Nvidia Is Giving Up On the Cryptocurrency Mining Market (latimes.com)

"Nvidia's nine-month crypto gold rush is over," reports the Los Angeles Times. An anonymous reader quotes their report: "Our core platforms exceeded our expectations, even as crypto largely disappeared," founder and Chief Executive Jensen Huang said Thursday on a conference call. "We're projecting no cryptomining going forward...." Nvidia said it had expected about $100 million in sales of chips bought by currency miners in the fiscal second quarter. Instead, the total was $18 million in the period, and that revenue is likely to disappear entirely in future quarters, the company said.

Investors are expressing their concern at the sudden collapse of what had looked like a billion-dollar business. Three months ago, Nvidia said it generated $289 million in sales from cryptocurrency miners, but warned that demand was declining rapidly and might fall by as much as two-thirds. Even that prediction was too optimistic.

Comments

Is it dead yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we call cryptocurrency dead yet? And blockchain?

Lot of suckers lost money, but my sympathy is limited because it was such a stupid idea to begin with.

Re:Is it dead yet?

[mikael]

In the very beginning, one man paid for two pizzas using 10,000 bitcoins, which at the highest price would have been $80,000,000

https://www.investopedia.com/n...

Re:Is it dead yet?

[FilmedInNoir]

At least he still has his Beanie Baby collection to retire on.

Re: Is it dead yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a currency it is dead, and has always been a bad investment. Blockchain as a tech has potential for logistics tracking. But that essentially has no requirements for crypto coins to be used at all.

Re: Is it dead yet?

[Tough Love]

As a currency it is dead

That pronouncement would be a bit premature.

Re: Is it dead yet?

[phantomfive]

The problem with these logistical tracking in the block chain ideas is (among other things) how do you ensure that the physical item matches the coin? How do I ensure that when the coin is given to me, the physical item also is given (and if you have a technique that works, why not just use that instead of the block chain)? Furthermore, what happens if the key for the item's entry in the chain is lost, does that mean the item must also be destroyed? Upon further investigation, adding block chain just adds a layer of complexity with little benefit. Block chain is not going to prevent UPS from losing my packages.

Re: Is it dead yet?

[ath1901]

The problem with these logistical tracking in the block chain ideas is (among other things) how do you ensure that the physical item matches the coin?

You put a sticker with a serial number on the item?

Re: Is it dead yet?

[phantomfive]

Good idea, a sticker sounds really hard to forge.

Re:Is it dead yet?

[DontBeAMoran]

On december 15th 2017, one Bitcoin was worth USD$17,900.

10,000 Bitcoins * $17,900 = USD$179,000,000.

Re: Is it dead yet?

[z3alot]

Presumably he's describing a system where the sticker is signed by a blockchain entry, or something, which can be checked automatically by a scanner.

Re: Is it dead yet?

[phantomfive]

How exactly does one sign a sticker using blockchain?

Re: Is it dead yet?

[z3alot]

You could 1. generate a key pair, 2. put the public key as metadata in the unforgable blockchain entry, and 3. sign whatever message is needed to be tied to this entry with the private key. This scheme ensures no unauthorized message is associated to the same blockchain entry (a property verifiable by anyone), but is vulnerable to an attack needing say an identical message on a different physical object (someone copying the sticker, as you suggest). Depending on the particular needs, this may or may not be sufficient.

Re: Is it dead yet?

[phantomfive]

Do you think this system would prevent counterfeiting of goods?

The true cost of mining

[xack]

Not only has millions of tonnes of greenhouses gases been produced due to mining, it has also produced millions of graphics cards that are now useless due to being fried alive by mining, which will now be in a third world waste dump now as they are too hard to recycle. meanwhile bona fide users of graphics cards have had their supplies disrupted, had their prices more than doubled and have had to wait an extra year for new hardare to come out because nvidia was too busy making mining cards to do r&d. Anyone who made “money” from mining should have it seized under environmental protection laws.

Re:The true cost of mining

[SuricouRaven]

Finite currencies have their own problems. They are subject to deflation, and wild price swings. There is a reason all major governments moved away from a gold standard.

Re:The true cost of mining

[gman003]

GPU production did not substantially increase. Both AMD and Nvidia looked at cryptocoins, realized they were almost certainly a bubble that could pop at any time, and accordingly made no long-term investments to increase production. They pretty much maxed out their contracts with chip foundries (neither make their own chips - Nvidia uses TSMC and Samsung, AMD uses GlobalFoundries and TSMC), but they could never keep up with such an absurd demand spike with existing infrastructure.

Further, the GPUs are hardly useless now. They're already starting to appear on the secondhand market, and be snatched up by gamers. I myself am contemplating getting a second card, if they get cheap enough. The really useless mining hardware are the ASICs - which are pretty tailor-made for the purpose of mining, although I suspect the Bitcoin ASICs might be able to be repurposed to brute-force SHA-256 passwords.

And finally, the headline is a bit inaccurate. Nvidia isn't "giving up". They're just letting shareholders know not to expect another quarter of massive sales volume, because they expect the remaining crypto miners to mostly buy ASICs, not general-purpose cards. (And the glut of used cards is probably going to hurt at least their low-end sales for a year or two - given a choice between this year's $200 card, and last year's $800 card, used, for $200, lots of people will pick the latter.)

