Ethereum Miners Are Selling Their Graphics Cards

[Megalith]

This writer suspects that the Ethereum craze may be slowing down, at least a little bit, based on the rapidly increasing sales of used mining rigs on eBay. While sellers could simply be moving more mining rigs to meet demand, being that interest in Ethereum remains high, those who were queried claim that they are, in fact, getting out of the market. Of course, nobody knows for sure when the exorbitant markups on certain GPUs will officially end.

…ethereum mining gets more difficult over time, causing any particular hardware setup to gradually earn less money every day. Based on the RX580's processing ability, power consumption, the drop in trading price, and the increase in mining difficulty, I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations. According to my math, the same graphics card that used to earn about $5 a day now earns less than roughly $2 a day. A $300 graphics card that might have paid for itself in 2-3 months (after electricity costs) will now take over 6 months, at best. A sizable mining operation can stomach that sort of long-term investment, but there aren't a lot of hobbyists who are willing to stick it out.

 

[Shmee]

I hope mining is slowing down. The inflation of graphics cards prices needs to stop.

 

[vegeta535]

I hope mining is slowing down. The inflation of graphics cards prices needs to stop.

It is slowing down. Prices have stalled and not selling at the crazy prices. Flood of cheap video cards is incoming.

 

[odditory]

Author of the linked article is clueless. No facts or real data, just a lot of "I heard from someone and I also looked around on ebay a little bit". Mining is going exactly nowhere. A lot of the doomsday articles about "Ethereum dropping half its value" are clickbaity because they're only looking at data from the tip of last month's bubble/peak to now, rather than an average of the last 3, 6 or 12 months. Its still more profitable now than it was before ETH suddenly and briefly got pumped to 400.

There is a long game here, the larger corporate operations and ruthless chinese superfarms instantly fill any void left by departing late-bandwagoners and gamerkids that saw a youtube video about "making munnee with your pee cee" during last month's bubble.

 

[odditory]

Flood of cheap video cards is incoming.

Not happening.

 

[TrevorR]

Probably one of those articles to try and slow the mining craze to drive up the price of ethereum. But then again, I have no idea how the market works.

 

[Merc1138]

It is slowing down. Prices have stalled and not selling at the crazy prices. Flood of cheap video cards is incoming.

Umm, maybe you mean flood of used beat to shit hammered at max load for weeks/months on end videocards is coming. I dunno about you, but that's not the kind of hardware I'd be looking at putting into any build.

 

[Ocellaris]

Umm, maybe you mean flood of used beat to shit hammered at max load for weeks/months on end videocards is coming. I dunno about you, but that's not the kind of hardware I'd be looking at putting into any build.

Many people into mining lower the max power useage of the cards. You can get a faster ROI if you use 65% of max power while still producing 96% of maximum hash rates.

 

[velusip]

Vice posting this article late, lol. Their info is 10 days old, which -- in the cryptocurrency world -- is already old and irrelevant.

Ethereum has already recovered and is back to 5/7 of it's peak value. Some less than patient miners rage-sold their equipment.

 

[Merc1138]

Many people into mining lower the max power useage of the cards. You can get a faster ROI if you use 65% of max power while still producing 96% of maximum hash rates.

Ok, so cards running at 2/3 of their max power while still being hammered to shit 24/7 for weeks and months.

 

[Krenum]

Only buy new folks, stick it to those a$$holes.

 

[oldmanbal]

Only buy new folks, stick it to those a$$holes.

But it's hard to turn down prices on flagship cards being sold at half price or less. . .

 

[Krenum]

But it's hard to turn down prices on flagship cards being sold at half price or less. . .

I know, its hard to turn down hookers on half price weekend too but dangit, sometimes you just gotta put your foot down.

 

[thebufenator]

In here we find people who don't like making money

 

[RogueTadhg]

I know, its hard to turn down hookers on half price weekend too but dangit, sometimes you just gotta put your foot down.

Nay!

2 For one deal!

 

[ecmaster76]

Meanwhile at Microcenter yesterday RX580s are priced at *$450* each, limit 2 per customer - and they still have a hard time keeping them in stock

Screw Pascal - Vega just needs to exceed hash efficiency of Polaris and AMD can name their price apparently

 

[oldmanbal]

I know, its hard to turn down hookers on half price weekend too but dangit, sometimes you just gotta put your foot down.

