Is it official that GPU mining is guaranteed to be irrelevant in 2 to 3 years?

[dipepmining]

I have been reading articles that when Etherium 2.0 is released in 2020 you will not be able to mine Etherium with GPU miners. Is this a definite thing or is it still just up in the air?
If we will no longer be able to mine Etherium does this officially make GPU miners irrelevant? Or is it still worth building them for @ home solutions to mine other coins and possibly new coins that could be profitable?

I currently have an 8 RX580 rig that can't really mine anything profitable except for Etherium. (not sure if this rig will be useless in 2020 or not).

I am looking to build another rig with 8 GTX 1070ti cards that will give me more flexibility to mine other algorithms.

Would it be foolish to buy 8 brand new GTX 1070ti cards at $479.99 a pop and build a $5000 rig with the future of GPU mining and where it stands? Even if I buy used the rig will cost about $3800. Just trying to see what peoples thoughts are on this. I am willing to gamble, but don't want to gamble if there is no chance GPU mining will be relevant within the next 2-3 years and we already know this.


If someone can give me an idea of what I am gambling on by continuing to expand my GPU miners in 2019 that would be great.

[deadsix]

Mining in its current state is only profitable for people that already have rigs lying around, and even they barely make any money. Its not advisable to make a rig for mining in the current market.
This is ofcource based on the assumption that you have regular-price electricity - like 10c. If you have access to cheap electricity - like 4c or something then by all means dive right in, there will always be something worth mining.

As for Ethereum, I hope and pray that we see 2.0 released in 2020, its see faar too many delays. When that comes however, mining will take a definite hit and profitability will tank since Eth lead the current resurgence in mining, and the vast majority of all GPU miners are on it.

[dipepmining]

deadsix: Thank you for the response! My electrical cost is .1333 c which is worse than 10. You are saying it would be a terrible move to spend 5K on a new rig as of today? I have read things saying that coins that use Equihash will always keep GPU mining alive even if Eth goes away. In my case my RX580 rig might go to waste since can primarily mine Ethash coins only, but Nvidia rigs seem to mine several different algos well.


Just trying to figure out the best case scenarios and worst case scenarios and go from there.

[CristianOff]

From a point of view, I truly disagree with you. GPU mining is not good for certain coins at the moment such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, however there is a huge
mining market of altcoins around you where GPU mining would be useful. In 2-3 years there will still be Bitcoin/Litecoin/Ethereum forks you'll be able to mine.
I would still recommend investing in ASIC

[Piskeante]

Just to be clear here.

Profitability , right now is dead for almost all people living in first world countries. Mining is only profitable in places where you can get Electricity at around 5cnt/kWh taxes included (i say this, because in Spain we are taxed 26%) or solar power (which also implies investment and ROI to take into account).

According to what ETH devs have said, ETH 2.0 or total POS will come in January 2020. At most you may be able to mine until February or March 2020. Not more than that. Once this happens, any algo where AMD can do nice will be destroyed. ETC (Ethereum classic) will see it's hashrate (currently 9,3Th or 9300 GH/s) more than x10 the next day. So anyone mining that coin will see his profit reduced dramatically.

All people mining ETH, will throw their machines to anything remotely profitable in the ETH algo if there is anymore than ETC or ETH. If not, then they can even try to mine NVIDIA algos the way NVIDIA guys have been mining ETH for a long time. all those coins will get their profitability REKT.

So, is it intelligent to build a mining rig? NO. AMD or NVIDIA? NONE!!! GPU mining will die with ETH, because the mining coins will be flooded with those gpus. I predict a huge, brutally huge amount of GPU in second hand to sale by 2020. So if you are reading and you are a gamer, just push a little more your card. You may be able to get Nvidia o AMD cards to play for very little.

Add to that the fact that all not resistant coins are seeing ASIC take control, so that makes GPU simply a no go.

Do you want an advice? forget about mining as a way of making some money. You are just 6 months away from the end. Enjoy it as much as possible now.