Re:The true cost of mining

[careysub]

Which is why hyperinflation from "printing" too much money has been a persistent problem with all fiat currencies around the world, hitting every nation repeatedly, including of course the United States. We desperately need blockchain to finally rein in the incessant hyperinflation!

Oh wait... this hasn't happened. Only a few failed (or near-failed) states have actually experienced anything like this. Never mind.

Re:The true cost of mining

[theM_xl]

That being that it's hard to hide what you're doing with people's money if it's easy enough for them to UNDERSTAND it.

Re:The true cost of mining

[ZorinLynx]

>Further, the GPUs are hardly useless now. They're already starting to appear on the secondhand market, and be snatched up by gamers.

A lot of the GPUs *are* useless to gamers because they don't have video circuitry on them or video outputs. So they're pretty much only good for GPU computing. I suppose they could be sold to the scientific computing market, but I suspect demand for GPUs there isn't as high as gamings, so it's likely folks won't get too much money back.

I wish the GPU card manufacturers hadn't started making these cards without the video circuitry and ports. This is the cheapest part of the card, and at least if they had proper video outputs the cards would be useful second hand to gamers and folks who want to drive really high resolution displays. What a waste.

Re:The true cost of mining

[m00sh]

Not only has millions of tonnes of greenhouses gases been produced due to mining, it has also produced millions of graphics cards that are now useless due to being fried alive by mining, which will now be in a third world waste dump now as they are too hard to recycle. meanwhile bona fide users of graphics cards have had their supplies disrupted, had their prices more than doubled and have had to wait an extra year for new hardare to come out because nvidia was too busy making mining cards to do r&d. Anyone who made “money” from mining should have it seized under environmental protection laws.

Actually NVidia got lots of money by selling their cards for cryptocurrency mining which they then used to hire more engineers to do R&D for their next generation of cards.

Like almost every company that was producing chips for mining, they are now pivoting to AI.

Re:The true cost of mining

[gman003]

Right, I forgot about those.

They might still be useful in SLI/Crossfire configurations. Only one GPU needs video outputs for that to work. Do mining-specific cards still have the SLI edge connector?

Re:The true cost of mining

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Not only has millions of tonnes of greenhouses gases been produced due to mining

There are dozens of other human activities which produce nothing but greenhouse gases.

it has also produced millions of graphics cards that are now useless due to being fried alive by mining

Unlike gamers who make their GPUs go through 0-100% use cycles, with temperatures ranging from 18 to 100C, most miners, on the the other hand, reduce voltage by default (this greatly increases efficiency) and keep their GPUs constantly loaded, under constant moderate temperatures (below 70C) which does not affect the GPU core lifespan in any significant way. Also mining rigs are usually open and well-ventilated, unlike gamers' PCs which are filled with dust and operate under extreme temperatures.

which will now be in a third world waste dump now as they are too hard to recycle

Or they might be resold.

meanwhile bona fide users of graphics cards have had their supplies disrupted, had their prices more than doubled and have had to wait an extra year for new hardare to come out because nvidia was too busy making mining cards to do r&d.

NVIDIA has never stopped R&D and they did not allocate any significant additional resources to producing cards meant for miners.

Anyone who made âoemoneyâ from mining should have it seized under environmental protection laws.

People waste money and resources on far more negative things.

Re:The true cost of mining

[war4peace]

Not only has millions of tonnes of greenhouses gases been produced due to mining

Where did THAT come from?

, it has also produced millions of graphics cards that are now useless due to being fried alive by mining

Citation needed. This is simply false. It's the typical case of incomplete information being blown completely out of proportion and twisted to carry someone's agenda.
While a graphics card used 24/7 would indeed carry a higher risk of becoming defective (by the way, this is the only correct information being flung around like poo by cryptohaters), there isn't much talk about everything else which counterbalances this risk.
The vast majority of miners take better care of their cards than regular gamers. The mining cards are undervolted and have power limits set. They are also better cooled than their gaming counterparts, located in open cases and with plenty airflow around them. I suggest researching this topic a bit before vomiting nonsense, but I guess it's simpler to vomit nonsense, isn't it? Fuck being objective.

, which will now be in a third world waste dump now as they are too hard to recycle.

What you fail to mention is that a GPU is much easier to recycle than, say, a mobile phone or a tablet, or a laptop, or a TV for that matter. A GPU's cooling solution has two main components: Aluminium and plastic. Both can be easily separated and melted. What remains is a 200-grams PCB which is flat and has components that can easily be separated.

meanwhile bona fide users of graphics cards have had their supplies disrupted, had their prices more than doubled and have had to wait an extra year for new hardare to come out because nvidia was too busy making mining cards to do r&d. Anyone who made “money” from mining should have it seized under environmental protection laws.

Again, you're either misinformed or carry an agenda.
nVidia wasn't the main perpetrator here. They clearly mentioned, more than once, that they can and would ramp up chip production if needed. The issue was integrators (Gigabyte, Asus, MSI and the like) were reluctant to boost chip orders and build many cards, out of fear they're going to be left with huge overstocks. Price jacking happened solely at third party sellers and was boosted by Vnand prices going up like crazy. For THAT you gotta blame Apple, they're buying about 20% of ALL vNand production every year. Guess what they put it in? Yeah, that phone you're carrying.

