Thursday, September 15th 2022
Ethereum Switches to Proof of Stake, GPU Mining is Dead
NVIDIA Ada and AMD RDNA3 will not sell to Ethereum miners. In a dramatic move, the creators of Ethereum have switched over the popular crypto-currency's algorithm from proof-of-work, to proof-of-stake, which means miners will no longer spend GPU resources in competing to find the same blocks. This effectively ends GPU-accelerated mining as Ethereum mining was the number-1 consumer of high-end GPUs through 2021. The switch-over happened as the total terminal difficulty surpassed 58,750,000,000T, with the last block having been found. With this move, global electricity consumption is expected to reduce by 0.2% (that's enough to power the world's top 5 cities).
The impact of this move on GPU sales to crypto-currency miners is expected to be profound. GPUs are no longer an economical way to mine Bitcoin, ASICs are; and Ethereum mining constituted the bulk of activity from GPU-accelerated mining farms. This doesn't mean there aren't other crypto-currencies that rely on GPU-accelerated proof-of-work blockchain compute; but Ethereum had the highest market-cap among such currencies. Gamers have reason to rejoice, as NVIDIA and AMD now have to sell high-end GPUs squarely on merits of gaming performance, power-draw, and graphics card pricing.
Sources:
The Verge, Vitalik Buterin (Twitter)
The impact of this move on GPU sales to crypto-currency miners is expected to be profound. GPUs are no longer an economical way to mine Bitcoin, ASICs are; and Ethereum mining constituted the bulk of activity from GPU-accelerated mining farms. This doesn't mean there aren't other crypto-currencies that rely on GPU-accelerated proof-of-work blockchain compute; but Ethereum had the highest market-cap among such currencies. Gamers have reason to rejoice, as NVIDIA and AMD now have to sell high-end GPUs squarely on merits of gaming performance, power-draw, and graphics card pricing.
118 Comments on Ethereum Switches to Proof of Stake, GPU Mining is Dead
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Apparently the global Ethereum mining was equivalent to the Netherlands power consumption but that has been effectively reduced by more than 99%.
Heck, maybe they could put all those GPUs to FAH or WCG?? Might help find that cure a bit faster but its a shame it'll use more electric but still...... :)
But seriously I think miners would find their next victim very soon.
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I also think Nvidia and AMD have large secret sectors devoted to promotion of cryptomining on their GPUs. They could even be directly investing into pumping some minable shitcoins, if things won't move by themselves soon enough.
The crypto currency is used by the organized crime for money laundering: it has its convenience for someone, no matter what. So in a way or another, they will keep mining profitable and the market alive.
As for the gpus, maybe the manufacturers will start engineering something different, specifically designed for that purpouse and very power efficient. We'll see.
Crypto, a rigged gambling game where all the big players make money except the little guy.
Coin Mining has died three times already but here we are.
Crypto currencies remain a technologically obfuscated pyramid scheme in my view.
Can there be a utility for block chain other than speculation. Probably, eventually!
If you want an inflation hedge, good old hard assets are the answer.if you want to pay for things, regular fiat is the way.
At this point and given the scale of the bubble, where would the "investors" come from in enough numbers?