[mihacrypto]

I think that mining on video cards will never cease to exist, every year there are new algorithms that are still relevant. and in the future it will be the same

[badbart]

You have to have cheap electricity, I have 4 cents electricity and have never had a one of my 100 GPUs be unprofitable and some are 3 years old.

[JGUN]

According to what ETH devs have said, ETH 2.0 or total POS will come in January 2020. At most you may be able to mine until February or March 2020. Not more than that. Once this happens, any algo where AMD can do nice will be destroyed. ETC (Ethereum classic) will see it's hashrate (currently 9,3Th or 9300 GH/s) more than x10 the next day. So anyone mining that coin will see his profit reduced dramatically.

Phase 0 of ETH 2.0 maybe releases January 2020. But phase 0 only introduces a beacon chain than confirms 1 out of every 50 blocks (or something like that). PoW won't be fully phased out probably until around 2021. And given the speed of Ethereum development, maybe later.

You can find a breakdown of the ETH 2.0 phases here: https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-roadmap/ethereum-2.0/eth-2.0-phases/

[black1ight]

For ethereum initially pos will be a hybrid of pow and pos. .
Privacy coins can take some more hash power.  :-)
Gpu mining should go on.  . New gpus , algos , protocols will keep coming. :-)

Though i dont think its a good time to buy hardware unless u have extras to spend or have cheap power costs or getting a good second hand deal.

Currently i feel new gpu prices are inflated. 

[FloppyPurpleGherkin]

Just to be clear here.

Profitability , right now is dead for almost all people living in first world countries. Mining is only profitable in places where you can get Electricity at around 5cnt/kWh taxes included (i say this, because in Spain we are taxed 26%) or solar power (which also implies investment and ROI to take into account).

According to what ETH devs have said, ETH 2.0 or total POS will come in January 2020. At most you may be able to mine until February or March 2020. Not more than that. Once this happens, any algo where AMD can do nice will be destroyed. ETC (Ethereum classic) will see it's hashrate (currently 9,3Th or 9300 GH/s) more than x10 the next day. So anyone mining that coin will see his profit reduced dramatically.

All people mining ETH, will throw their machines to anything remotely profitable in the ETH algo if there is anymore than ETC or ETH. If not, then they can even try to mine NVIDIA algos the way NVIDIA guys have been mining ETH for a long time. all those coins will get their profitability REKT.

So, is it intelligent to build a mining rig? NO. AMD or NVIDIA? NONE!!! GPU mining will die with ETH, because the mining coins will be flooded with those gpus. I predict a huge, brutally huge amount of GPU in second hand to sale by 2020. So if you are reading and you are a gamer, just push a little more your card. You may be able to get Nvidia o AMD cards to play for very little.

Add to that the fact that all not resistant coins are seeing ASIC take control, so that makes GPU simply a no go.

Do you want an advice? forget about mining as a way of making some money. You are just 6 months away from the end. Enjoy it as much as possible now.

Some valid points, Though as a GPU miner who started out in 2013.. Way before ETH was even a thought, I believe GPU mining will carry on (Yes it will take a brutal hit) but its been proven time and time again, Those who stick around during the 'dark' times (and hold) are rewarded in time

[philipma1957]

You have to have cheap electricity, I have 4 cents electricity and have never had a one of my 100 GPUs be unprofitable and some are 3 years old.

4 cent power has always been a winner for mining.

Almost all people over 10 cent power will eventually not be mining much.

[dipepmining]

philipma1957: I know it isn't much profit but my 8 RX580 rig is doing the following:

256mh/s @ 1050w

.1333c electrical costs

If you enter these values into whattomine.com you will see that today the daily profit is only 10cents but that is because Eth is doing terrible right now. I have seen this number range from $0.10 to $2.60 daily profit with this rig all depending on where Eth is at. I know some would say why go through all of the hassle just to make $30 a month at best, but I don't see what the big deal is. Lets say Eth goes up to $300 prior to 2020 it would definitely be profitable for this rig to mine even at .1333c electrical costs.