As I kept saying for quite some time now, it's easier to talk out of your ass and fling misinformation around like poo.

Re:The true cost of mining

[war4peace]

How dare you bring truth to the table? Boo!

Re:The true cost of mining

[war4peace]

A lot of the GPUs *are* useless to gamers because they don't have video circuitry on them or video outputs.

Define "a lot". Headless GPUs represent a tiny minority, mainly because all serious miners shied away from them, knowing their resale value was zero, or close to that. Some suckers still bought them but the totl amount is probably low single digit percentage of all, and I'm generous here.

Re:The true cost of mining

[Tough Love]

Not only has millions of tonnes of greenhouses gases been produced due to mining

Sink the profits into building solar farms, it should work out fine.

millions of graphics cards that are now useless due to being fried alive by mining

Right, just wore out all those wires? Maybe melted some solder? Or could it be, those cards on eBay were just superseded by the more efficient generation. For the right price, I will be happy to pick up a cast-off 580, thanks.

Re:The true cost of mining

[TeknoHog]

A lot of the GPUs *are* useless to gamers because they don't have video circuitry on them or video outputs. So they're pretty much only good for GPU computing.

That's like saying that CPUs are only good for CPU computing. I'm seeing a lot of "hidden" applications for GPU computing these days, e.g. video and photo editors that are taking advantage of OpenCL and related tech behind the scenes. As a sibling post mentions, things like SLI should be useful for gamers and others that only use GPUs to process what's immediately visible. Games might also offload physics modelling etc. to GPUs.

Today, it seems completely backwards that GPUs used to be limited for display only. Why build those nice parallel processor arrays if you can't actually use them for general computing? Fortunately, some clever people worked around those limitations by putting general data into image textures. Eventually, the industry gave in and formalized the idea into OpenCL and CUDA.

You can forget about cryptocurrencies and see all these companies talking about data mining and AI. Things like tensor cores neither for gaming nor cryptos. That said, such companies are probably not interested in random second-hand GPUs, but the point is that GPU computing is huge and professional and not going away.

Re:The true cost of mining

[110010001000]

I've never understood why people think graphics cards "wear out" due to use.

Re:The true cost of mining

[Kjella]

Right, I forgot about those. They might still be useful in SLI/Crossfire configurations. Only one GPU needs video outputs for that to work. Do mining-specific cards still have the SLI edge connector?

Well it's not needed for mining so if you were making an extremely stripped down single-purpose version I don't see how that'd survive.

Re:The true cost of mining

[mikael]

Only because every single bank started printing or even just making handwritten currency notes in order to keep their customers happy due to the high inflation of the economy. Which was being caused by banks printing currency as fast as they could In the end the solution to the hyperinflation was to issue a new standard set of bank notes and stop the banks from printing money.

Re:The true cost of mining

[hwihyw]

The first Big Mac cost $0.45, the first model T $850, cost of a suit in 1930 $30. Today, what kind of hamburger can you buy for $0.45 what kind of car you can buy for $850, and suit you can buy with $30? No inflation here, no sir. Just orderly theft of your purchasing power. Forget 1930's, compare house prices from today to 2000, did we run out of land? Did the population double? triple? Don't worry, people with ability to print infinite money will be responsible. Just as I would be responsible if I had the power to mint infinite Bitcoins.

Re:The true cost of mining

[Tough Love]

I wish the GPU card manufacturers hadn't started making these cards without the video circuitry and ports

These cards are for the deep learning market, now going vertical and no sign of stopping. Gamers don't need to feel left out, they benefit from the extra volume, which adds capacity the fab lines and contributes to bringing down the price of their next gaming GPU.

Re:The true cost of mining

[Tough Love]

They were never for miners, they are for deep learning, engineering, scientific computing.

Re:The true cost of mining

[Tough Love]

There are dozens of other human activities which produce nothing but greenhouse gases.

Posting on Slashdot, for example.

Re:The true cost of mining

[kriston]

I have struggled to understand the environmental impact of cryptomining, but I took a hard look at physical gold mining companies like AngloGold and Barrick.

By far, the cryptomining "industry" produces far fewer greenhouse gases and resource consumption (by electricity) than traditional, physical gold mining.

In short, it's a wash. Both are equally damaging to our environment. At least cryptomining doesn't scar the landscape like physical gold mining does.

Re: The true cost of mining

[phantomfive]

Of course, there are objective problems with a gold standard as you mention, but whether or more t it is addressed objectively better or worse, those reasons are not why governments moved to fiat currency. They moved because they were bankrupt and wanted to print their way out of the problem.

Re:The true cost of mining

[teg]

Not only has millions of tonnes of greenhouses gases been produced due to mining

Where did THAT come from?

There were a couple of articles about Bitcoin and emissions last year.

• Nature
• Forbes
• The Guardian/
• Wired

Re:The true cost of mining

[MrL0G1C]

"GPU production did not substantially increase"

FTS:

"Nvidia said it generated $289 million in sales from cryptocurrency miners"

Your statement and Nvidia's statement really don't match up do they, sure they didn't build new production but they certainly would of gone to full capacity at a time when normally it would have been quiet with gamers waiting for the next gen'.