I don't follow your logic why would you refuse a good deal? They overcharge anyway imho.

 

[RayderR6]

I don't follow your logic why would you refuse a good deal? They overcharge anyway imho.

He wants the miners to eat their greed sandwich, yummmm, greeeeed, for screwing the gamer consumer base with high demand pricing.

 

[STR]

In here we find people who don't like making money

It's more like most of the people in here aren't college students anymore, so the idea of $60/mo from mining is a lot more like "rounding error in the checkbook" than "making money".

Vice posting this article late, lol. Their info is 10 days old, which -- in the cryptocurrency world -- is already old and irrelevant.

Ethereum has already recovered and is back to 5/7 of it's peak value. Some less than patient miners rage-sold their equipment.

I've seen articles lately blabbing about how ether is going to take over the world (which in the grand tradition of bubbles is precisely the moment you should bail). Then I see charts like this, showing about as much trading volume as a penny stock, and figure I need to find better sources to read.

 

[Merc1138]

It's more like most of the people in here aren't college students anymore, so the idea of $60/mo from mining is a lot more like "rounding error in the checkbook" than "making money".



I've seen articles lately blabbing about how ether is going to take over the world (which in the grand tradition of bubbles is precisely the moment you should bail). Then I see charts like this, showing about as much trading volume as a penny stock, and figure I need to find better sources to read.

That's pretty spot on. I'm not at a point in my life anymore where $50-$100 a month means much. The simple fact is, that if I wanted to make an investment into coins(with the intent of making a return), I'd just drop a few grand on a coin and let it sit rather than wasting time screwing with getting hardware, putting together a mining rig, hoping I can beat the increase in the electric bill, and get some small return later that may or may not require spending more time having to sell hardware(to see what I can make back on it).

 

[Spidey329]

That's pretty spot on. I'm not at a point in my life anymore where $50-$100 a month means much. The simple fact is, that if I wanted to make an investment into coins(with the intent of making a return), I'd just drop a few grand on a coin and let it sit rather than wasting time screwing with getting hardware, putting together a mining rig, hoping I can beat the increase in the electric bill, and get some small return later that may or may not require spending more time having to sell hardware(to see what I can make back on it).

A few years ago when I was into litecoin mining (had about 25 gfx cards) I had a buddy that didn't grasp this. I was jumping out, and he was going in harder. I tried to explain the math and even sent him a spreadsheet that showed we were approaching the point where it was cheaper to just buy the coins versus trying to mine them (electricity costs, etc.). I gave up, for as smart as he is, he couldn't grasp it.

If you can predict the next GFX card crazed coin, you can make way more than you would mining. There's less risk in that as well, as the $5000 or so you may dump into a decent mining operation (before the craze prices) could net you a higher ROI if you just bought the coins outright and held them. In the end, you're doing the same thing (converting the coin to BTC or USD), it's just with one method you're not left holding a massive ton of video cards.

For those in this thread predicting that Ether still has legs or that there's no correction coming, you may be in for a shock. The same predictions were made with the coins that preceded this. It's all following the same cycle before the bubble burst.

- New coin gets traction among select mining groups, stays low for awhile.
- New coin starts to have the price go up in the market, others start to notice.
- More people start to jump in to take advantage of this coin, GFX cards start to see supply issues.
- The supply of GFX card mining rigs pushes the difficulty up faster and faster.
- Many start jumping out because difficulty starts to outpace coin valuation.
- It bursts, a little period of random coins being mined here or there before it starts all over again.

Ask yourself this - what is driving the value of Ethereum? What makes it so special over the 100's of other subcoins? Is it new or does it have features people really want? Or is it simply being driven by irrational market speculation? That will always correct in time. The best investors know when to take advantage of that in any market and most importantly, they recognize the signs on when to bail out.

Not saying the ride is over, just saying that blindly believing the hype can cause you to invest on emotion and not data.

 

[davethehedgehog]

Author of the linked article is clueless. No facts or real data, just a lot of "I heard from someone and I also looked around on ebay a little bit". Mining is going exactly nowhere. A lot of the doomsday articles about "Ethereum dropping half its value" are clickbaity because they're only looking at data from the tip of last month's bubble/peak to now, rather than an average of the last 3, 6 or 12 months. Its still more profitable now than it was before ETH suddenly and briefly got pumped to 400.

