<story><title>Nothing Is Cheaper Than Proof of Work (2015)</title><url>http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest?q=1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mquander</author><text>How can this be? GPU manufacturers are unhappy that demand for their GPUs is skyrocketing, so they are trying to make GPUs that are less in demand? That makes zero sense to me.&lt;p&gt;Why would a GPU manufacturer prefer that an end user use their GPU for games rather than cryptocurrency mining?</text></item><item><author>derefr</author><text>You know, the problem I have with Proof of Work isn&amp;#x27;t that it costs in electricity—it&amp;#x27;s that the Malthusian race-to-the-bottom of mining efficiency has completely destroyed the computer hardware market (for regular consumers.) It&amp;#x27;s to the point that GPU manufacturers are trying to make classes of cards that &lt;i&gt;only&lt;/i&gt; work with games, so that consumers will have something to buy that&amp;#x27;s actually in stock.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ben-schaaf</author><text>The GPU manufacturers aren&amp;#x27;t actually making that much more money AFAIK. They apparently have a lot of contracts with suppliers that have fixed pricing. Sure, demand is increasing, and the manufacturers are selling pretty much every new card they make, but until they increase production they aren&amp;#x27;t making that much more money. Increasing production takes a fair amount of time and money, and with the volatility of the cryptocurrency market it seems like a risky investment.&lt;p&gt;You can see the effects of this: Nvidia is selling their GPUs at close to MSRP on their website with a set limit on the amount you can buy per customer. If they&amp;#x27;re making bank on cryptocurrency mining why would they hurt their sales by doing that? To me that move only makes sense if Nvidia wouldn&amp;#x27;t be making a lot of money otherwise and highly valued their current gaming customers.</text></comment>
<story><title>Nothing Is Cheaper Than Proof of Work (2015)</title><url>http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest?q=1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mquander</author><text>How can this be? GPU manufacturers are unhappy that demand for their GPUs is skyrocketing, so they are trying to make GPUs that are less in demand? That makes zero sense to me.&lt;p&gt;Why would a GPU manufacturer prefer that an end user use their GPU for games rather than cryptocurrency mining?</text></item><item><author>derefr</author><text>You know, the problem I have with Proof of Work isn&amp;#x27;t that it costs in electricity—it&amp;#x27;s that the Malthusian race-to-the-bottom of mining efficiency has completely destroyed the computer hardware market (for regular consumers.) It&amp;#x27;s to the point that GPU manufacturers are trying to make classes of cards that &lt;i&gt;only&lt;/i&gt; work with games, so that consumers will have something to buy that&amp;#x27;s actually in stock.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dsacco</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; Why would a GPU manufacturer prefer that an end user use their GPU for games rather than cryptocurrency mining?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;They don’t prefer anything in particular, they’d just like to keep both markets. They can bifurcate the market and earn more from each demographic rather than let one dominate the other by inefficiently adapting gaming cards to homelab supercomputing.&lt;p&gt;In one scenario, they let things continue and the mining market reduces supply for the gaming market, which makes their overall market share more brittle. In the other scenario, they increase the volume of cards purchased by gamers, securing that market, while selling more optimized, higher cost mining cards to miners. This has the added benefit of product diversity.</text></comment>