And any gamer with savvy won't touch an ex-miner-card because they've been 'ragged'. A card would have to be 90% off of SRP before I'd even consider it. And it's a bad time to get a card when the next generation is about to come out and new memory chips are coming out that are literally more than twice as fast as the previous gen memory chips.

Re:The true cost of mining

[thegarbz]

That being that it's hard to hide what you're doing with people's money if it's easy enough for them to UNDERSTAND it.

You know economics and accounting are actually professional fields. When you are bleeding out do you also reject life threatening surgery because you don't know exactly how it works?

Let's not cater to ignorance, lest we still be hitting each other over the head with sticks while making grunting noises because no one is interested in this "fire thing" that was too confusing to understand.

Re:The true cost of mining

[thegarbz]

people wouldn't have to resort to cryptocurrencies.

People aren't resorting to cryptocurrencies because of inflation. They attempt instantly to convert to a stable tradable currency, often the USD. What kind of an idiot would swap hyperinflation for insane instability?

Because even cryptocurrencies developed by 15 year olds have set number of coins that can be mined

Then the immediate following year those 15 year olds take a high-school economics class and find out why deflation at scale is an incredibly bad thing for an economy and why central banks work to keep inflation rates where they do.

Re:The true cost of mining

[thegarbz]

There are dozens of other human activities which produce nothing but greenhouse gases.

Yeah I know. So we should just give up now. Excuse me I need to go turn on the heater and the AC at the same time because someone else somewhere is wasting power so clearly there's no reason at all for me not to do the same.

People waste money and resources on far more negative things.

Next time you post about this topic remember the scales that are involved. I may waste a bit of power by leaving the bathroom light on, but cyptomining has achieved zero and uses more power than the nation of Austria. There's few useless activities that people do at scale that if stopped could power the homes, industry and commercial activities of 10million people at once.

Re:The true cost of mining

[misexistentialist]

Historically, states have a 100% failure rate. The dollar only stopped being backed by gold 50 years ago, the only question is whether it was the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end.

Re:The true cost of mining

[Highdude702]

There arent many of those portless cards in the wild, and most of the people that bought them are still mining with them. However, they are still good for GPGPU and cracking rigs and the such. I mined, made a little bit of extra money after paying off my hardware costs. now waiting for the market to fall out so I can grab a bunch of cheap used cards and PSU's.. Everyone thinks that miners abuse the cards, when infact 90% of the miners keep them cooler than a gamer would or could cooped up in their tiny cases. Youre better off buying a used card from a miner than you are from some chinese shop. atleast you know the card works and will be what is claimed.

Re:The true cost of mining

[Highdude702]

I do not believe they have the SLI connectors cut out on the headless cards. But with the new DX and Vulcan you dont really need it anymore, you can even do cross vendor in some cases, and with time it is only going to get better.

Re:The true cost of mining

[Highdude702]

Except nvidia said "Check out this card we made for you miners!"

Re:The true cost of mining

[Highdude702]

MrLogic, your logic is flawed. The average temp of a gpu mining stays at 55-60c, the average temp of a gpu gaming is 75-85c. Using only one algorithm on the card means you're effectively only using about 20% of the GPU at any one time. Not to mention miners undervolt the card to keep it running cool. most big miners dont even overclock the cards. Anybody that doesn't buy old mining gpu's is a fool. I don't suggest buying the cards some gamer decided to mine with when he wasnt gaming, because that card has been abused, as most gamers don't understand the importance of keeping your hardware cold.

Re:The true cost of mining

[MrL0G1C]

The difference is miners run their systems 24/7. And I'd like to see the evidence that miners actually run their cards cooler than gamers, you can assume all you like but miners know they haven't got long to mine before asic miners will make their system useless for mining.

Re:The true cost of mining

[Highdude702]

Actually, you would be surprised how many of the big miners are using renewable energy to power their miners. I know a guy in Washington that has a farm which is 100% hydro electricity. And from what hes told me there are a few others in the area, and around the world.

Re:The true cost of mining

[Highdude702]

(There are also rumors of miners somehow loading custom firmware/microcode to GPUs, thereby making them useless for games, but I have no idea how true that is.)

Semi-true. AMD cards do require a custom BIOS, but its just tightening memory timing, and it actually boosts performance in video games. The part about making them useless for gamers is a lie though. I wouldn't believe another word that person told me if I was you.

Re:The true cost of mining

[Highdude702]

Im not assuming, I mine, and I know a lot of miners. Go to any miner forum or IRC channel and ask a few questions. If your card is running 24/7 at 80c youre degrading your gpu sure, but when running them cool at 55-60c and being undervolted and under clocked. You not only preserve the life of the VRM you also preserve the life of the silicon. Its like overclocking your cpu, you can run for years on an overclocked cpu as long as the voltage is low and the temp is low. there is no difference in a CPU and GPU as far as power and degradation is concerned.

Re:The true cost of mining

[Anonymous Coward]

Steady and controlled inflation plays a role in economics. It is a motivator for people to spend money now rather than a year from now. You say they are stealing purchasing power, but if they gave it back to you (deflation) then spending would slow to a trickle as people hold onto money in anticipation that it will be worth more in the future. This is terrible for the economy.

