Ethereum Gold Rush Wanes As Price Plummets, Mining Difficulty Skyrockets

[kcarbotte]

It appears the recent gold rush surrounding Ethereum is coming to an end. The price of Ether dipped below $200, and the mining difficulty level jumped by nearly 20%. If you’re getting into mining now, it’s probably too late.

Ethereum Gold Rush Wanes As Price Plummets, Mining Difficulty Skyrockets : Read more

 

[JamesSneed]

Now hopefully when AMD releases Vega the miners wont buy them all and cause the prices to skyrocket.

 

[AgentLozen]

This sucks if you've heavily invested in a mining rig but this is good news for gamers. I couldn't imagine paying $500+ for a GeForce Gtx 1070. Like Jamessneed was saying, this should make Vega launch (and stay) at a reasonable price.

 

[cats_Paw]

When the craze is shouted everywhere for people to jump in is a few days before the thing crashes.
What an interesting coincidence...
And by the way, if that is being manipulated, stolen, hacked, etc; good luck trying to get your money back.

 

[Slumy__57]

Fiiiiiiinally. Maybe now we'll see GPU prices back to normal, they were really starting to get into the sweet spot, I saw 1070s going for $330ish, and 1080s going for $380ish, and I was really hoping to pick up a 1080 sometime soon.

I can't help but wonder if the craze is going to have more of a lasting impact though. I hope we don't see prices settle back into that just-above-msrp zone again.

 

[InvalidError]

Now hopefully when AMD releases Vega the miners wont buy them all and cause the prices to skyrocket.

When Vega launches, it'll be too expensive to consider for mining anyway. What made the 470/480/570/580 so popular for Ethereum is 8GB VRAM for $200-250. 8GB Vega will likely be closer to $500 as it is aimed at the GTX1080.

 

[Aspiring techie]

Yay! We can buy GPUs again!

 

[gggplaya]

Woohoo GPU's won't be overpriced anymore.

 

[DSzymborski]

Thank goodness, I was at the point where I wouldn't even answer questions about a mining rig. No way did I want to take part in people lured by free, easy money that was causing problems for people that just wanted to build a nice, normal, gaming PC.

 

[Pompompaihn]

As someone who just cleared $425 on a 6 month old RX480, all I can say is man I had good timing!

 

[dstarr3]

Didn't take long for that bubble to burst. It's like the stock market, once you hear about something big, it's too late.

 

[DSzymborski]

Didn't take long for that bubble to burst. It's like the stock market, once you hear about something big, it's too late.

Pretty much. I think the questions about mining rigs have even slowed down considerably from two weeks ago. As I told many people wanting help building rigs "if you're asking these questions, you're already too late." You can only surf at the front edge of a wave.

 

[bloodroses]

This is music to my ears.

 

[lakimens]

If ETH(Ethereum)'s price drops they will go to ETC(Ethereum Classic), ZCash, Dash, and many other GPU coins. GPU buying should stop at this point, because ETH needs to grow to be as profitable on this new difficulty. Take a look at the ethereum project, it's pretty nice, I think it will grow again at some point.

 

[TJ Hooker]

As someone who just cleared $425 on a 6 month old RX480, all I can say is man I had good timing!

Lol, yeah I just sold an RX 480 8GB last night for 400 CAD (bought it open box for 260 CAD back in Feb). Dabbled in mining for a bit, but was having a hard time finding settings stable for mining. Combine that with the fact my city has been experiencing a heat wave recently (don't need my PC dumping heat into my apartment 24/7), I decided to just get rid of it a week ago. Guess I managed to sell it just in time.

 

[Spock_rhp]

The longer term outlook is that after Etherium switches to the PoS model, most miners will switch to something else. At that point, Etherium becomes a case of limited or no supply growth. All it takes at that point is for demand to increase [possibly due to real use for transactions away from government currency and consequent evasion of government taxes] and mining will, once again, become slightly profitable for the lowest cost producers [those who got in very early -- like the founders].

