What happened to GPU mining (late March 2018)?

[ptjoy]

I believe that mining never die, but now is bad time to hurry enter in it. Very risky if you want more than 1 farm - too low roi.

[senseless]

ASIC manufacturers have been mining on gpu only coins for months now. That has killed profitability almost everywhere for gpu miners. I expect a strong backlash and a bunch of algo changes coming up.

[Sandal_Hat]

ASIC manufacturers have been mining on gpu only coins for months now. That has killed profitability almost everywhere for gpu miners. I expect a strong backlash and a bunch of algo changes coming up.

We dont know for sure about that. It could have just been the gpu miners that push it up. After all, GPU is sold so much to crypto miners that the price is elevated. Gamers are suffering. Putting that aside, difficulty has risen up alot on its own and now, a strong asic appears to increase it more.

[john1010]

Is it practical to buy this another piece of crap? Can you imagine what profit may this asic eth miner with the hash speed of 180MH/s? now can you sell it after you realize that even this crap is not also profitable? I think there's a lot of people there that will going to make a solution for this.. I think the real Ethereum Fork must be on its way... A 100% ASIC resistance algo.. I read about it in some articles I hope that this is true...

[QuintLeo]

It is nice to be positive buddy. I notice u often are. But lets look at the chart

https://etherscan.io/chart/difficulty

It's easier to look at their hashrate chart, but the diff chart will work too.
Note that except for one "single-day" spike on April 26 that was probably LUCK driven (might have been folks on auto-switch miners bouncing out of ETC or some such though), the Ethereum Total Hashrate (and difficulty) has been slowly DROPPING since April 16.

Yes, there was a big surge for several months before that - but the surge is OVER unless Ethereum price starts rising.

[Sandal_Hat]

It is nice to be positive buddy. I notice u often are. But lets look at the chart

https://etherscan.io/chart/difficulty

It's easier to look at their hashrate chart, but the diff chart will work too.
Note that except for one "single-day" spike on April 26 that was probably LUCK driven (might have been folks on auto-switch miners bouncing out of ETC or some such though), the Ethereum Total Hashrate (and difficulty) has been slowly DROPPING since April 16.

Yes, there was a big surge for several months before that - but the surge is OVER unless Ethereum price starts rising.

It is now april 5th. I do not know what u mean by april 26.

If u mean march 26th, well, it is 3333 TH on that day and 3197 on april 2nd. U could call that a drop, but it is a drop of 4% which is normal now and then haha. That is just people switching to another algorithm that is more profitable. People will not burn or throw away their rigs.

Fact still remains it is 1935 on 1st Jan and 3197 on April 2nd. A major increase no matter how u look at it. And it is about to go higher with this cheap asic coming in.


Buddy, the hash rate increased over a period of 3 months. There is no luck involved as it is a constant increase over 3 months. I would like to be more optimistic also but I dont see how. I expect things to get worst now that asic for it is being sold to the public.

[gameboy366]

And it turns out that the F3 shown in that video is apparently NOT an ETH ASIC miner.

Bitmain released their E3 today for preorders - delivery NOT 'TILL MID JULY (indicating that they do NOT have many units on hand).

180 Mhash
800 watts

(they CLAIM these are minimums, but they'd have to do a TON better to change the below commentary).


About the same hashate and same power draw as a well-tuned 6-card  RX 480/580 "BIOS modded for memory straps" rig.
Slightly LESS hashrate and slightly MORE power draw than a well-tuned 6-card GTX 1070 rig.
NOT exactly a GPU mining killer.

Note that they would have to sell well over ONE MILLION of these units to achieve 50% of the current ETH network hashrate.
For perspective, current Bitcoin network hashrate equates out pretty closely to 2 Million S9 units (but PART of that hashware is LW.COM internal-usage miners, some is Avalon 721/741 units, some is EBang miners, et cetera - Bitmain PROBABLY has sold a total of ONE MILLION S9 units but it took them almost 2 YEARS to manage that despite having THE best performance miner on the market).

The E3 is NOT a GPU mining killer - in fact, I doubt it's going to make much more than a SMALL DENT in ethash mining profitability before ETH goes Proof of Stake and the REAL shakeout happens.

On the positive side, they DID get the price at $800 to a reasonable level, and probably WILL sell as many of these units as they choose to make since that's a LOT cheaper than building a GPU rig that can match the performance.

It is nice to be positive buddy. I notice u often are. But lets look at the chart

https://etherscan.io/chart/difficulty

On 1st Jan 2018, difficulty is about 1938 TH.
On 1st April 2018, it is about 3200 TH.

