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Ethereum Takes Literal Flight; Mining Conglomerates Rent Airplanes for Transport

Raevenlord

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Ethereum is a strange little thing. When you open up your Blockfolio to look at how much you're valued right now, it can be as a fine bit of coffee in the morning, perking you up for the entire day, or a wrecking ball to your capitalist, speculative heart. However, even if you don't believe in the technology, there are many people who do believe: at least, in the future value of it. They believe it so much, really, that they're willing to rent entire airplanes to transport mining equipment (read graphics cards). And we're talking Boeing 747 here, not your average private jet (handy infographic on the pictures below, by the way.)

Ethereum's price fluctuations notwithstanding, which saw the currency soar from $10 at the beginning of the year to a historical high of $400 in mid-June, seems to have somehow settled around a $200 support level. At that value, it's still profitable to mine - even with the increased difficulty of the myriad of miners, dedicated or not, who have flooded towards the GPU-based workloads that support the cryptocurrency's POW (Proof of Work) design. And faith - or expectation of future value is so high, that mining conglomerates (the ones with the greatest running costs, but also pretty scalable profits - aren't willing to waste more idle time than they possibly can. Marco Streng, chief executive of Genesis Mining, told Quartz that "Time is critical, very critical. For example, we are renting entire airplanes, Boeing 747s, to ship on time. Anything else, like shipping by sea, loses so much opportunity."





Some 36,000 units of Ethereum are collectively mined each day, which averages out to around $7.2 million worth of Ethereum per day. Even so, the recent Ethereum price drop scared many of the less heartened miners and investors out of the market (to which some might say "good riddance"). That has brought about a small flood of used graphics cards to the second hand market - no doubt marked as "lightly used." As such, the second-hand market prices remain somewhat at a premium, because even miners are selling their cards at the prices that were being practiced after they'd scooped up close to the entirety of the supply.

Even AMD has acknowledged the impact of mining on graphics cards shipments. This is something AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su touched on the impact of mining on graphics cards shipments and availability during a recent earnings call.

"Relative to cryptocurrency, we have seen some elevated demand," Dr. Su said. "But it's important to say we didn't have cryptocurrency in our forecast, and we're not looking at it as a long-term growth driver. But we'll certainly continue to watch the developments around the blockchain technologies as they go forwards." Dr. Su went on to say that inventories of GPUs are "quite lean" at the moment. AMD is "working on replenishing" stock, adding that the company's priority is on the gaming market. Although we have to say: there's virtually no guarantee new stock won't just be gobbled up by mining conglomerates as well. And we have a feeling (just a feeling, based on past experience) that Vega won't do much for the AMD card stock.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site
 
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This mining crap is the worst spent compute power in history of mankind.
If some people make profit off this it might not be :)
 
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Making a profit of monumentally dumb thing just makes it even dumber. Why don't they "mine" dog poops instead. At least they'd be doing good for something...
 
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Making a profit of monumentally dumb thing just makes it even dumber. Why don't they "mine" dog poops instead. At least they'd be doing good for something...
I kinda understand you point as well but if you think about it, why do we still print paper or plastic money ?
 
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It's currency being in control by the people and not the corrupt federal reserve. That's the appeal.
 
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It's currency being in control by the people and not the corrupt federal reserve. That's the appeal.

Controlled how? So that I can't buy a frigging graphic card to play games because all the asshole miners bought ALL OF THEM? Fuck that kind of regulation. That's about as idiotic as making shortages of magazines and books because they need paper to print money. It's absurd.
 
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Well they need to step up production then!!! Why should we restrict what people do with thier GPUs?
 
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Well they need to step up production then!!! Why should we restrict what people do with thier GPUs?
+1, it's not the miners it's the GPU companies that are not willing to ramp up production and instead they resume to increase prices.
 
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Has noone designed a blockchain that incorporates something like folding into the computation code? So it's actually contributing to the planets life/wellbeing...
 