Food for thought.

 

[edhem]

Now hopefully when AMD releases Vega the miners wont buy them all and cause the prices to skyrocket.

On the other hand if they do, there will be a huge dump of used high end cards pretty soon at low prices on Craigslist.

 

[d_kuhn]

If manufacturers ramped up production expecting the gravy train to roll on... we can expect to see not only near-new rigs for sale at bargain prices, but new card prices tanking.

 

[Ncogneto]

Laughing out loud at all the obviously young an naive posting things they know very little about. The GPU shortage won't sort itself out overnight, most likely 3 months+. Cards don't magically re-appear due to an Eth price drop, not when stock has been depleted.

Furthermore, Eth is just one of several Bitcoin possibilities, now the same thing will happen when the next one gets hot. If you want supply to even out, then you want a stable market.

 

[InvalidError]

Furthermore, Eth is just one of several Bitcoin possibilities, now the same thing will happen when the next one gets hot. If you want supply to even out, then you want a stable market.

Since there will be as many alt-coins as there are people promoting them, I doubt the alt-coin market will ever truly settle. I'm more along the lines of thinking that the market will eventually implode due to lack of focus (choice paralysis due to having too many options) and volatility.

Create a new alt-coin, mine the first million blocks yourself to "seed" the block chain at a low compute cost, launch the currency, let early adopters have their gold rush, cash in your early blocks when you achieve recognition and value goes up, rinse and repeat. Eventually, the alt-coin market will become too fragmented to be effective.

 

[dark_lord69]

I knew it wouldn't be long...
A co-worker asked me about mining and if it was worth it. I said, basically it's a fools errand as I had just read an article saying that by the time you get your hardware you may never be able to pay it off due to both decreasing value and increasing difficulty.

 

[cryoburner]

If ETH(Ethereum)'s price drops they will go to ETC(Ethereum Classic), ZCash, Dash, and many other GPU coins. GPU buying should stop at this point, because ETH needs to grow to be as profitable on this new difficulty. Take a look at the ethereum project, it's pretty nice, I think it will grow again at some point.

Ethereum's dropping price could scare investors away from buying other new cryptocurrencies for a while though, so most of their prices likely won't skyrocket like Ethereum's did. Not every cryptocurrency is going to be something that will see widespread use, and it will be a gamble whether one currency or another will ever be significantly profitable.

 

[DSzymborski]

Furthermore, Eth is just one of several Bitcoin possibilities, now the same thing will happen when the next one gets hot. If you want supply to even out, then you want a stable market.

Since there will be as many alt-coins as there are people promoting them, I doubt the alt-coin market will ever truly settle. I'm more along the lines of thinking that the market will eventually implode due to lack of focus (choice paralysis due to having too many options) and volatility.

Create a new alt-coin, mine the first million blocks yourself to "seed" the block chain at a low compute cost, launch the currency, let early adopters have their gold rush, cash in your early blocks when you achieve recognition and value goes up, rinse and repeat. Eventually, the alt-coin market will become too fragmented to be effective.

Yeah, you end up with currency Balkanization. The belief that something has value is crucial for any fiat currency and flooding the markets with them will just kill off most of them in the long run, especially the ones that don't become an acceptable exchange medium themselves.

 

[velocityg4]

Interesting I didn't know difficulty increased as network power increased. I just thought the number of available coins decreased as they got mined. So, the likelihood of finding one simply decreased.

I'm just going to watch eBay. My guess is there will be a panic sale of barely used cards soon. Hopefully, I can pick up a used GTX 1070 or dual Rx 580 on the cheap. Wait for prices to rebound some for the Christmas season and sell my GTX 970.

 

[Volkerkind]

Except at the time of writing this comment we are now at $216.16 which leads me to believe that you have no idea how this market works. It is extremely volatile, and there is no indication of when it will find a baseline to settle on. This could go on for months.
In regards to GPUs, don't count your eggs before they've hatched. Ether is #2, but there are also numerous other coins coming. This is only the beginning.