Last month more GPUs went online than entire combined GPUs during Litecoin days

[adaseb]

Its really hard to imagine these record breaking hashrate levels without ASICs in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Take Litecoin for example during the 2013-2014 Bubble.

The hashrate peaked at ~120GH/s on Jan 2014. If you were around during the Scrypt Litecoin days you would know that unlike today there were only 2 coins to mine back then. Litecoin AND Dogecoin. Dogecoin hashrate was around ~100GH/s.

However keep in mind that sometime during the end of 2013, a small era of Scrypt ASICs started emerging. So lets assume that 120GH/s was for SCRYPT GPU mining only. And another 120GH/s was being mined with the newly released 300KH/s scrypt asics.

A 7970/280X mined scrypt at 750KH/s so around ~120GHs/0.75 = ~160,000 GPUs mining. If we assume all those scrypt asics don't count then lets say ~320,000 GPUs mining.


According to etherscan.io last month a total hashrate gain of 9,104GH/s was added. Since each RX 470 ~ 28MH/s that equals to about ~325,142 GPUs. Also another 10% of that ~32,500 most likely went into the ETC hashrate growth. For simplicity I am not taking ZEC, ZCL, XMR into account.

So as much as its fun to ROI your GPU in less than 1 month, I am wondering whats going to happened when the bubble bursts. In Jan 2014, mining was VERY profitable like it is today, and in less than 6 months, it started using more electricity then profits.

However now we have most likely 10x as many miners and GPUs out there. So I can only imagine how horrific it might get when either the BTC bubble bursts, alt-coins bubble burts, ETH lowers block rewards to 3 ETH per block, ETH goes POS at end of year...

[bathrobehero]

Its really hard to imagine these record breaking hashrate levels without ASICs in the Ethereum ecosystem.

That's a big, likely false assumption.

But yeah your point stands; eveyone and their pets are buying mining rigs and once the bubble bursts it will be bad and maybe some plug and play nicehash miners will sell their hardware off, but mining won't die anytime soon. Something, something quantum computers.

The questions I think are; when the bubble will burst, how hard it will burst and will this bubble help cryptos long term (due to potential massive profits) or will it have a detrimental effect (massive losses, volatility).

[jstefanop]

Its really hard to imagine these record breaking hashrate levels without ASICs in the Ethereum ecosystem.

That's a big, likely false assumption.

But yeah your point stands; eveyone and their pets are buying mining rigs and once the bubble bursts it will be bad and maybe some plug and play nicehash miners will sell their hardware off, but mining won't die anytime soon. Something, something quantum computers.

The questions I think are; when the bubble will burst, how hard it will burst and will this bubble help cryptos long term (due to potential massive profits) or will it have a detrimental effect (massive losses, volatility).

Yea this should be interesting to watch...this is why I only buy hardware that is already ROIed (i.e. I only buy with pure profit). This kind of probability is nice for the short term, but its definitely not sustainable.

[Raziel__]

When ETH goes POS at the end of the year, or block time start rising 2 months from now, GPU mining will be very hard, if not possible at all, cuz you have about 1m-1.2m gpu miners in eth, the rest will be hit hard cuz there is about 300k gpus in zcash, below 100k in etc and below 100k in monero, others have below 10k.

[kopija]

ETH is never going POS: too risky to implement and also there is the pesky issue of ETC that would profit from ETH going POS.
They decided instead to implement some sort of hybrid POW/POS solution (that will take years to implement).
https://github.com/ethereum/research/wiki/Casper-Version-1-Implementation-Guide
This POS FUD has been around for almost a year and needs to die already.

[bathrobehero]

ETH is never going POS: too risky to implement and also there is the pesky issue of ETC that would profit from ETH going POS.
They decided instead to implement some sort of hybrid POW/POS solution (that will take years to implement).
https://github.com/ethereum/research/wiki/Casper-Version-1-Implementation-Guide
This POS FUD has been around for almost a year and needs to die already.

I may just misread it but it seems the implementation of PoS will be based on what is essentially a voting with funds wheterh to switch to PoW+PoS or staying with PoW only. Am I right?

[kopija]

Ask Vitalik
So much smoke and mirrors in ETH land, I prefer to just forget about it.
Fancy names is all they are good at.
Reduction of mining rewards, now that is something to worry about.

[bathrobehero]

Ask Vitalik
So much smoke and mirrors in ETH land, I prefer to just forget about it.
Fancy names is all they are good at.
Reduction of mining rewards, now that is something to worry about.

I see.

Asking miners to vote for implementing PoS is like asking the turkey on thanksgiving if it's ok to be killed and roasted.

Also, I don't think the team behind Eth truly believes they can pull off staking without any major issues considering their complex system.

And even the facts around the difficulty timebomb seems to be vague.

[Vaccinus]

based on my assumption, i think there are around 1 millions gpu now mostly on ETH, i'm more worried what would happen when ETH go pos, than if the bubble burst, ETH going pos is more scary than anything because somethign like 500k gpu will be reversed in all other coins making even the current profit very bad

[pikachuy]

Well, check out this guy http://ethpool.org/miners/85fdc336c3d20039b1facd71420c6aaab5d4ea1e

The person's estimated monthly earnings is mind blowing! --> http://ethpool.org/miners/85fdc336c3d20039b1facd71420c6aaab5d4ea1e/blocks

Edit: Last month, that person was only getting 5 eth a day according to the pool stats. Then it sky rocketed.

[kopija]

What do you think will happen if the FED keeps increasing the leveraging of the dollar beyond its already absurd 100 to 1 level?

Where do you think the money pumping crypto is coming from?

FED already ultra inflated the dollar 53% via leveraging since 2008.

I am not afraid to hold crypto; I'm afraid to hold dollars.  