This is 1262 TH higher, or 65% higher, in just 3 months and this is without the ETH miner being sold to public. Ethereum price did not increase by 65% to keep mining at the same profitability. That why profitability has dropped. In fact ETH price dropped while difficulty increases. The manufacturers ramp up production in anticipation of future price increases of the coin but coin prices wont rise up like last year. We have overcapacity of mining equipment manufacturing and yes, I know u disagree with me.

65% increase in 3 months is roughly about 18% monthly with compounding included. Thus, if the coin price increases by 18% a month, and network difficulty increases by 18% a month, that would make profitability to be the same. Thats not the case. I say overcapacity of mining equipment exist even without this new eth miner. And now this ethminer appears...


This increase is without a bitmain coming in to pump up difficulty. Thus, difficulty can increase at a higher rate now because a new manufacturer is now pushing it up too, not just the current ones. This is why competition in mining is stupid. It hurts those at the bottom, the miners most.

Just my 2 cents.

We need more competition.....competition in asic development. Bitmain is capitalism gone wrong. No competition, complete monopoly and exploitation. There is no company that can stand against Bitmain that's why they are doing whatever they want. If there was competition then prices would be low and so would be the chance of them mining the hell out of those asics before releasing them. Until AMD and Nvidia develops a mining specific gpu or until a asic resistant coin surpasses ETH's market capital it will be dark ages for gpu mining.

[ciciteng]

This is not how decentralize crypto concept from the beginning. When a greedy company decides to start monopolizing just because they have a big resources, like Bitmain does, is just something gone wrong.
There's should be a movement against this kind of monopoly. Like how Monero really hates this ASIC bastard, therefore they decides to give Bitmans and other ASIC company a lesson. Creating expensive door stop and heater.
I really hope more and more dev unite and fight against this kind of monopoly.

[dhouse]

We need more competition.....competition in asic development. Bitmain is capitalism gone wrong. No competition, complete monopoly and exploitation. There is no company that can stand against Bitmain that's why they are doing whatever they want. If there was competition then prices would be low and so would be the chance of them mining the hell out of those asics before releasing them. Until AMD and Nvidia develops a mining specific gpu or until a asic resistant coin surpasses ETH's market capital it will be dark ages for gpu mining.

samsung's getting into asic development, i'm interested to see where that goes

[RYXES]

We need more competition.....competition in asic development. Bitmain is capitalism gone wrong. No competition, complete monopoly and exploitation. There is no company that can stand against Bitmain that's why they are doing whatever they want. If there was competition then prices would be low and so would be the chance of them mining the hell out of those asics before releasing them. Until AMD and Nvidia develops a mining specific gpu or until a asic resistant coin surpasses ETH's market capital it will be dark ages for gpu mining.

samsung's getting into asic development, i'm interested to see where that goes

Source?

[Eternu]

Is it practical to buy this another piece of crap? Can you imagine what profit may this asic eth miner with the hash speed of 180MH/s? now can you sell it after you realize that even this crap is not also profitable? I think there's a lot of people there that will going to make a solution for this.. I think the real Ethereum Fork must be on its way... A 100% ASIC resistance algo.. I read about it in some articles I hope that this is true...

If ASIC miners prove to be profitable (which they are), I guess many will buy them, and in that moment GPU mining of Ethereum will be over.  Also I wouldn't call something a crap, at least not just because I don't like it. Difference between mining around 30 MH/s and 180 MH/s, is big difference.
Ethereum Fork could happen, I head something about it too, but I think that would not solve anything. And about that 100% ASIC resistance algo... So far I have understood one thing: Everything is possible, nothing is 100% clear.

[gameboy366]

We need more competition.....competition in asic development. Bitmain is capitalism gone wrong. No competition, complete monopoly and exploitation. There is no company that can stand against Bitmain that's why they are doing whatever they want. If there was competition then prices would be low and so would be the chance of them mining the hell out of those asics before releasing them. Until AMD and Nvidia develops a mining specific gpu or until a asic resistant coin surpasses ETH's market capital it will be dark ages for gpu mining.

samsung's getting into asic development, i'm interested to see where that goes

I don't think so that will ever happen. Samsung is such a big name there is no need for them to touch this hot market of altcoins. I don't know where you get your news from but this is definitely a fake one.

[gameboy366]

Is it practical to buy this another piece of crap? Can you imagine what profit may this asic eth miner with the hash speed of 180MH/s? now can you sell it after you realize that even this crap is not also profitable? I think there's a lot of people there that will going to make a solution for this.. I think the real Ethereum Fork must be on its way... A 100% ASIC resistance algo.. I read about it in some articles I hope that this is true...