Re:The true cost of mining

[Sir Holo]

Do mining-specific cards still have the SLI edge connector?

Most certainly. Miners would build multi-bay PCI buses for this specific purpose. One CPU can mine using 16 or so graphics cards, as it's mainly just doling out the work to the GPUs.

If I had several GPU cards, then I'd definitely strap them all together with SLI connectors. In mining, it's a race to solve the next block, so a set of strapped cards would mean more parallel compute power, and thus better chances.

Re:The true cost of mining

[Tough Love]

I was actually referring to the AMD Instinct (7nm, no video)

Re:The true cost of mining

[ewibble]

so banks can loan out 10 times or more depending on regulations of what they have in accounts

Technically banks can not loan out any more money than they have, the can not just say they have extra money. It does work out that the amount of money in the economy is 10 time more however. Here is a simplified example: Say there is $100 or gold coins in the economy that is all in a bank (say there is only 1 bank). the bank can lend out say 90% so now there is $190, then that $90 goes back into the bank so the bank can lend 90% out of that. Keep going for ever. So the total amount of money in the economy is 100 (1 + 0.9 + ... + 0.9^n + ...) = 100 * 1/(1-0.9) = 100 * 10 = 1000. 10 times more than you started with. It has nothing to do with fiat currency you could just as easily do it with gold coins as long as you trust the bank to give you your gold back when you need it. So effectively the banks are creating money, but at no point can they say I have $100 of net deposits on my books I can lend out $101.

Re:The true cost of mining

[war4peace]

Clicked the Nature article. It says Some estimate that the combined electricity consumption for bitcoin and ethereum mining, which together represent 88% of the total cryptocurrency market capitalization (G. Hileman and M. Rauchs http://doi.org/cj22; 2017), has already reached a staggering 47 terawatt-hours per year and is on the rise”. Checking source, it says As a reference, it is estmated that Bitcoin alone currently consumes about 10.41 TWh per year, which is close to the yearly energy consumpton of Uruguay, a country with 3.3 million inhabitants” (Filter error: That's an awful long string of letters there - this was supposed to be the PDF URL but Slashdot won't allow it).

Clicked the Forbes article: So all of the hysteria about cryptocurrency energy use is going to go away in the next few months.”

Clicked the The Guardian article. It quotes the same source as seen elsewhere, from Digiconomist (https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption). The issue with it is that it is controversial, with other estimates, within the very same article (https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption#validation) showing a much lower value.

Now I'm not going to say Bitcoin and altcoins aren't large energy consumers, but putting things into perspective, my own (Eastern European) country consumes in one year more than the highest cryptocurrency estimates worldwide. I'm not overly concerned about either.

Re:The true cost of mining

[war4peace]

nVidia never said that because nVidia never made such cards. They were all made by integrators and they were all GTX 1060 cards. nVidia just sold the chips to integrators.

Re:The true cost of mining

[Highdude702]

Umm. SLI is not used in mining rigs. It actually hinders performance in most algorithms. You should really lookup this stuff before you comment about it.

Re:The true cost of mining

[Highdude702]

You dont think the partners just did that on their own did you? You realize that the P106-100 is not the same chip as the P106. Very very close, but far from the same.

Re:The true cost of mining

[war4peace]

If they requested it, nVidia provided it.

NVidia is terrible

[themusicgod1]

NVidia not making profit here? Let's look at why. 1) You need to be able to understand what the hardware/software stack below you is doing in the cryptocurrency world. Because more often than not, that one black box that you don't understand is where your bitcoin / other cryptocurrency is going to get stolen from. And yet Nvidia is actively hostile to those of us who live and die by drivers that are FLOSS. Nevermind that NVidia drivers are buggy as hell, we can't fix the official ones.
2) NVidia has been openly hostile to cryptocurrency miners, expressing publicly that they would prefer their cards go to gamers. They are not content to shut up and take our money, they didn't want it.
3) Their contact/support blocks tor users Which, guess what? There's a significant overlap with cryptocurrency users, given the concern we have over our privacy.
tl; dr nvidia didn't care when one of the biggest windfalls ever hit them, and now the market is starting to move past them. Good.

Re:NVidia is terrible

[iggymanz]

sounds like butt-hurt miner talk

nvidia doesn't need a market that has small saturation point

bitcoin too illiquid to be useful as money because of its bottlenecked architecture.

maybe someday someone will design a cryptocurrency that is actually useful to the masses, but that day is not now

Re:NVidia is terrible

[themusicgod1]

"sounds like butt-hurt miner talk"

Actually not really. I'm a free software guy...and *their stuff will not work with only free software*. I was locked out of using their product. I could have poured megadollars into nvidia equipment, were that a free software option....but they did not make that an option, and lost out. I did my cryptocurrency mining back in, what, 2010? 2011? I'm frustrated from helping other people mine, and go through troubleshooting nvidia crap. Trying to bring cryptocurrency mining 'to the masses' as it were. It's just not happening with nvidia being the platform of choice.

"nvidia doesn't need a market that has small saturation point"

Sure. But that is mutual. There's no compelling reason why cryptocurrency miners have to use proprietary hardware, it just so happens that they choose to for mostly self-defeating reasons.