There is a long game here, the larger corporate operations and ruthless chinese superfarms instantly fill any void left by departing late-bandwagoners and gamerkids that saw a youtube video about "making munnee with your pee cee" during last month's bubble.

Let me get this straight. There's been a shortage of graphics cards for months. Literally no GPU's available of some models, to the point where my local disty doesnt even list 580's and 480's any longer on their site. Massive mining farms are being built by private consortiums across the world with tens of thousands of GPU's humming away. Pre-orders of literally hundreds of graphics cards in a batch at a time are being seen.

And this guy thinks because he's seen 277 rigs selling on ebay everyone's selling up and moving on? Even if you imagine they're all 6GPU. That's short of 1800 graphics cards being sold. Given the volume of the market, that's miniscule.

Big companies out there right now are touting Ethereum as the next generation platform for running applications over. Ethereum isn't just a "coin", it's much more. You've got the big banks involved, big tech firms like Cisco and Microsoft.

I get that people are pissed that they can't buy a card for gaming, but thats just tough. This is a captialist society, supply and demand. The world is full of the little people not being able to buy stuff because richer, bigger entities price them out of the market. It's a good job we're in a capitalist environment too, or those graphics cards wouldn't even exist.

 

[next-Jin]

Yea I doubt we see a huge sell off like Bitcoin back in 2012. The majority of the coins coming out are ASIC resistant. Even if Ethereum drops to 0 (it won't, it'll keep going up over time), becomes too difficult to mine, etc. there are many other coins to mine that is profitable like Zcash.

I mean hell siacoin is profitable, Ethereum Classic, etc.

The returns are not as high but if you're in it for the long game over the course of 2-3 years you can diversify your portfolio for far cheaper than buying the crypto outright.

I have a 6 GPU setup with 1060 6GBs and earn around 300 a month give or take dual mining ETH and SIA.

Nvidia and AMD will likely release mining specific cards alongside Volta and Vega so we should see a return to form soon.

If you're looking for a GPU to put into a gaming build setup alerts and keep checking NewEgg.

The videocards I use (Gigabyte GTX 1060 WF2OCs 6GB) are routinely in stock weekly at 259.99 at Newegg as well as 1070s.

 

[Twisted Kidney]

The US economy is storming back into the toilet and their dollar is dropping which makes ours more valuable, yet prices aren't moving down.

This situation is starting to get upsetting, it's like the 90s all over again.

Anything that can put some downward pressure on component prices for us Canadians would be welcome.

 

[collegeboy69us]

Only buy new folks, stick it to those a$$holes.

Seems you don't understand basic economics, how even how GPU's work. There have been thousands of people whining and crying for "Cheap" GPUs, when the bottom busts out again, you will see a flood of 1060s going for $150 or less. You really think all those people who want the cheapest/highest performing solution will ignore such a price. It's been minded on, so what? If you knew how us miners worked you'd be getting an undervolted card, well ventilated, and cared for far far better than joe blow. So you have to buy a $8 fan sooner than you otherwise might, small price to pay. Those that truly exit the market don't care about dumping the price because the card has already paid for itself many times over.

Personally, I can't wait till dirt cheap cards show up so I can expand my little farm more on the cheap.

And let me ask you: What exactly is asshole-ish about buying a product for an agreed upon price in an open market? Am I an asshole because I woke up extra early to get to the donut store to buy a few boxes of fresh donuts reducing the stock by a significant amount? You show up 5 minutes before they close and get stale donuts or nothing at all, who's really the asshole here?

I highly suggest you read up on the basics of supply and demand.

 

[Archaea]

The US economy is storming back into the toilet and their dollar is dropping

You need to get a new news source. Our economy is up. Real Estate is up, Markets are up, small business sector is way up, 401k is up. Job market is up.

What are you talking about?

 

[beyonddc]

And let me ask you: What exactly is asshole-ish about buying a product for an agreed upon price in an open market? Am I an asshole because I woke up extra early to get to the donut store to buy a few boxes of fresh donuts reducing the stock by a significant amount? You show up 5 minutes before they close and get stale donuts or nothing at all, who's really the asshole here?

