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Cryptomining boom driving massive GPU demand

count

Well-known member
Not sure how many of you have an interest in cryptocurrencies, but if you haven't been paying attention there is a gold rush on right now that's generating a windfall for GPU makers. Specifically, alternative cryptocurrencies such as Ether and ZCash, are extremely profitable to GPU mine at the moment. AMD RX series cards are sold out for months, as these have the highest ROI for Ether mining. Nvidia 10 series cards are also in demand for ZCash mining, and several other mining rig components such as PCIe riser cards, are in short supply.

It'll be interesting to see how long this boom lasts. My personal view is that blockchain is much more than hype. It's a revolutionary technology, and the smart contracts enabled by Ethereum are going to become a game changer in a number of industries because it allows you to design a contract executed by an algorithm without requiring trust between parties.

I've been experimenting a little in this space, looking at various cryptocurrencies, GPU mining, and learning how to write smart contracts. After spending a bit of time with this, my feeling is that Blockchain and specifically the smart contracts enabled by it is going to be the next computing revolution, and it will be bigger than AI, VR, and IoT.
 
As one who follows finance and technology for a living, the crypto currency currently is an unregulated fad with a growing number of bit players working on systems with lots of problems technically, politically and tax wise among others. Bitcoin, the most famous, can only handle seven transactions a second, which is a joke. Soon as this area of endeavor becomes serious, major players like Visa, Master Card and others will move in and dominate. I could also see Amazon with the power of AWS becoming a dominant player. I could see the minor players of which that's all there is right now, becoming illegal in many jurisdictions, with a whole host of problems. This easily could become a very dangerous area to be in the legal, tax and political sense. I would only enter these areas with extreme caution, since I could easily see problems as great as criminal felonies and even worse, getting on the very wrong side of the IRS, who has more power than any law enforcement agency. I will write further on this as time permits. In the meantime, use caution and always remember, there is no free lunch and if there is, someone pays for it. Also usually the power players win or take a cut.

Also, all crypto currencies are now is another layer, largely unregulated, built on top of other currencies.
 
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As one who follows finance and technology for a living, the crypto currency currently is an unregulated fad with a growing number of bit players working on systems with lots of problems technically, politically and tax wise among others. Bitcoin, the most famous, can only handle seven transactions a second, which is a joke. Soon as this area of endeavor becomes serious, major players like Visa, Master Card and others will move in and dominate. I could also see Amazon with the power of AWS becoming a dominant player. I could see the minor players of which that's all there is right now, becoming illegal in many jurisdictions, with a whole host of problems. This easily could become a very dangerous area to be in the legal, tax and political sense. I would only enter these areas with extreme caution, since I could easily see problems as great as criminal felonies and even worse, getting on the very wrong side of the IRS, who has more power than any law enforcement agency. I will write further on this as time permits. In the meantime, use caution and always remember, there is no free lunch and if there is, someone pays for it. Also usually the power players win or take a cut.

Also, all crypto currencies are now is another layer, largely unregulated, built on top of other currencies.

I'm more interested in block chain and cryptocurrencies from the technical sense of how they work and what they can do, as opposed to speculation. I'm not investing in them, although I'll admit the reason they caught my attention was because of how the cyryptomarkets have been behaving lately.

I think being able to execute transactions without trusted third parties is a big deal in terms of what kinds of applications can be enabled by them. A simple transfer of value from one wallet to another (ie, Bitcoin), is the absolute simplest transaction, but any exchange of information, resources, or value, can be turned into an transaction.

I agree that both the technology and regulation around it is immature at this point, and there is legal issues with specific applications of some of the cryptocurrencies but you could have said the same thing about the internet in the 1980s. You could also say that any iPhone application is just a layer that sits on top of iOS.

However I am very cautious due to level of speculation that has taken over the market and don't see these things as investments. Besides, anyone who understands gold rushes knows it's better to sell shovels than mine yourself, and I figure my long position in TSMC gives me some good exposure if this market takes off without much downside if it doesn't.
 
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Also, all crypto currencies are now is another layer, largely unregulated

It is alternative giving more power to users and less to the banks and classic financial industry; it's true people have to be careful and know what one is doing. This decentralization is for some people like me a big plus and the reason to be a proponent.

built on top of other currencies.

This is false. For example Bitcoin stands fully on it's own but because it has value it can be expressed in USD/EUR/...
 