"maybe someday someone will design a cryptocurrency that is actually useful to the masses, but that day is not now"
Likewise: only 54% of people are on the internet. Though linux/android cellphones/handheld robots are actually useful 'to the masses'...it took a lot to get there. Cryptocurrency makes the internet more valuable, and there's a lot more of that that needs to happen before the remaining 46% will find it worth taking advantage of the internet.

Re:NVidia is terrible

[Tough Love]

nvidia doesn't need a market that has small saturation point

They will take any market they can get. The problem is, miners don't want nVidia GPUs because they are less power efficient for the hashing load than AMD. Why exactly that is... I only looked at that superficially, but it seems one big point is that nVideo optimized their architecture heavily for the most popular gaming GPU load, that is, 32 bit floating point. For double, half or integer, AMD delivers better ops per watt.

Re:NVidia is terrible

[iggymanz]

no they will not take a niche market with no future. bitcoin is deeply flawed for it's claimed purpose. there are alternative better scaling crypto coin architectures in the works. BTC will finally auger into the ground because of its flaws.

Re: NVidia is terrible

[themusicgod1]

Say what you will about the black box that is intel CPUs, at least you can get free software that runs on them that is more or less feature complete.

Impractical

[Anonymous Coward]

This is because people are finally realizing how impractical cryptocurrencies are. There are simply too many variables. Too many things that can go wrong. Security measures continue to prove ineffectual as more and more high profile thefts persist. And let's not forget that for something that was supposed to "set people free" from fiat currencies, they fail to realize that government controls the manufacture of the technology and the infrastructure on which it depends (i.e. power grids, communication transport).

If people truly want a new way of doing things, look to the old ways: commodities, practical skills, and the bartering and trading of such.

Re:Impractical

[Powercntrl]

This is because people are finally realizing how impractical cryptocurrencies are.

The problem is cryptocoins have very few legitimate applications beyond resale to the next bigger fool. Once the fool pool is depleted, the value has nowhere to go but down. It will probably never reach $0 though, as there will always be illegal uses (money laundering, drug money, ransomware, etc.) propping up the value.

Re:Impractical

[aticus.finch]

This is because people are finally realizing how impractical cryptocurrencies are.

The problem is cryptocoins have very few legitimate applications beyond resale to the next bigger fool. Once the fool pool is depleted, the value has nowhere to go but down. It will probably never reach $0 though, as there will always be illegal uses (money laundering, drug money, ransomware, etc.) propping up the value.

Also, there are new fools being born every minute. The fool pool can never be depleted because the supply of fools is virtually infinite.

Yes, yes!

[SuricouRaven]

Let it die already! Or at least move to coins a bit more practical then proof-of-work with their race to build ever more specialised hardware.

Re:Yes, yes!

[llZENll]

Totally agree, the notion of wastefully burning energy to verify transactions is absurd. What if bitcoin didn't crash, and people kept mining and mining more and more, until it was basically the only way to make money, and every single person was mining. Eventually it causes so much pollution it is what kills off all of the animals, destroys the environment, and ends civilization on earth. Might make for a good drama, it clearly illustrates the conflict between greed and the environment.

Re:Yes, yes!

[SuricouRaven]

Bubbles are a well understood economic phenomenon. The price of something is rising, so people want to buy it as an investment, which drives the price up higher, which causes more people to want to invest. It could be what's happened w ith bitcoin. How many people are actually spending bitcoin on goods and services, rather than just hoarding it to watch their wealth grow?

I dabbled in mining myself on a tiny scale as a hobby, never intending to make any money off it. I eventually made enough to just barely pay off the cost of the hardware, but most of that is still sitting unused. I spent some on a new graphics card - for gaming, not mining - and donated a little more to an open-source project.

Re:Yes, yes!

[Highdude702]

We could only be so lucky..

Is this some kind of parody?

[SuperKendall]

Not only has millions of tonnes of greenhouses gases been produced due to mining

If you want to troll you have to use some figure that sounds like someone somewhere might actually believe it. According to you the atmosphere is 100% CO2 at this point. I'm still breathing pretty well.

it has also produced millions of graphics cards that are now useless due to being fried alive by mining

This also seems rather absurd; I have a friend with a dedicated mining rig and something like 16 cards - why would miners "Fry them alive"?? The longer the cards last the more money they make so the miners treat the GPU's like tender infants and take great pains to cool them properly. There is no reason those cards will not last 10x longer than a GPU in the average PC sold to someone in a dusty house.

Re:Is this some kind of parody?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

The longer the cards last the more money they make so the miners treat the GPU's like tender infants and take great pains to cool them properly.

If the next gen of cards produces a significant boost in performance, they'll upgrade anyway. If the GPUs have any life left in them, that's money left on the table.

What you may mean is they have to take great pains to cool them so they last until the next gen is out (since they run 24/7 at max speed.) But that makes them last longer than they otherwise would, not longer than in someone's normal computer. Heck, the "average" GPU probably is used for decoding Netflix streams.

Re:Is this some kind of parody?

[bill_mcgonigle]

That's not how mining works. You need fast hashes that profit more than electric costs. PoW chains have difficulty increases.

Re:Is this some kind of parody?

[SuperKendall]

If the GPUs have any life left in them, that's money left on the table.

