News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices?. Parent comment

Re:Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices? by jefftk on Saturday January 01, 2022 @08:01PM (#29764623)
Historically, for many products, high demand leads to lower unit prices as manufacturers become more efficient. Since we're a decade into GPU mining, there's been a lot of time for manufacturers to adjust. While so far they have not been able to keep up with demand, I don't think it's clear that they never will.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices? by kelseyfrog on Saturday January 01, 2022 @08:20PM (#29764740)
Sorry, not following. Can you explain how efficiencies in GPU production interact with network difficulty to produce lower GPU prices? I'm not finding much in the literature.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices? by jefftk on Sunday January 02, 2022 @10:39AM (#29769545)
What makes hash-based proof of work function is that to produce some number of hashes you need to use some amount of real-world resources. In practice, the two main resource inputs are electricity and computational hardware. If hardware is scarce, as it is now, the hardware will be a large proportion of mining cost, while the more efficiently hardware can be produced, the more of the cost is electricity.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Are cryptocurrencies to blame for high GPU prices? by kelseyfrog on Sunday January 02, 2022 @11:49AM (#29770325)
How does that make miners not buy GPUs?
[ Parent | on HN ]