Bitcoin does not stand on its own, it is strictly used as another layer on other currencies. If it couldn't be converted to other currencies at some point, no one would use it. It could end up being made illegal or taken out of circulation like large denomination currency that has been taken out of circulation or ruled illegal many times throughout current and past history. The crypto currency miners are rank amateurs, compared to the major financial players. It would be like a criminal cartel attempting to take on the US military.
 
Bitcoin does not stand on its own, it is strictly used as another layer on other currencies. If it couldn't be converted to other currencies at some point, no one would use it. It could end up being made illegal or taken out of circulation like large denomination currency that has been taken out of circulation or ruled illegal many times throughout current and past history. The crypto currency miners are rank amateurs, compared to the major financial players. It would be like a criminal cartel attempting to take on the US military.

Bitcoin does stand on it's own. You might be thinking of some of the other alt coins built on Ethereum. But Bitcoin is the original currency that spawned all the others. Bitcoin can easily be converted to any other currency over a multitude of exchanges, and the industry is no longer run by amateurs. MIT has a digital currency initiative, the large banks are already using block stream for interbank exchanges, and smart contracts are getting a lot of attention from the major financial players. There are also emerging applications for block stream in IoT, where you can use it as an IoT platform that does not rely on a third party and can achieve essentially 100% availability.

Again, I'm interested in speculating on any individual cryptocurrency, but the underlying technology has an enormous amount of potential.
 
I agree, the technology has many very good uses, but not as currency. It would be great for land titles around the world, for many countries have no accurate system of land titles. As a currency it presents so many dangers to all parties, governments and financial stability it could almost be used as a weapon.
 
Bitcoin would have to recognized by central banks around the world to become a true currency. It's an interesting bit player in such an infinitesimal percentage of transactions to be irrelevant. The fact that Bitcoin can only handle seven transactions a second literally makes it a joke as a functioning currency. We will see new financial currency, but without staggeringly large changes, Bitcoin will not be it. Perhaps some other cryptocurrency will overcome Bitcoins severe limitations or maybe even Bitcoin itself. Until that time, Bitcoin will remain a bit player on transactions per second alone.
 
I agree, the technology has many very good uses, but not as currency. It would be great for land titles around the world, for many countries have no accurate system of land titles. As a currency it presents so many dangers to all parties, governments and financial stability it could almost be used as a weapon.

Yes, this exactly the type of application blockchain could revolutionize. And I also agree that there are significant roadblocks for bitcoin to become an actual currency, both technological and legal, and those roadblocks may well prove to be insurmountable. What bitcoin is, is a proof of a concept that is paving the way for future blockchain technologies. Much like ARPANET was a proof of concept for the internet or the Apple I was a proof of concept for PCs. Bitcoin may well fade away into obscurity in 20 years time but Blockchain will change the world.
 
Bad day for Etherium. Here are two posts. In first Etherium coin
prices falling on internet problems.

Ethereum drops 15% as increased demand sparks fear of growing pains

And a story on a flash crash that drove Etherium (temporarily?)
to $13:

$13: Ether Prices Plunge in GDAX Exchange Flash Crash - CoinDesk

This is related to electronics because asynchronous circuits and algorithms are
problematic. For example, Achronix has abandoned asynchronous clocking in their
new FPGAs. I think it makes sense that bit coins should trade like stocks not currencies
because with stocks their are multiple asynchronous exchanges with traders fighting
to have their computers located nearer to the exchange's computers to reduce latency.

In mathematics (but not EDA) the logical model behind asynchronous algorithms
and protocols called temporal logic is not seen as interesting because the definitiion
of A causes B ends up being: B happens after A.
 
Just wanted to add a few new developments to this post:

1. NVidia 1070 is the hot new mining card. People have figured out how to overclock/tweak it to provide better performance than AMD cards, in spite of the fact that the ETH algorithm was designed for AMD cards.

2. NVidia is planning to release mining focused cards over the next few months, which will further improve performance over AMD.

3. GPU mining profitability has dropped significantly as crypto currency prices have stalled out and competition has increased dramatically. So much so that it's unlikely to be profitable to purchase new GPUs for mining going forward (except maybe the NVidia mining focused GPUs when they come out)

Now one wonders to what extent AMD's profits have been boosted by cryptomining, because it looks like that party is already winding down as far as AMD is concerned, although it might go on a bit longer for NVidia.
 
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