Or, you sell them, and no money is left on the table.

What you may mean is they have to take great pains to cool them so they last until the next gen is out

Oh come on, how could they time that??? Bullshit. They keep the whole rig as cool as they can so they can overclock things as much as possible. But in the end the cards are still working and can be sold, to help pay for upgrades when more powerful cards arrive. In reality though they may skip a generation or two because working card already paid for mean your overall cost of mining is lower the longer you can use them.

Re:Is this some kind of parody?

[skam240]

"If you want to troll you have to use some figure that sounds like someone somewhere might actually believe it. According to you the atmosphere is 100% CO2 at this point. I'm still breathing pretty well."

Heh, you're the one who doesnt know what they're talking about. Humanity produces thousands of millions of tons of co2 alone every year https://www.statista.com/stati... . If bitcoin mining did produce millions of tons of green house gases (I have no idea how much it produced) it certainly wouldn't change much let alone leave us with an atmosphere that "is 100% CO2 at this point"

Maybe make sure you know what you're talking about before you go calling people trolls.

Re:Is this some kind of parody?

[skam240]

Oh shit, that graph was just for the US so the parent really was most like spot on. Way to go dumbass.

Re:Is this some kind of parody?

[SuperKendall]

Humanity produces thousands of millions of tons of co2 alone every year.

From the electricity used by GPU's??? Really????

Idiot. Come back when you get out of high school and have better reading comprehension.

Re:Is this some kind of parody?

[Anonymous Coward]

False, most miners do not overclock anything. They undervolt, and in some cases underclock. But anything that results in lower hashpower/watt? Such as overclocking? No! Not unless they have a horribly detuned card (like an R9 290) that can be both undervolted AND overclocked while using less power/producing less heat. Then they might overclock.

That's definitely a no-go with RX Vega, and probably with 1060s and 1070s too.

Re:Is this some kind of parody?

[mvdwege]

Since he specifically did not state that those billions all came from mining, I suggest that you go back to K-12 to remedy your reading comprehension.

Re:Is this some kind of parody?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

No, for Bitcoin, for example, it's "only" tens of millions of tons, although it comes from ASICs these days. Ethereum is perhaps a third of that. I think the point is that of all the human activities, this is one of the things that can be trivially lower in its footprint - traditional banking has vastly lower energy costs per transaction.

Re:Is this some kind of parody?

[Highdude702]

Miners don't upgrade all of their cards as soon as new ones comes out. You would never turn a profit if you did that. There are still warehouses full of 970/980 rigs running to this day. Sure they have added a bunch of rigs with 580's and 1070's. That does not mean they stopped using the old cards. Have you ever even talked to a miner? Let alone one that has more than 1 mining rig?

Re:Is this some kind of parody?

[Highdude702]

Actually its a mix of all of them, Undervolt the core, and underclock it, then overclock the memory. A lot of cryptocurrencies are memory bound(ethash for one) meaning you need that memory timing tight, and memory clock high. You however need very little core power, so it gets tuned down.

Re:Is this some kind of parody?

[ls671]

There is no reason those cards will not last 10x longer than a GPU in the average PC sold to someone in a dusty house.

Did you ever see those tiny screws on the card fan cover? They are there to taken off to clean the cooling hardware once in a while. It gets pretty packed with dust after a while indeed. After a cleanup, the cards are as good as new.

Re:Is this some kind of parody?

[skam240]

Some one already commented on this but I thought your comment was so rich I can't help myself. At no point did I say GPUs did that. I very clearly state, humanity in general does. It literally reads as such in your own post where you quote me saying "humanity" and not "GPU". They're not even spelled similarly. Clearly you're the one with a reading comprehension problem. I mean really, twice in a row with this shit really looks bad for you.

Pro-tip: If you're going to act like a jackass by calling people names and questioning their intellect you had better make sure you know what you're talking about otherwise you look so much worse than the pettiness you are trying to dish out.

NB

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

"Our core platforms exceeded our expectations, even as crypto largely disappeared"

Crypto has not disappeared, it's just you can barely break even with it nowadays. The reason it's not as profitable as it was in the past 12 months is not even due to the depreciation of crypto-currencies, it's because mining difficulty has increased several-fold (it's increased/decreased automatically following the changes in network hashing rate). It's quite possible that the next crypto-craze will again make mining profitable.

Re:then why the hell...

[Luckyo]

Crypto-boom is still felt. Prices are going down slowly from being much higher than MSRP. Additionally there's a large amount of unsold stock, because higher prices blocked people who were planning to update from updating. And now, the same people are waiting for the next gen and not updating. All while no manufacturer wants to sell at a much lower price than everyone else and crash the market for everyone.

So we end up in status quo.

The cost of video cards is still pretty high

[rsilvergun]

I got a 1060 for $270 with a 20% off coupon on top of that about 2 years ago. Nowadays I'm lucky if I can find one for $300 (assuming it's not a refurb or one of the b grade ones like PNY or eVGA). I have seen a few RX580s for 8gb though. I'm looking forward to seeing what Intel does in a few years, but they're a long way off...

Re:The cost of video cards is still pretty high

[Tough Love]

I'm looking forward to seeing what Intel does in a few years, but they're a long way off...

