Cryptocurrencies and the economy

I realize that there's already a thread about bitcoin, but I wanted to discuss the whole crypto thing on a more meta level, including how they affect the economy more generally.

It does seem weird to me, how volatile they are. I admit, I don't really understand why people think they have value. Bitcoin is over $60,000 now. Ethereum over $2,000. Good luck if want to buy a graphics card for your computer, because crypto enthusiasts are buying every last one they can. Apparently at current prices, it will pay for itself within a fairly short time. Is it sustainable? How much energy does it all consume, anyway?

The popularity of cryptocurrency mining graphics cards may have surprised even Nvidia

Quote:

Nvidia expects its CMP lineup will net $150m in its first three months, three times more than initially expected. In the same breath as announcing a bleak outlook for GPU shortages this year, Nvidia has revealed that its CMP (Cryptocurrency Mining Processors) lineup is set to make more money than it had first expected. Launched last month, Nvidia had initially expected a return of $50 million from its CMP lineup. In a short period of time, however, it has scaled that up three times, to $150 million for these cards' first three months. Nvidia's CMP lineup is made up of four cards that share some similarities with existing and past GeForce generations from Nvidia. However, they are not one and the same. While they may share some silicon, the CMP cards are said to be built with GPUs unable to deliver what's required for Nvidia's GeForce lineup. They also do not feature any outputs and probably cost a lot more. One major cryptocurrency outfit recently ordered $30 million in CMP GPUs, which accounts for a rather large chunk of Nvidia's new CMP revenue alone. It appears as though scale takes precedent over savings here—the order value could easily see Ampere and Turing chips going for thousands of dollars. It appears as though some of the larger mining operations are desperate for higher hash rates while cryptocurrency value is up, and are willing to pay extra for it.

If you stop and think about it, that's really an incredible amount of real resources being diverted to this. The $150 million is just a drop in the bucket I'm sure.

via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/3a8mcmu