don't get them. I also read a story on Bloomberg that some big miners now buy directly from factories, even circumventing AIBs. It's a wild, wild east in the supply chain. Whoever buys and pays more, gets them. Even Nvidia has no control over it atm. Greed is a b***

Nvidia's Q1 2021 sales numbers will show us how much they really knew.

 

[newtekie1]

It does matter, because big guys don't buy 100 GPUs but a few airplanes of GPUs at once directly from AIB, so even large retailers don't get them. I also read a story on Bloomberg that some big miners now buy directly from factories, even circumventing AIBs. It's a wild, wild east in the supply chain. Whoever buys and pays more, gets them. Even Nvidia has no control over it atm. Greed is a b***

At the end of the day, nVidia and AMD are companies that want profit. As long as their products are selling(and aren't being used illegally) they don't care who is buying them. If they did, they would be working to develop methods to detect mining on their cards and purposely slow the cards performance down to unusable levels. And before anyone says "that isn't possible" remember that they already do this. They already have methods in place to detect certain programs, and even certain load patterns, and throttle cards. Furmark is an example of this.

 

[Why_Me]

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.

Luckily for China, they aren't buying into the scam. and btw the climate has been changing for millions if not billions of years. Just ask a dinosaur.

China Is Still Building an Insane Number of New Coal Plants

While the rest of the world turns away from the fossil fuel, China is investing big in coal-powered electricity.

www.wired.com

 

[Space Lynx]

Luckily for China, they aren't buying into the scam. and btw the climate has been changing for millions if not billions of years. Just ask a dinosaur.

China Is Still Building an Insane Number of New Coal Plants

While the rest of the world turns away from the fossil fuel, China is investing big in coal-powered electricity.

www.wired.com

that article is misleading. if you actually read that article it says MOST of the coal powered plants are not in use, its building them due to emergency case scenarios mostly. I know reading can be hard sometimes though. it's ok.

also, you are correct the world has changed in the past many times, thousands of times. but if you do not understand that 200 ppi in the atmosphere to over 400 in less than 200 years, combined with the ocean changes we are seeing already then I'm afraid we might as well not even debate.

 

[Why_Me]

that article is misleading. if you actually read that article it says MOST of the coal powered plants are not in use, its building them due to emergency case scenarios mostly. I know reading can be hard sometimes though. it's ok.

also, you are correct the world has changed in the past many times, thousands of times. but if you do not understand that 200 ppi in the atmosphere to over 400 in less than 200 years, combined with the ocean changes we are seeing already then I'm afraid we might as well not even debate.

I've spent the better part of my life working in the energy sector (oil & gas industry) in the US and Russia. Anyone who thinks China is building hundreds of coal gen plants while upping their coal imports for a rainy day needs to get a clue. China is the worst polluting country in the world followed by India and neither of those country's are showing improvement. btw millions of Texans went without power last night in freezing temps due to the clean energy failure RE windmill farms freezing up and solar panels covered in a layer of snow.

 

[Space Lynx]

I've spent the better part of my life working in the energy sector (oil & gas industry) in the US and Russia. Anyone who thinks China is building hundreds of coal gen plants while upping their coal imports for a rainy day needs to get a clue. China is the worst polluting country in the world followed by India and neither of those country's are showing improvement. btw millions of Texans went without power last night in freezing temps due to the clean energy failure RE windmill farms freezing up and solar panels covered in a layer of snow.

Texas is it's own state, no one forced them to do anything to their energy sector. This is their fault for not having back up plans in place.

 

[Why_Me]

Texas is it's own state, no one forced them to do anything to their energy sector. This is their fault for not having back up plans in place.

No argument here. Hopefully Texas learned their lesson after this. When you're main voices pushing the climate change agenda have recently purchased waterfront homes and private jets that should tell you something right there.

 

[Caring1]

These small guys are not the real problem... These are:
View attachment 188570
100MW crypto farm in Russian Bratsk... and there are A LOT of similar farms in China, Iceland and all around the world being build atm, wherever electricity is cheap.

Nice generic picture you chose.
So tell me how many GPUs they have, because they look more like banks of ASICs to me.

 

[Tartaros]

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.

The problem of trying to solve this in the hardware side is that the software evolves, mining started in regular x86 cpus, then went to asics, then went to gpus, then went back to asics, then went back to gpus....

Trying to gimp computing performance in amd gpus is quite moot, tomorrow there might be a new software that goes better in casio calculators or some shit, or more realisticly tensor cores. There has to be some regulation, but that is also a titanic task. If you force the makers to sell x amount for general purposes and y amount for mining you will have to put some sort of control or identification that has to be worlwide, thus making a lot of people wary of these things because precisely all the cryptocurrency thing relies on independency from goverments, so there will be a very long debate on the matter with too many points of view.

It's a daunting task, and no ones want to stirr the lion in the den.