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+1, it's not the miners it's the GPU companies that are not willing to ramp up production and instead they resume to increase prices.

How do you ramp up a production when these mining idiots buy 50 graphic cards each and we're talking small fish miners. Have you seen the massive mining farms where they run entire halls filled with racks and each also filled with RX480 or RX580 cards? It's impossible n matter how much they "ramp up" the production. AMD has a tiny gaming market share and even that one is being eaten away by god damn miners. Then developers don't bother optimizing games for their stuff since why even bother if they are used for stupid ass mining anyway. And then even less people buy them for games because what's the point if nothing gets optimized for it. And welcome to one of reasons why AMD is just not taking off (among other things).
 
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If the demand was of the size that you're talking about I think AMD would put more effort into mining cards production as at the end of the day it means more cards sold and as a result more profit but this is not the case...why? Btw miners don't use only AMD cards they use Nvidia as well
 
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Pretty much just seeing more irrational miner hate forthcoming than actual attempts to fix the problem, sadly. People don't understand the issue and don't care to either, knee-jerk judgements are the call of the day.
 
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If the demand was of the size that you're talking about I think AMD would put more effort into mining cards production as at the end of the day it means more cards sold and as a result more profit but this is not the case...why? Btw miners don't use only AMD cards they use Nvidia as well

If they were buying Radeon Instinct cards that is. If they are abusing the stuff meant for gamers, things suddenly change. Gamers are loyal bunch and their existence encourages better long term income and profits. Miners are interesting today, but they don't have any value added to the brand or the ecosystems. Which is particularly bad for AMD which is already struggling with gamer market share and anything that they could gain was taken away by retarded miners.
 
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If they were buying Radeon Instinct cards that is. If they are abusing the stuff meant for gamers, things suddenly change. Gamers are loyal bunch and their existence encourages better long term income and profits. Miners are interesting today, but they don't have any value added to the brand or the ecosystems. Which is particularly bad for AMD which is already struggling with gamer market share and anything that they could gain was taken away by retarded miners.
I am sure AMD would be smart enough to find a solution to take advantage of this...and if AMD is struggling with the gaming market this is the perfect situation for them. If gamers are not that interested in AMD's cards at least miners are :)
 

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Let me cry into my free money made mining. You weren't going to buy a new card anyway.
 
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Pretty much just seeing more irrational miner hate forthcoming than actual attempts to fix the problem, sadly. People don't understand the issue and don't care to either, knee-jerk judgements are the call of the day.
It's not like it's hard to see coming when the typical reaction from miners is:
'lol ur juz jeluss ur not mkin coin lik me'

Even when there's a rational response I've yet to see something that clearly outlines exactly why coin A, B, or C should be worth any money or why that value should fluctuate wildly.
 
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It's not like it's hard to see coming when the typical reaction from miners is:
'lol ur juz jeluss ur not mkin coin lik me'

Even when there's a rational response I've yet to see something that clearly outlines exactly why coin A, B, or C should be worth any money or why that value should fluctuate wildly.
You can find answers on the internet if you care to do some research, if not why bother asking? (I am not a miner :D)
It's like brokering :D
 
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Maybe they should stop seti and folding it's a waste to!! Blame the miners. Some people need to learn the facts before crying.The average miner is not buying 50 cards. Maybe 2 to 4 cards. Your big farms like this thread start off with buy 1000's of cards. It's not just them it's Hospitals, research labs, schools etc. And I'm a gamer with over 500 games. I play pc games every day! By the way I have solar for my house. How about you.
 
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My main point is that if miners care so much about the comments made they should try and get people to understand.
I am really confused, why do you want to understand. Will it make your life better? People make money off this, they don't steal. Anybody could do it
 
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I am really confused, why do you want to understand. Will it make your life better? People make money off this, they don't steal. Anybody could do it
I don't care to understand and I'm not saying I do. I'm saying miners that care about anti-mining comments should try another approach.
 
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