I never experienced 2017,2018 when profit was at its best so maybe I don't know what I am missing out on.
Would like you guys to share your thoughts, I am no guru with this stuff.

[h311m4n]

Honestly?

I think it will become irrelevant, yes. 2-3-10 years, who knows. GPUs are not really that efficient. They are just easy to get their hands on. Unless you have very, very low ct/kW rate, it already doesn't really make much sense anymore.

Then again, who knows. ETH's shift to POS will be interesting to say the least. You'll need a minimum of 32 ETH to stake afaik. I have no clue how much that will yield to.

[h311m4n]

philipma1957: I know it isn't much profit but my 8 RX580 rig is doing the following:

256mh/s @ 1050w

.1333c electrical costs

If you enter these values into whattomine.com you will see that today the daily profit is only 10cents but that is because Eth is doing terrible right now. I have seen this number range from $0.10 to $2.60 daily profit with this rig all depending on where Eth is at. I know some would say why go through all of the hassle just to make $30 a month at best, but I don't see what the big deal is. Lets say Eth goes up to $300 prior to 2020 it would definitely be profitable for this rig to mine even at .1333c electrical costs.

I never experienced 2017,2018 when profit was at its best so maybe I don't know what I am missing out on.
Would like you guys to share your thoughts, I am no guru with this stuff.

Profit is profit yes. But It all comes down to your strategy:

1. Do you mine and hodl and wait for the price to pump to sell?
2. Do you mine and sell and cash out to ROI your hardware?

Fact is, no one knows if BTC will go to 100'000$, which would likely send ETH to the 5000-10000$ range. At 2$ a day, investing what 2000-3000$ in a full rig is just a bad investment decision. You're better of buying the crypto directly at this point lol. There's a ton of coins that yield stake returns of over 2$ a day for that price range.

2017-2018, there's was no ETH ice age. You could make over an ETH a day with like 3 rigs. I had months where Ethermine was showing me a monthly payout of 4 grand with 4-5 rigs. A 6 card rig would literally pay itself off in a month or two.

[WickedPigeon]

Would it be foolish to buy 8 brand new GTX 1070ti cards at $479.99 a pop and build a $5000 rig with the future of GPU mining and where it stands? Even if I buy used the rig will cost about $3800. Just trying to see what peoples thoughts are on this. I am willing to gamble, but don't want to gamble if there is no chance GPU mining will be relevant within the next 2-3 years and we already know this.

your question, "would it be foolish" - well, I can't say what is or isn't foolish, but it would be a bad business decision - at $480 a GPU your payoff would be over 6 years at current coin prices. So you would be betting on a massive move in the Alt-coin market to make any kind of decent ROI.

If you believe that Alt-prices will move higher, say double in the next year, then the ROI on mining would drop to around one year, still high but better. But, if you are committed to mining and are willing to invest right now, buying a bunch of 1070TI's isn't a good choice. There are a lot of better GPU's that have a better ROI, like the 1660 or the 2060.


RVN is used as a benchmark - many Alt-coins follow similar return structure, but it will vary a bit based on what you want to mine.

[crairezx20]

Right now it's hard to mine altcoin and it takes years before you can get your ROI. The difficulty keeps increasing because more people thinking that they can make a profit and they want to mine because they are lazy and they are hoping that after a year or a few months the price of the coin they mine can increase too high just like what happened after block halving or last year.

For me, I just continuing mining because the coin that I mine I just exchange them to other coins and not focusing on coin vs USD mostly coin vs coin just to make sure that the amount of the coin that I holding and trading are increasing not decreasing.

Mining is not guaranteed as passive income if you do that you never get your ROI back.

[grangonzo]

I currently have an 8 RX580 rig that can't really mine anything profitable except for Etherium. (not sure if this rig will be useless in 2020 or not).