Probably expand their partnership with AMD, it's just more cost effective than putting in all the R&D necessary to come up with something competitive with vega/navi. Isn't that weird?

Understanding Bitcoin

[PopeRatzo]

Some Twitter wag gave the best explanation of Bitcoin I've ever seen:

"Imagine if keeping your car idling 24/7 produced solved Sudokus you could trade for heroin."

Re:Understanding Bitcoin

[PopeRatzo]

car != ASIC

Those of us who have been around Slashdot a while know that there are car analogies for every technology. Without exception. But keep coming back. It works if you work it.

Re:Understanding Bitcoin

[PopeRatzo]

Maybe if your car can only drive on one road, in one direction, then it would be an apt analogy.

Did you even read the analogy? The car is idling. It's not driving anywhere. It's up on blocks. Stationary.

Fuck, do I have to explain everything to the Anonymous Coward? As much as he's on here, you'd think he'd have developed some reading skills by now.

I never knew they bought into it

[Snotnose]

I'm guessing they were surprised when the crypto-mining folks bought up all their cards, then looked into their APIs and what the crypto-minors needed, guessed at the market, and said "Nah. 1% does this shit, the rest of em want to run over pedestrians in some GTA variant".

"We project no cryptomining"

[Chas]

So they're short selling.

When mining jumps on the new devices, swallows the entire available supply, burps, and screams for more, while regular owners are asked to pay $1000 for a mid-range device, they can laugh all the way to the bank.

Re:"We project no cryptomining"

[Highdude702]

First post I've read that makes much sense.

Good!

[p51d007]

HOPEFULLY the price of video chips/cards comes down. And hopefully this whole crypto-mining garbage goes away.

Re:then why the hell...

[Tough Love]

are the previous generation (launched early '17) graphics cards still selling for above the original launch

Previous gen is now back at roughly MSRP, which is still distorted. Prices should fall rapidly over the coming weeks with perhaps a bit of overshoot, maybe great value for games. RX 580 remains highly respectable, especially for Vulkan/DX12 games. Current gen Vega 64 is running about 10% over MSRP right now, way down from what it was. I'm one of those fuck nVidia guys (with good reason) so I don't much care what they cost, but for what it's worth, nVideo MSRP is following about the same trajectory.

Nvidia Mining?

[ElizabethGreene]

My understanding was that Nvidia's kit was terrible for GPU mining. That might be outdated, but I know it was the case in 2013.

Nobody didn't see this coming

[kriston]

Nobody didn't see this coming, unless they were wildly misinformed and/or stupid.

"We're projecting no cryptomining going forward...

[rokh00]

"We're projecting no cryptomining going forward...." Heh, then they obviously don't know too much about cryptomining since there's no projecting what cryptomining be like from one month to the next.

Re:I'll buy the GTX1080 card from you for $50 mine

[luther349]

miner will think they will get near new prices for there burned out cards.

Re:"We're projecting no cryptomining going forward

[luther349]

its all tied to bitcoin even all the clone currency's. people would mine the easier clone currency to buy bitcoin. but now that bitcoin has crashed hard and levelling off its over. see the miners where not dumb they where pumping up the price of bitcoin to cash out before the wall street traders invaded the currency. they knew once they invaded they would cash the currency short selling and they did.

Re:"We're projecting no cryptomining going forward

[Antique Geekmeister]

They're predicting that the cryptominsers won't use NVidia hardware. That seems a reasonably safe bet, and rather than spending more of their research and production on chpsets or cards aimed at a very small market segment for NVidia. New, politically exciting markets may be interesting to examine or even participate in, but they're not necessarily _profitable_.

Re:I'll buy the GTX1080 card from you for $50 mine

[Highdude702]

Define burned out? Youre better off buying a used mining card than a used gaming card.

What are you smoking ?

[aepervius]

Not only has millions of tonnes of greenhouses gases been produced due to mining

it. According to you the atmosphere is 100% CO2 at this point.

Hardly, carbon cycle is natural 750 gigaton per year, as for human it is around 30 gigaton (or that order of magnitude). A million tons CO2 is not even a sizzling drop on a hot stone in the sahara.

Re:I'll buy the GTX1080 card from you for $50 mine

[luther349]

stop it mining card are run full tilt all there lives by the time there for sale there half dead. they have way more stress then a gaming card. only someone trying to pawn off that junk would call them better.

Re:I'll buy the GTX1080 card from you for $50 mine

[Highdude702]

You realize lower core voltage and adequate cooling(no hot cold cycles) your hardware lasts 10x as long right? Learn something before you spout your bullshit. Also "Full tilt" you realize when it is bashing it is literally using a tiny fraction of the circuitry on the silicon right? This is the problem with slashdot. People who have no fucking clue how shit works wants to chime in and tell someone they're wrong about something. Moron.

Re:I'll buy the GTX1080 card from you for $50 mine

[luther349]

whatever you say reseller.

Re:I'll buy the GTX1080 card from you for $50 mine

[Highdude702]

Sorry, I horde electronics. You would never catch me selling a GPU. In fact I hope a lot of the population is as dumb as you so I can get a bunch of cheap cards and PSU's. Have fun buying your $2000 Consumer(lol) GPU. You are why Nvidia thinks they can sell the 2080 for double what the 1080 debuted at.