I am not a miner, but well said.

A bunch of us here benefit from this regardless your role is a miner or a seller of an existing RX card. Miner pay us above MSRP price for a used RX card and we got our ROI and extra money instantly versus miners need to spend their time and money initially hoping to get a ROI at a later time.

 

[HockeyJon]

A few years ago when I was into litecoin mining (had about 25 gfx cards) I had a buddy that didn't grasp this. I was jumping out, and he was going in harder. I tried to explain the math and even sent him a spreadsheet that showed we were approaching the point where it was cheaper to just buy the coins versus trying to mine them (electricity costs, etc.). I gave up, for as smart as he is, he couldn't grasp it.

If you can predict the next GFX card crazed coin, you can make way more than you would mining. There's less risk in that as well, as the $5000 or so you may dump into a decent mining operation (before the craze prices) could net you a higher ROI if you just bought the coins outright and held them. In the end, you're doing the same thing (converting the coin to BTC or USD), it's just with one method you're not left holding a massive ton of video cards.

For those in this thread predicting that Ether still has legs or that there's no correction coming, you may be in for a shock. The same predictions were made with the coins that preceded this. It's all following the same cycle before the bubble burst.

- New coin gets traction among select mining groups, stays low for awhile.
- New coin starts to have the price go up in the market, others start to notice.
- More people start to jump in to take advantage of this coin, GFX cards start to see supply issues.
- The supply of GFX card mining rigs pushes the difficulty up faster and faster.
- Many start jumping out because difficulty starts to outpace coin valuation.
- It bursts, a little period of random coins being mined here or there before it starts all over again.

Ask yourself this - what is driving the value of Ethereum? What makes it so special over the 100's of other subcoins? Is it new or does it have features people really want? Or is it simply being driven by irrational market speculation? That will always correct in time. The best investors know when to take advantage of that in any market and most importantly, they recognize the signs on when to bail out.

Not saying the ride is over, just saying that blindly believing the hype can cause you to invest on emotion and not data.

Probably the best post I've seen in any thread on coin mining and valuation. Totally agree!

 

[Deleted member 93354]

Author of the linked article is clueless. No facts or real data, just a lot of "I heard from someone and I also looked around on ebay a little bit". Mining is going exactly nowhere. A lot of the doomsday articles about "Ethereum dropping half its value" are clickbaity because they're only looking at data from the tip of last month's bubble/peak to now, rather than an average of the last 3, 6 or 12 months. Its still more profitable now than it was before ETH suddenly and briefly got pumped to 400.

There is a long game here, the larger corporate operations and ruthless chinese superfarms instantly fill any void left by departing late-bandwagoners and gamerkids that saw a youtube video about "making munnee with your pee cee" during last month's bubble.

So how many $500 RX580 cards do you have up for sale? *jokes*

 

[Space_Ranger]

Wake me when these cards get back down below MSRP. Otherwise Eth Miners can go SCRATCH!

 

[ir0nw0lf]

Nay!

2 For one deal!

Double your pleasure, double your chances of a STD.

 

[RogueTadhg]

Double your pleasure, double your chances of a STD.

There's worse ways of getting an STD.

 

[next-Jin]

You need to get a new news source. Our economy is up. Real Estate is up, Markets are up, small business sector is way up, 401k is up. Job market is up.

What are you talking about?

Uh quite the contrary, it "appears" up. But the underlying fundamentals are scary as hell. 2008/2009 won't have shit on when this economy hits its next recession.

Markets are so high because there is a gigantic bond bubble, since no one can get returns there they move into the stock market which is insane. It's WAY over valued, the housing market is seeing the exact same trends as 2008/2009. Nothing was fixed and ARM loans continue to increase.

401k is tied to the markets. Look at almost every pension fund or I funded liabilities. Job market is up according to "one" metric, with actual ones that look at the entire picture such as people who have stopped looking it's far far worse. The vast majority of jobs are part time low skilled jobs.

We never recovered from 2008/2009 we would have had to quadruple the monthly job increases for years to account for population increases nevermknd getting back to where we were.

This is why a lot of people are investing in crypto because hey don't have faith in fiat currency and the financial system.