I am looking to build another rig with 8 GTX 1070ti cards that will give me more flexibility to mine other algorithms.

Would it be foolish to buy 8 brand new GTX 1070ti cards at $479.99 a pop and build a $5000 rig with the future of GPU mining and where it stands?

I would still build a new rig for sure. Having nvidia and amd rigs, i can tell you amd rigs right now are kind of limited to a few profitable coins.

Nvidia is the best choice, tons of coins to mine and more popping up every day. Try to get best performing nvidia cards on the various flavors of equihash.

Just keep mining.
When the whole crypto ecosystem goes up a lot in prices, would you prefer to already have the coins to sell or start buying equipment when half of the world will be buying and mine when half of the world is mining. I wouldn't.

About the future of mining, don't see it ending in our lifetime. Just getting more and more profitable.

[lunobird]

You noobs need to understand mining is like investing in a gold mining company where you get taxed daily on the income and not actually  investing in the gold directly which is tax free when you buy.

That means you will get less gains if you mine crypto instead of buying coins if the market goes up. You however will also get less losses if the market goes down, so your hedged by your mining gear assets and can offset any mining daily gains with your operation expenses.

Yes roi is bad for gpus and it makes sense. A lot more people and average Joe's, gamers, etc, have access to gpus compared to Asics so GPU mining is an overcrowded market and a race to the bottom where those with the cheapest electric rates will survive another cycle.

So start getting used to it. It won't get any better just will keep getting worst as the Data has shown for the past 1.5 years till your hardware is outdated and have to reflect do you want to buy more gear and do it all over again.  So stop nerding out on GPU gear ,not everyone can win in crypto if your doing what most are doing. Theirs gonna be a lot of miner moonboy tears these next few months when your alts will dump even more and roi extends further out to 2-3 hardware generation cycles

[Regulater]

I have been reading articles that when Etherium 2.0 is released in 2020 you will not be able to mine Etherium with GPU miners. Is this a definite thing or is it still just up in the air?
If we will no longer be able to mine Etherium does this officially make GPU miners irrelevant? Or is it still worth building them for @ home solutions to mine other coins and possibly new coins that could be profitable?

I currently have an 8 RX580 rig that can't really mine anything profitable except for Etherium. (not sure if this rig will be useless in 2020 or not).

I am looking to build another rig with 8 GTX 1070ti cards that will give me more flexibility to mine other algorithms.

Would it be foolish to buy 8 brand new GTX 1070ti cards at $479.99 a pop and build a $5000 rig with the future of GPU mining and where it stands? Even if I buy used the rig will cost about $3800. Just trying to see what peoples thoughts are on this. I am willing to gamble, but don't want to gamble if there is no chance GPU mining will be relevant within the next 2-3 years and we already know this.


If someone can give me an idea of what I am gambling on by continuing to expand my GPU miners in 2019 that would be great.

Its just like with BTC, LTC, Eth, etc. saying GPU mining is dead. Even saying FPGA mining is dead and here they are doing FPGAs again. GPU mining is like a rollercoaster, up down up down. If your buying Nvidia graphics cards then dont worry about Eth. Nvidia has many other profitable coins and they go up and down. Many coins want to stay GPU friendly so it will always have profitable algos in the future. Also those prices are really high. 6 GPU 1080 systems only go for around $2000. So for only $4000 (200 above your $3800) you could get 12 1080s plus the case, mobo, etc. plug and play.

[adaseb]

It's impossible to tell if GPU or ASIC mining will be completely unprofitable in the future.

Many people assumed that CPU mining was dead when there were GPU miners released for Bitcoin. Then other coins became CPU mineable.

Then it was assumed that GPU mining would be dead since ASICs came out and then Litecoin came out with Scrypt which was only possible to mine with GPUs.

Then Litecoin got ASICs and it was the entire cycle all over again with ETH.

So it's impossible to predict.