Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Friday April 27 2018, @01:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the picks-and-shovels dept.

Shipments of GPUs are being slowed down or suspended in light of a slowdown in demand driven by cryptocurrency miners:

Taiwan-based graphics card makers including Gigabyte Technology, Micro-Star International (MSI) and TUL are expected to see their shipments for April plunge over 40% on month, as many clients have suspended taking shipments in response to drastic slowdown in demand for cryptocurrency mining machines, according to industry sources.

Channel distributors and larger mining farm operators have cut orders with makers of mining graphics cards and mining motherboards or asked them to suspend shipments due to the crypto mining craze waning abruptly from the beginning of April, the sources said.

Quite a few mining farm operators have even stopped purchasing graphic cards, as they are awaiting the rollout of Ethereum mining machines by China's Bitmain in the third quarter of 2018. They anticipate mining rewards to pick up gradually in the third quarter, as Bitcoin and Ethereum values may rebound following sharp declines seen in early 2018, the sources indicated.

Bitmain.

Previously: AMD GPU Supply Exhausted By Cryptocurrency Mining, AIBs Now Directly Advertising To Miners
Cryptocoin GPU Bubble?
Ethereum Mining Craze Leads to GPU Shortages
Used GPUs Flood the Market as Ethereum's Price Crashes Below $150
Cryptocurrency Mining Wipes Out Vega 64 Stock
GPU Cryptomining Hurting SETI and Other Astronomy Projects

Related: AMD Profits in Q3 2017


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday April 27 2018, @07:26PM (7 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Friday April 27 2018, @07:26PM (#672746)

    Yes, there are a number of high tech industries that are developing further because of this activity.

    Broken Window Fallacy: If you're putting all this R&D into a fundamentally useless activity, that's not helping anyone else.

    This massive development means we're developing currency ideas that aren't a variation of "Pay VISA in order to buy anything".

    1. I don't have to pay VISA whenever I use those handy-dandy pieces of paper in my pocket with words like "Twenty Dollars" printed on them. Or if I use ACH and similar methods of going direct from 1 bank account to another.
    2. Presumably, both the retailers accepting VISA and the customers accepting the increased prices involved because VISA gets a cut consider the extra costs worth it, because they continue to use VISA.
    3. I'm guessing that all the middlemen involved in a mostly-hypothetical cryptocurrency infrastructure aren't interested in doing all the processing and verifying work for free.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Insightful=2, Interesting=1, Total=3
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 27 2018, @07:33PM (4 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday April 27 2018, @07:33PM (#672750) Journal

    Broken Window Fallacy: If you're putting all this R&D into a fundamentally useless activity, that's not helping anyone else.

    They're doing it by choice. So I'm willing to take their opinion on the value of mining at face value.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday April 28 2018, @02:11AM (3 children)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday April 28 2018, @02:11AM (#672879) Journal

      They're doing it by choice. So I'm willing to take their opinion on the value of mining at face value.

      "Doing it by choice" doesn't automatically mean is good for society as a whole.
      2008 economic crisis, opioid epidemic - all causing actions were done "by choice" and legal.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 28 2018, @02:38AM (2 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday April 28 2018, @02:38AM (#672887) Journal

        "Doing it by choice" doesn't automatically mean is good for society as a whole.

        Burden of proof is on you to show that there is such harm. Your two examples set the bar pretty high.

        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday April 28 2018, @03:00AM (1 child)

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday April 28 2018, @03:00AM (#672898) Journal

          Methinks the burden of proof for your position of "doing by choice is always good" is on you.
          Without that proof, your choice to take it "at the face value" is just your personal choice and I can't deny you that. Don't expect me to accept it, though.

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 28 2018, @03:50AM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday April 28 2018, @03:50AM (#672912) Journal

            Methinks the burden of proof for your position of "doing by choice is always good" is on you.

            That's not my position. I'm well aware of exceptions (not to mention your examples). We've had several opportunities to discuss the harm of cryptocurrency mining (here [soylentnews.org] and here [soylentnews.org], for example), and the primary complaint seems to be that the miners use electricity and take advantage of stupid electricity subsidies. I don't care much about electricity conservation (we're not running out) and I don't mind the end of electricity subsidies. So far, there just hasn't been much to concern myself with.

            And that's where we are. If there is some serious harm from cryptocurrency mining, and I don't think there is, then please enlighten us as to what it is.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 27 2018, @08:22PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 27 2018, @08:22PM (#672778)

    I do not think blockchain-based crytocurrencies are a good design for a system for financial transactions. No one should be using anything remotely resembling BitCoin as a currency.

    But VISA is still bad for everyone because they are a single entity with way too much power (okay, they have a few competitors, but it's a very small space). Just because we don't have a better alternative doesn't mean the existing system isn't bad. And people very often participate in systems they do not fully agree with. In this case there's plenty of reasons including the fact that building good financial systems is hard and the existing services have a major advantage of already being used/accepted everywhere.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 28 2018, @12:07AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday April 28 2018, @12:07AM (#672850) Journal

    Broken Window Fallacy: If you're putting all this R&D into a fundamentally useless activity, that's not helping anyone else.

    To elaborate on my previous post, this is not the broken window fallacy because coin mining doesn't happen because we want better high tech industries (such as ASIC and FPGA development and GPU production, etc). That instead is a happy coincidence. Instead, mining occurs voluntarily, indicating that the activity has sufficient value to the involved parties to justify their investments in it. At this point, I merely am speaking of further benefit beyond that of the "fundamentally useless" mining itself.

    Now, when one is second-guessing the value of Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies, one is actually second-guessing free peoples' decisions and opinions. Which is fine as long as you realize that they have a similar level of respect for your non-binding opinion. Recall a key part of the setup for the broken window fallacy. Someone had decided that higher economic activity was more important than peoples' windows, and thus, broke those windows without the consent of the window owners.

    We don't have a top-down government or other group forcing people to mine bitcoins in order to prop up their ASIC/FPGA/GPU industries. Thus, we don't have the initial conditions for the fallacy.