Comment by webinvest | Hacker News Reader

Comment by webinvest | Hacker News Reader

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Ethereum miners were using GPUs. AMD, Nvidia, and others. They could switch their GPUs from mining ethereum which is about $1500 per coin to Ethereum classic but that is only about $40 per coin. I’d guess that wouldn’t be worth continuing with since it would be much less than than their electricity bill. They could sell their GPUs on EBay or other secondary markets, switch to protein folding, cloud-based password cracking, or SETI sky scanning. Maybe they use them to play high resolution video games like most people. Some smaller percent might notice next month when they eventually see that their ETH wallet hasn’t grown over the next month and Google why that’s the case.

Crypto mining occurs mainly where electricity is either cheap or free. Hydroelectric and Geothermal tends to produce the cheapest energy so many large mining outfits were relocated next to Hydroelectric and Geothermal plants. Many are in remote northern areas where computer cooling costs are less expensive too. $HIVE blockchain technologies was running enough ethereum miners to mine 7675 ethereum ($11.5 Million dollars worth) during the 3 month period ending in June 30, 2022 according to their quarterly earnings report. 100% of all of their miners used renewable energy sources.

In case of Ethereum that wasn't true afaik, a lot of it was mined in the US for example. Since Ethereum wasn't all ASICs like Bitcoin, there was more decentralization in that sense with individuals running miners from home, not always at the highest efficiency. Your first paragraph is correct regarding profitability for most miners though, based on the numbers I've seen.

One thing that I find interesting in the electricity debates is that if we took the gaming example and looked at the collective consumption of all people playing video games around the world, you'd arrive at even larger numbers of power usage and emissions. Yet this isn't ever discussed, even though an immutable public ledger like Bitcoin arguably has more utility for society than playing games. A lot of HN users probably play video games, CO2 emissions are of course mainly an issue caused by other people and activities oneself doesn't take part in. In Europe, there's also a trend of public anger against SUVs and there are groups slashing tires of cars, simply based on the shape and ignoring the actual energy efficiency. Happened to a friend of mine who couldn't understand why they targeted her car and left 30 year old gas guzzlers in the same street alone. I think a lot of it has to do with emotions more than rational considerations around sustainability.

>One thing that I find interesting in the electricity debates is that if we took the gaming example and looked at the collective consumption of all people playing video games around the world, you'd arrive at even larger numbers of power usage and emissions.

Okay, this is the second time I've seen an argument of the form: If you're not okay with the energy consumption of PoW cryptocurrencies, you can't be okay with X.

The first time I called it out, was someone pointing at the energy consumption of making, transporting, and storing ice cream. You are bringing up gaming.

You are advocating for making our children's/descendants lives worse, our lives worse, and trying to throw a valuable industrial subsidizer of the state of the art in many sub-fields of computer science...

...to defend the least efficient, wasteful,least empowering form of computation we've ever discovered. You're taking and making hostages of something that has objectively wrought joy and innovation to millions of lives.

If you find yourself on one side of an argument, and ice cream/video games on the other... I'd recommend having a long hard think about how you managed to get there.

I think that pattern of tire slashing is rational. Old cars will die, and the thing you want to hurt most is the incentives for making more oversized vehicles.

If it's a hybrid SUV then it's more complicated, but a gas SUV makes sense as a target even with an engine tuned for efficiency.

>even though an immutable public ledger like Bitcoin arguably has more utility for society than playing games

Video games' secondary impacts to simulation, film making, and modeling have and will provide more benefit per energy used than any proof of work system ever will.

I guess hydro/geo is better than them firing up a coal fired power station to do the job. But all the "mining" nonsense just sucks up clean power than could be used in the real world which hopefully pushes out more polluting sources.

All to supposedly create artificial scarcity for .jpg files.

At least that illness is over now somewhat. Hopefully all the miners go bankrupt.

I’m guessing it’ll shortly be an excellent time to pick up a second hand graphics card.

Which ones we looking for?

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