If the college debt bubble, credit card bubble, car loan bubble, or housing market crash again it's going to be a domino effect and the Fed can't do shit because interest rates are already basically 0, there is no where else to go.

That's why Janet Yellen is bumping intrest rates .25 slowly so they can go somewhere when it crashes again. They aren't stupid, they know it's brewing and dropping it to zero from 1-1.5 won't do anything. It dropped 5-7 in 2008 and they barely contained it.

EDIT: And when we do have that recession, you best believe crypto (especially Ethereum and Bitcoin) are going to see huge increases.

 

[Archaea]

Uh quite the contrary, it "appears" up. But the underlying fundamentals are scary as hell. 2008/2009 won't have shit on when this economy hits its next recession.

Markets are so high because there is a gigantic bond bubble, since no one can get returns there they move into the stock market which is insane. It's WAY over valued, the housing market is seeing the exact same trends as 2008/2009. Nothing was fixed and ARM loans continue to increase.

401k is tied to the markets. Look at almost every pension fund or I funded liabilities. Job market is up according to "one" metric, with actual ones that look at the entire picture such as people who have stopped looking it's far far worse. The vast majority of jobs are part time low skilled jobs.

We never recovered from 2008/2009 we would have had to quadruple the monthly job increases for years to account for population increases nevermknd getting back to where we were.

This is why a lot of people are investing in crypto because hey don't have faith in fiat currency and the financial system.

If the college debt bubble, credit card bubble, car loan bubble, or housing market crash again it's going to be a domino effect and the Fed can't do shit because interest rates are already basically 0, there is no where else to go.

That's why Janet Yellen is bumping intrest rates .25 slowly so they can go somewhere when it crashes again. They aren't stupid, they know it's brewing and dropping it to zero from 1-1.5 won't do anything. It dropped 5-7 in 2008 and they barely contained it.

I have had these same concerns, but we are a decade past 2008, and the market doesn't seem to care.

You missed a couple concerns by the way. The baby boomers are edging towards retirement (and they are a HUGE generation) as they move to retirement communities and nursing homes a lot of nice big established homes will hit the market, lowering home values and new development demand.

Robotics are going to replace 20-30% or more of blue collar workers in the next 30 years. Where will those laborers go?


Yet. Despite all those concerns we share (That have been present this whole time) the economy is currently up, NOT in the toilet.

 

[next-Jin]

I have had these same concerns, but we are a decade past 2008, and the market doesn't seem to care.

You missed a couple concerns by the way. The baby boomers are edging towards retirement (and they are a HUGE generation) as they move to retirement communities and nursing homes a lot of nice big established homes will hit the market, lowering home values and new development demand.

Robotics are going to replace 20-30% or more of blue collar workers in the next 30 years. Where will those laborers go?


Yet. Despite all those concerns we share (That have been present this whole time) the economy is currently up, NOT in the toilet.

True, but we are up for all the wrong reasons. The baby boomers retiring point right back to unfunded liabilities, pensions not being able to be paid (there is actually a bill where taxpayers would bail out pensions circulating ATM), etc.

Those boomers doesn't play a role in student debt, car loans, and the bond bubble either.

All I'm saying is that those who called the dot com and housing bubbles years before they happened is who I'm listening too and they are pretty terrified of the current situation.

These aren't gold bugs either, these are famous hedge fund managers, day traders, investors, etc. never mind the economists.

Before the 2008 collapse everyone in government and finance was saying everything was fine even when signs were blatantly obvious to quell fear. Janet Yellen just said a few weeks ago everything is fine and she doubts there will ever be another recession.

Screw that, she is not dumb or ignorant of these issues.

This is why I'm getting into crypto, because yes something like Ethereum could universally change the way our financial system works taking out all of these issues if implemented.

That type of adoption given the world money supply would mean gigiantic returns to anyone who invested early. Like retirement at 25 level returns.

Will it happen? I have no idea but the technology is there and it's sound. It's worth the risk to me to invest spare resources/money into something like that.

 

[nightanole]

Yea I doubt we see a huge sell off like Bitcoin back in 2012. The majority of the coins coming out are ASIC resistant. Even if Ethereum drops to 0 (it won't, it'll keep going up over time), becomes too difficult to mine, etc. there are many other coins to mine that is profitable like Zcash.

