How much fab capacity is indirectly dedicated towards Crypto mining?
Could blocking the fiat inroads, and causing a price fall, be a solution to this chip shortage?
Could blocking the fiat inroads, and causing a price fall, be a solution to this chip shortage?
Even at the current ridiculous price of crypto, they can't afford latest nodes. And TSMC make them pay cash because they were previously burned by few mining chip makers going bust after their bet on coin prices didn't pay put.
But only underlines how chipmaking is the next most lucrative thing after, effectively, printing money.
Could blocking video game sellers, and throttling the internet, be a solution to this chip shortage?
But in reality I don't think "blocking" is possible now. That ship has sailed (feel free to use your own cliche here). There are now exchange listed companies, eg Coinbase, that deal in crypto. There are mutual funds that deal in crypto. Tesla owns a bunch of crypto :)
A lot of older ICs, eg automotive, don't need leading edge fabs, and those other fabs also are seeing record demand.
What does humanity have to gain generally, with an increasing share of our energy and chip manufacturing output going towards an essentially pointless activity?
Why not more individual action, like India has taken?
Much of the wealth seems to be funneled into the USA, where many of the earliest entrants and major Crypto traders are located.
Could be a nice alternative to the few monopolistic public clouds with arbitrary rules and one could even use the crypto stuff to pay for using the resources.
Let us ban all internet chat. People can use smoke signals and paper mail instead. (Aside, the latency differential between internet messaging and paper mail is extremely similar to the differential between legacy settlement technology and blockchain-based.)
Let us ban video games. Board games worked for thousands of years.
Let us ban all video streaming. Let people use local video stores instead of all this high energy information broadcasting.
You ask this question from ignorance. You assume the new technology is pointless, when in fact it represents a sea change in finance, contracts, and international order. There are use cases and financial instruments that are impossible with legacy technology. To call it pointless is simply wrong. Anyone from any country with the ability to broadcast and receive hash strings can participate, this is not an exclusive endeavor.