If ASIC miners prove to be profitable (which they are), I guess many will buy them, and in that moment GPU mining of Ethereum will be over.  Also I wouldn't call something a crap, at least not just because I don't like it. Difference between mining around 30 MH/s and 180 MH/s, is big difference.
Ethereum Fork could happen, I head something about it too, but I think that would not solve anything. And about that 100% ASIC resistance algo... So far I have understood one thing: Everything is possible, nothing is 100% clear.

Yes ETH fork won't do any good. It is now only in the hands of AMD or Nvidia or a asic resistant coin that can challenge the might of ethereum. Man ! one by one all of the big guys are down. We thought ETH will be safe, but no

[Sandal_Hat]

And it turns out that the F3 shown in that video is apparently NOT an ETH ASIC miner.

Bitmain released their E3 today for preorders - delivery NOT 'TILL MID JULY (indicating that they do NOT have many units on hand).

180 Mhash
800 watts

(they CLAIM these are minimums, but they'd have to do a TON better to change the below commentary).


About the same hashate and same power draw as a well-tuned 6-card  RX 480/580 "BIOS modded for memory straps" rig.
Slightly LESS hashrate and slightly MORE power draw than a well-tuned 6-card GTX 1070 rig.
NOT exactly a GPU mining killer.

Note that they would have to sell well over ONE MILLION of these units to achieve 50% of the current ETH network hashrate.
For perspective, current Bitcoin network hashrate equates out pretty closely to 2 Million S9 units (but PART of that hashware is LW.COM internal-usage miners, some is Avalon 721/741 units, some is EBang miners, et cetera - Bitmain PROBABLY has sold a total of ONE MILLION S9 units but it took them almost 2 YEARS to manage that despite having THE best performance miner on the market).

The E3 is NOT a GPU mining killer - in fact, I doubt it's going to make much more than a SMALL DENT in ethash mining profitability before ETH goes Proof of Stake and the REAL shakeout happens.

On the positive side, they DID get the price at $800 to a reasonable level, and probably WILL sell as many of these units as they choose to make since that's a LOT cheaper than building a GPU rig that can match the performance.

It is nice to be positive buddy. I notice u often are. But lets look at the chart

https://etherscan.io/chart/difficulty

On 1st Jan 2018, difficulty is about 1938 TH.
On 1st April 2018, it is about 3200 TH.

This is 1262 TH higher, or 65% higher, in just 3 months and this is without the ETH miner being sold to public. Ethereum price did not increase by 65% to keep mining at the same profitability. That why profitability has dropped. In fact ETH price dropped while difficulty increases. The manufacturers ramp up production in anticipation of future price increases of the coin but coin prices wont rise up like last year. We have overcapacity of mining equipment manufacturing and yes, I know u disagree with me.

65% increase in 3 months is roughly about 18% monthly with compounding included. Thus, if the coin price increases by 18% a month, and network difficulty increases by 18% a month, that would make profitability to be the same. Thats not the case. I say overcapacity of mining equipment exist even without this new eth miner. And now this ethminer appears...


This increase is without a bitmain coming in to pump up difficulty. Thus, difficulty can increase at a higher rate now because a new manufacturer is now pushing it up too, not just the current ones. This is why competition in mining is stupid. It hurts those at the bottom, the miners most.

Just my 2 cents.

We need more competition.....competition in asic development. Bitmain is capitalism gone wrong. No competition, complete monopoly and exploitation. There is no company that can stand against Bitmain that's why they are doing whatever they want. If there was competition then prices would be low and so would be the chance of them mining the hell out of those asics before releasing them. Until AMD and Nvidia develops a mining specific gpu or until a asic resistant coin surpasses ETH's market capital it will be dark ages for gpu mining.

Are u out of your mind? Bitmain just added more competition aka the E3 and GPU mining is going to take a major hit.
U want someone else to come.up with something stronger or on par with the E3? That just adds to less profits and more difficulty.

Why would anyone want that

[m.vina]

So many cheap used GPUs! Used RX 580 and GTX 1060 at under $100?!

So. Is mining dying now?

1060s and 580s under $100? Can you link this to me? I would BUY these without thinking twice.

What you've got to understand that people are panicking but they are doing it for the wrong reasons. People are selling because their DAILY income crashed. However, they fail to see that mining is not about your DAILY profit. It's a long term game that requires patience, research, and timing. You can profit by mining shitcoins then sell during pumps or you can mine the most profitable coin, sell, then buy potential winner coins. Noobs panic and sell. Be smarter and hodl.

