GPU prices more than double as cryptocurrency craze accelerates

[haxxiy]

Teeqoz said:

Arkaign said:
Crypto went away from GPUs and onto ASICs back in like 2014, and then coins that once again leveraged GPUs came back. Ugh.

I am not opposed to cryptocurrency. At all. But I really think it's distasteful and severely wasteful for this to be a GPU-using business. The wasted electricity and economic waste are astonishing. Outside of a handful of coins which further protein folding simulation and other actually useful things to science and humanity, drawing mass power and heat output from GPU mining is a joke when it's just arbitrary numbers.

If an ASIC can be made to take over Ether/etc, it would be extremely helpful in so, so many ways.

I wonder when this will start affecting electricity prices. Eventually, crypto-mining, wether GPU-based or ASIC-based will have its margins shaved razor thin, so this particular problem of GPU pricing will be solved, one way or another. But the power issue remains, and indeed, it's a rather wasteful concept in its current form, with the exception of a handful of coins like you say.

EDIT: However there are some things like Proof of Stake that tackles the power issue as well.

Independently of the merits (or lack thereof) of blockchains and cryptocurrencies, there could be, and probably will be, at some point , laws to progressively limit the power consumption of any given GPU/CPU to something like 30 - 45 W. It's not that unfeasible, considering it has been done already with goods like lamps and cars almost worldwide and even TVs in some places, and the lower voltage ensures the benefits would remain even if someone were to stack multiple processors to compensate the loss of computing power.