News Cryptominers Target AMD Ryzen CPUs for Their Big L3 Caches

Feb 10, 2021
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Great! Just Great! This is all we need! When will this free money scheme end? I really feel like it's just some ones big give away. You use your machine, electric and time to crunch some numbers and they give you money. Do they do something with the work you did to make money for themselves?
 
Beyond product availability, there will be long term social consequences to computers being used for wealth accumulation instead of traditional purposes like learning, creativity, and fun.
The first few decades of computing they where used exclusively by governments by scientists and by businesses to make money.
All of the stock market is being done by computers since forever as well.
The social consequences, if any, are already set deeply in society.
 
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DerKeyser

Prominent
Oct 15, 2021
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Why on earth isn’t cryptocurrency just banned altogether? It would save our planet a HUGE amount of ressources - like the combined power/ressource usage of one of the biggest US states.
It would also allow the world to work again in terms of chip shortages and scalper price gouging.
Finally - but not least - criminals will have a hard time doing money laundering/transfers, and it might even hopefully rupture this HUGE financial bouble we have with free money everywhere and debt being a moneymaker….
 

PapaCrazy

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Dec 28, 2011
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The first few decades of computing they where used exclusively by governments by scientists and by businesses to make money.
All of the stock market is being done by computers since forever as well.
The social consequences, if any, are already set deeply in society.

It may have started that way, but later development of the personal computer led to social advances in communication, productivity, education, and art. Crypto is reversing those democratizing trends.
 

JamesJones44

Reputable
Jan 22, 2021
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Why on earth isn’t cryptocurrency just banned altogether? It would save our planet a HUGE amount of ressources - like the combined power/ressource usage of one of the biggest US states.
It would also allow the world to work again in terms of chip shortages and scalper price gouging.
Finally - but not least - criminals will have a hard time doing money laundering/transfers, and it might even hopefully rupture this HUGE financial bouble we have with free money everywhere and debt being a moneymaker….

I can't wait till we have massive buy now pay later firms that need to be bailed out with trillions of printed money. What could possibly go wrong when you have lousy goose lending requirements? But heck, maybe we can use crypto this time around to prop them up.
 
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ddcservices

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Oct 12, 2017
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Why on earth isn’t cryptocurrency just banned altogether? It would save our planet a HUGE amount of ressources - like the combined power/ressource usage of one of the biggest US states.
It would also allow the world to work again in terms of chip shortages and scalper price gouging.
Finally - but not least - criminals will have a hard time doing money laundering/transfers, and it might even hopefully rupture this HUGE financial bouble we have with free money everywhere and debt being a moneymaker….

Why not ban the billionaires that buy up more homes than they can live in? Why not ban this or that, just because you don't like it? Honestly, the problem is that you have the big professional miners that buy up all the resources, leaving your typical consumer without products. The blame is entirely on the distributors that sell to miners, rather than to the actual retailers that are supposed to be getting shipments of video cards. CPUs in general are not going to be all that cost effective for mining, because you still need motherboard, RAM, the better CPUs don't have video built in, so you need a video card, and a power supply. A USB flash drive might be enough to boot an OS to mine with, so storage might not be needed, but that's still a LOT of hardware for a single-CPU system to mine with, and the best CPUs they talk about using will be 12+ core processors, so $400+ at a minimum for the CPU. That's a LOT of money for each system for mining as an investment that may or may not pull a profit after the year+ it would take to break even.
 
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tazmo8448

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Dec 23, 2011
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Knew this crypto mess would open a can of worms. People love to create problems so they can create ways to solve them. Hope it all caves in.
 

Co BIY

Splendid
I believe this is a solution more than a problem. It clearly shows what I believe to be the greatest threat to the crypto currency craze.

While Crypto and Blockchain have some uses they cannot have intrinsic value. There are almost no barriers to entry and no reason to value one crypto over another.
 

vern72

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I bought five Ryzens in the past 15-months (one of them got trashed when I tried to remove the cooling fan so I had to buy another one) so I'm done buying any for a while.
 
Eh, it's nothing to be worried about. How many CPUs can you stack on a single motherboard? The cost of a decent motherboard with quality VRM, a high-end CPU and a solid cooler vs. a single GPU isn't worth it. Besides it's a huge waste of space. This will fall flat like CHIA coin.
Yeah, it's probably not nearly as much of a concern. You wouldn't necessarily need a "decent motherboard" or a "solid cooler", and some motherboards can boot without graphics hardware installed, but even with minimal components, that's a lot of additional hardware to support each CPU. So you are not as likely to see large-scale mining operations buying up tons of CPUs for this purpose.

And the article's suggestion that it would be possible to mine this on a pair of server processors totaling around $14,000 to get just 7 times the mining performance of a $520 processor also seems a bit nonsensical.
 
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Co BIY

Splendid
Beyond product availability, there will be long term social consequences to computers being used for wealth accumulation instead of traditional purposes like learning, creativity, and fun.

It's really just "Hype" accumulation. No wealth has actually been created.

But you are right that resources are wasted on foolishness.

Who has been able to "cash" out? What is the total value of goods and services purchased with Crypto? Very few people are trading anything that most would consider property for any cryptocurrency.
 
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spongiemaster

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Who has been able to "cash" out? What is the total value of goods and services purchased with Crypto? Very few people are trading anything that most would consider property for any cryptocurrency.
Any miner can cash out whenever they feel like it. Do you have any idea how crypto mining works? Why would you bother buying goods or services with crypto, when you can cash out whenever you feel like it?
 
Aug 15, 2021
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Eh, it's nothing to be worried about. How many CPUs can you stack on a single motherboard? The cost of a decent motherboard with quality VRM, a high-end CPU and a solid cooler vs. a single GPU isn't worth it. Besides it's a huge waste of space. This will fall flat like CHIA coin.

Chia coin fell flat on its face for a different reason. This was to be expected. Also, a 3900X + 150$ mobo + 8GB RAM stick + 550W PSU + 128GB SSD = $800, the price of a 3070, with a hash limiter. Trust me, it won't fall flat like Chia. It will do just fine
 

Co BIY

Splendid
Any miner can cash out whenever they feel like it. Do you have any idea how crypto mining works? Why would you bother buying goods or services with crypto, when you can cash out whenever you feel like it?

Yes but how many miners are cashing out ? and to what ?

How much is the crypto being used as a currency?

I would want the ability to buy things in Crypto because it's supposed to be a currency.

"Mining" as I understand it was originally designed to be an incentive to provide the processing power needed to process transactions on the blockchain. It seems to me that it is being used more as a interest generator, a way to make it sound fun and active.

"Proof of stake" I have no clue about at all but it does seem to indicate that "mining" was probably unnecessary all along.

I want no restrictions on crypto and think governments should stay out of it. I believe it should fail based on it's own inherent valuelessness rather than some likely misguided and heavy handed government action.

I am open to the possibility that the various cryptos have a lot going on in China where the inflation, government policy, corruption and lack of transparency might make an alternative money much more practical. (but that is literally "Chinatown" as Jack Nicholson would say)
 
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