[shibob]

So many cheap used GPUs! Used RX 580 and GTX 1060 at under $100?!

So. Is mining dying now?

1060s and 580s under $100? Can you link this to me? I would BUY these without thinking twice.

What you've got to understand that people are panicking but they are doing it for the wrong reasons. People are selling because their DAILY income crashed. However, they fail to see that mining is not about your DAILY profit. It's a long term game that requires patience, research, and timing. You can profit by mining shitcoins then sell during pumps or you can mine the most profitable coin, sell, then buy potential winner coins. Noobs panic and sell. Be smarter and hodl.

The GPU's price in my place still keep the same, even some 1070 Ti getting more expensive. For me, I will not surging to buy Asic miner E3, as Bitmain srewed us on monero mining, if Ethereum has fork, investing into E3 asic miner may turn to a bad deal. And the weird thing is in Chinese site of Bitmain, they also sold gpu miner just by the time they announced about this E3, whatever it seems like the very first batch of E3 already sold out, regardless, the E3 miner is likely to be popular. Hope that Ethereum development team will have some action: https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/958

[huntingthesnark]

We need more competition.....competition in asic development. Bitmain is capitalism gone wrong. No competition, complete monopoly and exploitation. There is no company that can stand against Bitmain that's why they are doing whatever they want. If there was competition then prices would be low and so would be the chance of them mining the hell out of those asics before releasing them. Until AMD and Nvidia develops a mining specific gpu or until a asic resistant coin surpasses ETH's market capital it will be dark ages for gpu mining.

samsung's getting into asic development, i'm interested to see where that goes

I don't think so that will ever happen. Samsung is such a big name there is no need for them to touch this hot market of altcoins. I don't know where you get your news from but this is definitely a fake one.

Samsung did announce it would be looking into the ASIC mining market - as one of the biggest silicon producers globally, why wouldn't they if there's a market?

Obviously they might change their mind (they do that a lot), plus it will take many months to see any action. They'd just white label chips to BM and co anyway, so you'd need a detailed teardown to notice. They aren't going to put out their own brand miner, it's b2b big business.

[TroubleMaker]

It's all about price.. BTC Miners are losing money until btc's price up to 10k$...

I'm a gpu miner of Minexcoin and difficulty increased by 10 times last 30 days. Still it's better than ethereum mining.

Anyway, this job is still profitable but it wants labor and time and the profit is not enough for my labor. So I'm thinking about selling my cards...

[Eternu]

It's all about price.. BTC Miners are losing money until btc's price up to 10k$...

I'm a gpu miner of Minexcoin and difficulty increased by 10 times last 30 days. Still it's better than ethereum mining.

Anyway, this job is still profitable but it wants labor and time and the profit is not enough for my labor. So I'm thinking about selling my cards...

I guess that now large number of people are looking for alternatives for mining. So I doesn't surprise me to hear that difficulty for Minexcoin increased 10 times. Many consider bailing out like you do, and I guess that is reasonable. If profit doesn't cover basic thing, its not worth doing it. So I guess that because of this things people are selling their equipment for such low prices that OP have seen.
With everything that is going on and things that are comming, we will see even more of things like this.

[Swinging Phallus]

It's all about price.. BTC Miners are losing money until btc's price up to 10k$...

I'm a gpu miner of Minexcoin and difficulty increased by 10 times last 30 days. Still it's better than ethereum mining.

Anyway, this job is still profitable but it wants labor and time and the profit is not enough for my labor. So I'm thinking about selling my cards...

I guess that now large number of people are looking for alternatives for mining. So I doesn't surprise me to hear that difficulty for Minexcoin increased 10 times. Many consider bailing out like you do, and I guess that is reasonable. If profit doesn't cover basic thing, its not worth doing it. So I guess that because of this things people are selling their equipment for such low prices that OP have seen.
With everything that is going on and things that are comming, we will see even more of things like this.

I want to call you pessimistic, but I see you are cynical after looking in retrospect. I'm on the fence about GPU mining, ETH really resurrected GPU mining, Now that ASICs are taking control - I can't see any better time to sell my GPUs and just stop for a while (still, a part of me wants to swim against the flow). I know that ETH is planning on hardforking but they don't even have any idea how the ASICs work so it would be a guessing game until they are in market and for sale.  We know Jihan Wu is just going to keep the delivery to market postponed until whenever he sees fit.