Thursday, August 16th 2018
The Only Thing You Get with Mining Ethereum Now is Room Heating
Cryptocurrency prices continue their downward slide making them no longer viable to mine on GPUs. The value of Ethereum has dropped to USD 256, down from its historic high of $1,250 this January. Bitcoin fell to below $6,000 Wednesday, way down from its late-2017 high of $19,000. A 79 percent devaluation isn't the worst of Ethereum's problems. The currency is facing stiff inflation from conversions to other cryptocurrencies or the Dollar. At its peak, ETH held 32 percent of all cryptocurrency market cap, beaten only by BTC at 39 percent. Now ETH only makes 14 percent.
Source:
Bloomberg
108 Comments on The Only Thing You Get with Mining Ethereum Now is Room Heating
I'll gladly walk out the door, no need to show me.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I personally am glad that coin mining went bust, never trusted it from the beginning. By the way @cdawall has gpus for sale and he knows what he is doing with regards to all of this.
I do wonder how many times the 10k BTC pizza guy has smashed his head into a brick wall at the speed of light, though.
It was definitely disruptive for me when looking for a GPU as well, but those are the breaks. There's no way to rectify that easily, and I just have to deal with the trends going on in the GPU market. I'm not going to resent other buyers for it.. no more than I'd resent someone who was in line at 7-11 before I was.
Really, the only people who won out with all of these crypto coins are the GPU makers. They made the cash, the real cash... meanwhile all you were doing is "mining" what amounts to monopoly money.
If you had, you'd know that currency's power comes from market acceptance, not mandate by governmental authority. If you think "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private" actually means anything, go to Venezuela and try to spend a bolivar.... The whole point of crypto is that the PEOPLE who use it would regulate the value of it by market forces, instead of a government manipulating it to maintain power and wealth like state backed currencies. Whether you like the idea of decentralization or not has no bearing on the effectiveness of crypto as a currency. Currency is simply a surrogate item to make trade easier. The thing keeping crypto from being worth anything is lack of market acceptance, not lack of backing. The US dollar also has no physical backing. And the US dollar also has FAR less proof of validity than a bitcoin. So... I'll quote you again... You don't understand, and yet you continue to have a marked opinion on the subject. I'm not saying you're wrong for it... you're free to do as you please, and have any opinion you like. I'm just making the observation that those who say things like you do, are in fact generally the same people who share your ignorance of how it works.
But I'll reiterate: I'm not against miners. Profit from it to your heart's content. Just don't make it anymore than that.
edit: And wanting to decentralize everything requires power in and of itself, ironically. Maybe that'll happen one day, who knows.. But it sure as hell won't happen because you say so. It's a direct challenge to the one who doesn't want that.
edit 2: I almost see decentralized currency the same way I see Globalism. Both are ideas before their time (but both appeal to me btw). Both also got a boost from the Digital Age as finally seeming viable (since the Internet itself is sort of a decentralized and global entity). But it's deceptive. The World is not the Internet. Issues of Meatspace will not be ignored so easily.
I wish I could say it was just here. And no, ford, this is not exclusively aimed at you. Not at all.
Obviously, this is a rhetorical question, because I already know what your answer is...