It will be interesting to watch the impact of GreatDepression v3.0 on crypto.
In 2008 gold skyrocketed.
So I assume the same will happen to BTC when the shit hits the proverbial fiat fan again.

[Marvell1]

Well, check out this guy http://ethpool.org/miners/85fdc336c3d20039b1facd71420c6aaab5d4ea1e

The person's estimated monthly earnings is mind blowing! --> http://ethpool.org/miners/85fdc336c3d20039b1facd71420c6aaab5d4ea1e/blocks

Edit: Last month, that person was only getting 5 eth a day according to the pool stats. Then it sky rocketed.

has to be a chinese farm, look at how many workers he has , his power usage is probbaly in the 50k per month range

[Raziel__]

Ask Vitalik
So much smoke and mirrors in ETH land, I prefer to just forget about it.
Fancy names is all they are good at.
Reduction of mining rewards, now that is something to worry about.

I see.

Asking miners to vote for implementing PoS is like asking the turkey on thanksgiving if it's ok to be killed and roasted.

Also, I don't think the team behind Eth truly believes they can pull off staking without any major issues considering their complex system.

And even the facts around the difficulty timebomb seems to be vague.

Thats why they implement time bomb, at the end of the year it is going to be impossible to mine cuz difficulty is going to skyrocket.

P.S. they said that they are going to do pow/pos in the beginning just for testing, pure pos is still the way (even etc is considering to do pow/pos or only pos)

[QuintLeo]

Where do you think the money pumping crypto is coming from?

 MOST of it is being pumped in by Chinese investors, due to a combination of the Chinese recent economic issues, and the very very weak Yuan.

 As far as that one big ETH farm on ethermine.org - they HAD over like 1500 rigs at one point a week or two back, must have shifted half of them at something else or some other pool.


 I'd like to have what they pay for their electric bill as my income.....

[newmz]

I just mine as a kind of money making hobby.

I have 2 rigs - one AMD and one Nvidia. I have mined ETH, ZEC, XMR, ZCL mostly - I have bought mostly BTC and DASH with what I make. I have always stayed profitable even in a country where power is VERY expensive.

A few times, when prices have gone real high on BTC and DASH for example, I cash out and put $1000 or so into my bank account.

At my scale, it's all just fun and profit. I would NEVER run a big farm because of the potential bubble/depression risks outlined above. If all crypto coins suddenly become worthless, I will sell off the hardware or keep some of it for gaming machines.

So for me it's not scarey at all - but those people running say 5 or more rigs are just asking to wake up one day and discover they have a lot of hardware and nothing to do with it. I understand the motivation to increase in scale when I see what I have done with just 10-12 GPUs, but that is my limit.

I have or would never mine as a primary source of income - way too risky. I know plenty of people and groups of people have made a killing with large scale mining but it just isn't for me. Too much risk IMHO. I have learned a LOT and made way more than I have spent so I am ahead. I just think that going bigger scale for me at least is crazy.

[64dimensions]

ETH is never going POS: too risky to implement and also there is the pesky issue of ETC that would profit from ETH going POS.
They decided instead to implement some sort of hybrid POW/POS solution (that will take years to implement).
https://github.com/ethereum/research/wiki/Casper-Version-1-Implementation-Guide
This POS FUD has been around for almost a year and needs to die already.

POS FUD complicates the investment decisions of any ETH class ASIC effort.

[kopija]

POS FUD complicates the investment decisions of any ETH class ASIC effort.

Smoke and mirrors.

[QuintLeo]

So for me it's not scarey at all - but those people running say 5 or more rigs are just asking to wake up one day and discover they have a lot of hardware and nothing to do with it. I understand the motivation to increase in scale when I see what I have done with just 10-12 GPUs, but that is my limit.

 Worst case, all of the hardware I've bought in the last year for mining *still has good resale value* because it is current or half-generation old.

 If you've been paying attention, RX 4xx series cards are sometimes selling now for MORE than they sold for new, due to the short-term scarcity of the RX 5xx parts as AMD gets those ramped up and the resulting price gouging raising the floor on the value of the older "IN SOME WAYS BETTER but overall generally a tossup" parts.

 Realistically though, if I ended up having to sell in 6 months, I could still probably realise 80% or more of what I paid for my recently purchaced gear - worst case rebuild it into "gaming machines" and might even be able to sell at a small profit.
 Any of the gear I have that was NOT recently purchased is long-since paid for and PURE PROFIT making at this point (except for electric and cooling costs) and most of that gear I'd probably be running anyway on various "distributed network projects" like DNet and F@H.



 POS and the eventual end of ETH POW is not FUD - the most recent statement out of Vitalik is still "aiming for POS end of year or early next year" but planning to impliment in stages, and the first stage is supposed to be ready "soon".

 I won't be shocked if there are further delays though well into next year.

 I still see no significant probability of an ETH ASIC.

 I can see a possibility of the "diff bomb" driving most miners out of ETH before ETH goes full POS, but that's still months away and it will probably get "adjusted" again if the POS work goes slower than currently planned.

[fanatic26]

has to be a chinese farm, look at how many workers he has , his power usage is probbaly in the 50k per month range

So much ignorance on these forums. 750 workers isnt even 1 megawatt of power, that farm can be anywhere. Please stop spreading falsehoods. Its time people stop saying "China" for everything crypto that is at any sort of scale.

[Marvell1]

has to be a chinese farm, look at how many workers he has , his power usage is probbaly in the 50k per month range

So much ignorance on these forums. 750 workers isnt even 1 megawatt of power, that farm can be anywhere. Please stop spreading falsehoods. Its time people stop saying "China" for everything crypto that is at any sort of scale.

50 bucks says its china