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posted by martyb on Monday December 03 2018, @01:40AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-goes-up... dept.

Bitcoin just ended its worst-performing month in seven years in terms of month-over-month price declines. While this is comparing rate of fall and not absolute values, the world of economics is run on rate.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency began November at an average price across exchanges of $6,341, but as of 0:00 UTC on December 1 is trading at just $3,964, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index.

As it stands, the near $2,400 drop in bitcoin’s price has created a -37.4 percent monthly performance, which is its worst on record since August 2011, when it fell from roughly $8 to $4.80 to print a -40 percent monthly loss.

This may have some good impact for PC gamers:

Bitcoin miners hit hard by the cryptocurrency’s crash may be throwing in the towel.

The Bitcoin network’s hash rate, one way of gauging the computing power dedicated to mining the digital currency, dropped about 24 percent from an all-time high at the end of August through Nov. 24, according to Blockchain.com. While the decline may have partially resulted from miners switching to other cryptocurrencies, JPMorgan Chase & Co. says some in the industry are losing money after Bitcoin’s price tumbled.

A big miner shakeout could be bad news for chipmakers including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Nvidia Corp. who supply the industry, along with mining-rig designers like Bitmain Technologies Ltd. that are pursuing initial public offerings.


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 03 2018, @05:54PM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 03 2018, @05:54PM (#769213) Journal

    That $200 card may seem like a smoking deal but the only smoking will be of the magic blue variety as those chips fail. And don't look to the manufacturer to honor the warranty on a card that has been used for mining.

    Electronics isn't like a used car. Cooling fans are the only moving parts on a GPU. Running full out is wearing (especially if the fan kicks on and off), but these things can still have a lot of life left in them (after all, they survived so far which is a strong demonstration of fitness). And they are scrapping these because they're no longer profitable, not because the cooling fans sound like a belt sander.

    And consider that last paragraph:

    Inno3D's stance makes us wonder if the company or others have seen an uptick in RMA requests. Either way, it's refreshing to see Inno3D take a stand against mining, even if it has its own self interest in mind.

    There's a lot of financial and ideological incentive to exaggerate the risk of used mining GPUs.

  • (Score: 2) by The Shire on Monday December 03 2018, @06:05PM (1 child)

    by The Shire (5824) on Monday December 03 2018, @06:05PM (#769215)

    Mining is hard on the cards VRM's. Heat is the enemy of silicon circuits and when running full bore those regulators get VERY hot. The cards just aren't designed to be driven that hard continuously. If you have ever been around a mining rack you can literally hear the chips whining under load. So no, it's not about the moving parts - fans on these cards are designed to be in motion all time and are actually easy to repair/replace if they do fail. The onboard circuitry however can't sustain that load indefinitely. It's like having a car you drive at 80mph 24 hours a day every day, eventually the engine wear will make itself known. It's not the age - it's the miles that'll kill ya.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 03 2018, @08:38PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 03 2018, @08:38PM (#769279) Journal

      Mining is hard on the cards VRM's. Heat is the enemy of silicon circuits and when running full bore those regulators get VERY hot. The cards just aren't designed to be driven that hard continuously. If you have ever been around a mining rack you can literally hear the chips whining under load.

      And? They still work. There's electronic Darwinism here. The stuff that survived this long is going to have a higher MTBF (mean time before failure) than the stuff that didn't make it. Sure it'll probably still have a shorter lifespan than a new product which survives warranty, but it's cheap. Cheap covers a lot of ills.