How badly is cryptocurrency worsening the chip shortage?

Re:How badly is cryptocurrency worsening the chip shortage? by ohgodplsno on Friday November 12, 2021 @11:47AM (#29201365)

Right. Because the miners will stop their operations when Ethereum moves to proof of stake in 2030. Because there won't be a hard fork from miners who would rather have PoW. Because the miners will just give up on their operations when Ethereum isn't the shitcoin of the day. Because they won't move on to another shitcoin that is worth mining on GPUs.

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Re:How badly is cryptocurrency worsening the chip shortage? by chucksmash on Friday November 12, 2021 @12:07PM (#29201690)

Miners will find another PoW ecosystem to deploy their mining hardware in, correct.

Ethereum is not really a shitcoin though, unless you consider all cryptocurrencies shitcoins. Many tokens are implemented as ERC-20s (including most relevant stablecoins), other chains target EVM compatibility to drive developer adoption, majority of the NFT boom has been in ERC-721 NFTs on Ethereum, and traditional companies are now building L2s on top of Ethereum tech (PwC, Reddit).

Ethereum blockchain is pretty fundamental to much of what is happening in crypto aside from pure NumberGoUpism. Miners can hard fork ETH if they want to, but I doubt they will. All those dollars held in stablecoins will determine which chain has validity, and I doubt USDC/DAI/RAI/GUSD would go along with a miner cashgrab fork again Vitalik...

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Re:How badly is cryptocurrency worsening the chip shortage? by ohgodplsno on Friday November 12, 2021 @12:10PM (#29201757)

>Ethereum is not really a shitcoin though, unless you consider all cryptocurrencies shitcoins

dingdingdingding! There is nothing useful done with Eth today, aside from quick money grabs.

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Re:How badly is cryptocurrency worsening the chip shortage? by reidjs on Friday November 12, 2021 @12:13PM (#29201801)

There's a lot of people using it for online gaming (gambling) I think

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Re:How badly is cryptocurrency worsening the chip shortage? by ohgodplsno on Friday November 12, 2021 @12:22PM (#29201920)

Fueling addictions and bypassing regulations in hundreds of countries isn't exactly a shining example of the technology.

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Re:How badly is cryptocurrency worsening the chip shortage? by kevinmgranger on Friday November 12, 2021 @12:31PM (#29202054)

I'm no fan of it either, but plenty of folks would view bypassing financial regulations as a shining example. That was part of the point, was to sidestep government oversight.

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Re:How badly is cryptocurrency worsening the chip shortage? by danaris on Friday November 12, 2021 @02:07PM (#29203296)

Another way of saying that is "to enable criminal activity."

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Re:How badly is cryptocurrency worsening the chip shortage? by kevinmgranger on Friday November 12, 2021 @02:39PM (#29203646)

Sure. But legality is separate from morality.

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Re:How badly is cryptocurrency worsening the chip shortage? by sershe on Saturday November 13, 2021 @10:59AM (#29210650)

It's important to separate moral judgement from technical judgement. Even if I agreed with you on morality (which I don't on either count), addiction industries, including the legal ones like tobacco and games, have always been large and profitable, and avoiding various regulation has also been a big "meta-industry" for a long time.

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Re:How badly is cryptocurrency worsening the chip shortage? by capableweb on Friday November 12, 2021 @11:51AM (#29201443)

> Because the miners will stop their operations when Ethereum moves to proof of stake in 2030

Well, from the perspective of Ethereum, they will, since Ethereum will no longer be PoW...

> Because there won't be a hard fork from miners who would rather have PoW.

There might be, or they might use Ethereum Classic. That's all fine, the second biggest network (Ethereum) will still be PoS so they can do whatever they want.

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Re:How badly is cryptocurrency worsening the chip shortage? by gzer0 on Friday November 12, 2021 @12:03PM (#29201639)

Ethereum Classic fell victim to multiple 51% attacks in 2020. The hacker was able to gain control of 51% of the hash power and reorg some blocks and it allowed double spending and all the catastrophes that come with a 51% attack [1][2].

It is safe to say that it won't come anywhere near close to where normal Ethereum is in terms of mainstream adoption.

[1] https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/08/29/ethereum-classic...

[2] https://coingeek.com/over-1m-double-spent-in-latest-ethereum...

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Re:How badly is cryptocurrency worsening the chip shortage? by ohgodplsno on Friday November 12, 2021 @11:53AM (#29201490)

> Well, from the perspective of Ethereum, they will, since Ethereum will no longer be PoW...

Children develop object permanence by the age of two. How long does it take for cryptobros to develop GPU permanence ? You closing your eyes doesn't make the problem go away.

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Re:How badly is cryptocurrency worsening the chip shortage? by capableweb on Friday November 12, 2021 @11:55AM (#29201519)

But the GPUs already exists, what solution do you imagine that involves the said GPUs to not be used anymore? Even if you sell them to normal consumers, the GPUs will be used, one way or another.

Are you suggesting we should destroy the GPUs that were previously used for Eth mining?

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Re:How badly is cryptocurrency worsening the chip shortage? by gjulianm on Friday November 12, 2021 @12:04PM (#29201655)

I think the point is that the miners already have the GPUs, they will probably switch their operations to mining other coins/forks instead of just giving up on everything.

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