I mean hell siacoin is profitable, Ethereum Classic, etc.

The returns are not as high but if you're in it for the long game over the course of 2-3 years you can diversify your portfolio for far cheaper than buying the crypto outright.

I have a 6 GPU setup with 1060 6GBs and earn around 300 a month give or take dual mining ETH and SIA.

Nvidia and AMD will likely release mining specific cards alongside Volta and Vega so we should see a return to form soon.

If you're looking for a GPU to put into a gaming build setup alerts and keep checking NewEgg.

The videocards I use (Gigabyte GTX 1060 WF2OCs 6GB) are routinely in stock weekly at 259.99 at Newegg as well as 1070s.

What about towards the end of this year when we stop mining coins and switch to proof of stake, were the ones making the most money will be the ones holding the most eth(stake)?

I still dont see the point of the whole thing. Say you sink $5000 in a rig that will make you $5000 in 90-365 days based on coin price and difficulty. Now you have $5000(i hope you pay income tax on it) and "hardware" which may or may not be worth keeping. How are the people who sat on their litecoin rigs from 2014 before the difficulty got to the point where it wasn't profitable at 15 cents per kwatt? I guess you could be mining eth etc with R9 290's...

 

[Design1stcode2nd]

Well my wife got a $1,000 PC for $374 due to selling two RX470's so I'm fine with it. I'll wait until 1050Ti's or 1060's come down maybe on black Friday so I can build my HTPC. I'm in no need currently.

 

[next-Jin]

What about towards the end of this year when we stop mining coins and switch to proof of stake, were the ones making the most money will be the ones holding the most eth(stake)?

I still dont see the point of the whole thing. Say you sink $5000 in a rig that will make you $5000 in 90-365 days based on coin price and difficulty. Now you have $5000(i hope you pay income tax on it) and "hardware" which may or may not be worth keeping. How are the people who sat on their litecoin rigs from 2014 before the difficulty got to the point where it wasn't profitable at 15 cents per kwatt? I guess you could be mining eth etc with R9 290's...

www.whattomine.com

My electricity is .10 per KWh, so in my case there are several different coins I can mine and be profitable.

Note that that is with today's prices, it's risk/reward. If prices of other coins increase further or at least keeps up with difficulty you'd see passive income.

There will likely always be new coins that are profitable in some form or fashion.

I sincerely doubt we will ever see a time when mining won't be worthwhile for the next 5 years at least.

 

[Armenius]

True, but we are up for all the wrong reasons. The baby boomers retiring point right back to unfunded liabilities, pensions not being able to be paid (there is actually a bill where taxpayers would bail out pensions circulating ATM), etc.

Those boomers doesn't play a role in student debt, car loans, and the bond bubble either.

All I'm saying is that those who called the dot com and housing bubbles years before they happened is who I'm listening too and they are pretty terrified of the current situation.

These aren't gold bugs either, these are famous hedge fund managers, day traders, investors, etc. never mind the economists.

Before the 2008 collapse everyone in government and finance was saying everything was fine even when signs were blatantly obvious to quell fear. Janet Yellen just said a few weeks ago everything is fine and she doubts there will ever be another recession.

Screw that, she is not dumb or ignorant of these issues.

This is why I'm getting into crypto, because yes something like Ethereum could universally change the way our financial system works taking out all of these issues if implemented.

That type of adoption given the world money supply would mean gigiantic returns to anyone who invested early. Like retirement at 25 level returns.

Will it happen? I have no idea but the technology is there and it's sound. It's worth the risk to me to invest spare resources/money into something like that.

Looks like someone is wishing beyond hope that crypto takes over fiat.

 

[shad0w4life]

Ok, so cards running at 2/3 of their max power while still being hammered to shit 24/7 for weeks and months.

The cards I wouldn't buy would be Nvidia, they are used in ZEC mining a lot which is purely GPU speed and needs OCing, so my 1070s are all 2000+Mhz GPU speed range when I was trying ZEC, back to ETH for them though.

AMD(Ethereum only pretty much) people run around 1150Mhz GPU and then lower voltage to the 900-950mV range from the 1200 or so it is stock.