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AMD Radeon RX 500 series graphics cards, particularly the RX 580 and 570, have been out of stock for weeks now owing to the cryptocurrency mining craze. The market had shifted away from GPU mining a couple of years back after several China based companies launched specialized ASICs that were much faster and more power efficient at resolving the block chain equations necessary to mine Bitcoin and Litecoin, the Gold and Silver of cryptocurrencies.
However GPU mining has seen a massive resurgence over the past little while due to the rising popularity of ASIC resistent coins. Chief among which is Etherium which has seen its price more than triple in a matter of months. AMD's Add-In-Board partners have caught on to this and have already started directly advertising to miners.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @01:08PM (8 children)
I still think the whole idea of making computers work in order to "make value" is stupid and wasteful.
you want safe and secure transactions? go work for a bank and fix their stupid systems, and the job is done.
the electricity wasted on these "currencies" would have been so much more useful if it had been used for BOINC or some similar distributed computing thing...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @01:40PM (4 children)
The computers are making value because they are doing the work necessary to secure these payment networks; that is valuable.
Put another way: Before Bitcoin, there was no way that you could have run a 100-million-dollar drug market through a website. Clearly, Bitcoin provides some kind of value that your traditional banks cannot provide.
In short, it doesn't matter whether you personally think it's worthwhile; clearly, a whole bunch of people do think it's worthwhile, and you can either participate profitably in their activities, or you can sit on the side line and become increasingly agitated with their success.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @01:51PM (2 children)
I beg to differ : https://www.cia.gov/careers/opportunities [cia.gov]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @01:57PM (1 child)
Put another way: Before Bitcoin, there was no way that some 20-something, starry-eyed man-child could have even set up a 100-million-dollar illegal-drug market through normal, consumer-grade website infrastructure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @06:14PM
That's true. He'd have to start his own implementation of MySpace at an ivy league school instead.
(Score: 1) by butthurt on Wednesday June 07 2017, @05:35PM
Another option is to participate unprofitably.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @02:56PM (1 child)
crypto currencies and block chain are being used for research, etc. there are coins for that. why are you running your mouth when you can't even be bothered to look through coinmarketcap to see what people are doing with these coins?
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday June 07 2017, @04:51AM
Since I was running Folding @ Home anyway I decided to try Curecoin. It looks decent so far, getting a small payout for something I was doing for free anyway.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @03:14PM
go work for a bank and fix their systems? are you trolling? they're lucky they aren't being bombed and shot! fuck the banks and their systems of usury!