There's a generic word for facial tissues, too. Language doesn't care about the semantics.

The generic word for non Bitcoin crypto is alt(ernative)coin. People are mining altcoins with GPUs.

Nope. That's still an in-context word.

The generic word will be whatever John Q. Public with zero knowledge or care calls it.

I've never heard of other crypto currencies referred to as Bitcoin by anyone other than noobs. It's like calling the Mexican Peso a Dollar. The semantics are important - i.e. for doing something like currency conversions.

That's exactly my point.

The "noobs" will always outnumber the knowledgeable in-crowd. They are the ones who will—ahem—coin the generic term.

Are we noobs here or is this a tech forum where people might reasonably be expected to know the difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum? I'd argue it's the latter.

You can't say that Bitcoin is responsible in a discussion about GPU shortages. It's flat-out wrong and obfuscates the actual problem. It's Ethereum that's mostly responsible for said shortage, and seeing as how Ethereum is moving to proof of stake soon that problem might be alleviated. Bitcoin uses all custom hardware for mining and is not affecting the GPU shortage. The problem with Bitcoin mining is power consumption, not chip contention.

I was making a parallel point about language. Your "well aaaackshually" derailed it.