News Intel Announces Bitcoin Mining Initiative, Bonanza Mine Chips Ship This Year

Feb 11, 2022
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Hardware enthusiasts don't have conceptual thinking to recognize the next revolution in tech. Every single billion dollar corporation is investing it because if they don't innovate, they'll die. Look at how Facebook is struggling against ByteDance. They had to push into Metaverse to survive.
 
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husker

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If you have a secret key to get all the answers to tests in school, you might get away with it. But it doesn't scale well: If everyone has the key it will all fall apart. Crypto also cannot scale in an unlimited way. One cannot assume that pricing and markets won't adjust to a new influx of wealth created out of whole cloth. Will a cryptocurrency get mined out to the point it cannot be mined profitably? If no then "hurray, we all have a money tree in our yard". If yes, new currencies are created in an endless cycle and "hurray, we all have a money tree in our yard". That won't end well and probably will lead to a global economy and bank system crash like we have never seen.
 
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TJ Hooker

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Intel's talk of addressing crypto mining power draw through efficient miners is so disingenuous. If you develop a miner that's more efficient (and therefore more profitable), that just means miners will buy more of them. Eventually, difficulty will increase point where profitability is roughly what it was previously. All that you've done is consumed a bunch of resources to produce the new ASIC miners, and resulted in a bunch of old ASIC miners becoming e-waste.
 

Blitz Hacker

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Intel's talk of addressing crypto mining power draw through efficient miners is so disingenuous. If you develop a miner that's more efficient (and therefore more profitable), that just means miners will buy more of them. Eventually, difficulty will increase point where profitability is roughly what it was previously. All that you've done is consumed a bunch of resources to produce the new ASIC miners, and resulted in a bunch of old ASIC miners becoming e-waste.
It's for a more sustainable blockchain, which not only nets them a bunch of money, but it also reduces the energy load on the grid, both are wins in intel's case. Old asic's will run until/if the cost of energy exceeds the revenue they can produce. Even 10 cents usd a day, is ten cents (over power costs), same argument could be made for electric cars aswell.. well all the gasoline ones will become waste, yes but progress must be had :)
 

Blitz Hacker

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If you have a secret key to get all the answers to tests in school, you might get away with it. But it doesn't scale well: If everyone has the key it will all fall apart. Crypto also cannot scale in an unlimited way. One cannot assume that pricing and markets won't adjust to a new influx of wealth created out of whole cloth. Will a cryptocurrency get mined out to the point it cannot be mined profitably? If no then "hurray, we all have a money tree in our yard". If yes, new currencies are created in an endless cycle and "hurray, we all have a money tree in our yard". That won't end well and probably will lead to a global economy and bank system crash like we have never seen.
Obviously you don't understand blockchains. You can't mine more coins than is given at a rated time. If you increase the hashrate on a network, the network difficulty spikes to compensate for it. Meaning the same amount of crypto is earned over time no matter what the hashrate on the network is, with more people it's distributed more is all and the network becomes more secure. The more decentralized the network is, the more secure it is (and less likely anyone can get a solo 51% of the hashrate on a network to 'change the governance rules) As time goes on and future halvings (the rewards given out are halved) the amount of crypto mined decreases (by half) and presumably the value of each coin increases, as supply/demand/scarcity. Will it get to a point of where it's not profitable? Yes probably. That's why the push for more efficient ways of doing it are an ever increasing need. The only thing that can 'crash' in crypto is the traded value of it, and over time crypto valuates really really well. As more gets 'lost' 'forgotten' or just being held by everyone, the value of a coin will almost always go up. It's why people are using crypto as a store of value. As time goes on the value increases. Where as with fiat and this BBRRRRRR money printing going on, the value of saved money is going down.
 

Matt_ogu812

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Does this mean that the rumors of Bitcoin mining death is all BS?
Surely Intel would not be making this investment if Bitcoin mining doesn't have a future, like MSM has been reporting.
 

TJ Hooker

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It's for a more sustainable blockchain, which not only nets them a bunch of money, but it also reduces the energy load on the grid, both are wins in intel's case. Old asic's will run until/if the cost of energy exceeds the revenue they can produce. Even 10 cents usd a day, is ten cents (over power costs), same argument could be made for electric cars aswell.. well all the gasoline ones will become waste, yes but progress must be had :)
I think you missed the point. Making miners more efficient just means people will run more miners. In the end, there is no reduction in power draw.

How would load on the grid decrease by adding more miners? Consider that hashing efficiency has improved by orders of magnitude since bitcoin mining started, but network power draw just keeps increasing.
 
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TJ Hooker

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Does this mean that the rumors of Bitcoin mining death is all BS?
Surely Intel would not be making this investment if Bitcoin mining doesn't have a future, like MSM has been reporting.
Where have you seen people saying that? Or are you confusion bitcoin mining with ethereum mining? Ethereum mining will eventually die when it moves from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake (which has been coming 'soon' for like 3 years). This does not apply to bitcoin though.
 
Old asic's will run until/if the cost of energy exceeds the revenue they can produce. Even 10 cents usd a day, is ten cents (over power costs), same argument could be made for electric cars aswell.. well all the gasoline ones will become waste, yes but progress must be had :)

In case of electric cars people in cities will instantly benefit from noticeably clearer air and less noise. Also more stable electricity grid if V2G will become widespread. Mining in nutshell doesn't have any usable benefit for society. Only larger load on electric grid accompanied with market and financial system disruption.
 

jp7189

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If Intel has unused fab capacity they want to use for this..meh whatever, but I really hope they don't use up TSMC 5nm capacity and lockout other more useful chips for this crap.
 

Matt_ogu812

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Where have you seen people saying that? Or are you confusion bitcoin mining with ethereum mining? Ethereum mining will eventually die when it moves from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake (which has been coming 'soon' for like 3 years). This does not apply to bitcoin though.

Thinking I read it on zerohedge but I don't make notes of everything I read just in case someone gives me a 'pop-quiz' as to where I read it.
 

husker

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Obviously you don't understand blockchains. You can't mine more coins than is given at a rated time. If you increase the hashrate on a network, the network difficulty spikes to compensate for it. Meaning the same amount of crypto is earned over time no matter what the hashrate on the network is, with more people it's distributed more is all and the network becomes more secure. The more decentralized the network is, the more secure it is (and less likely anyone can get a solo 51% of the hashrate on a network to 'change the governance rules) As time goes on and future halvings (the rewards given out are halved) the amount of crypto mined decreases (by half) and presumably the value of each coin increases, as supply/demand/scarcity. Will it get to a point of where it's not profitable? Yes probably. That's why the push for more efficient ways of doing it are an ever increasing need. The only thing that can 'crash' in crypto is the traded value of it, and over time crypto valuates really really well. As more gets 'lost' 'forgotten' or just being held by everyone, the value of a coin will almost always go up. It's why people are using crypto as a store of value. As time goes on the value increases. Where as with fiat and this BBRRRRRR money printing going on, the value of saved money is going down.
As far as the technology is concerned, I have no doubt you are correct. But my concerns are about economic pressures and the psychology of the masses when investing. Blockchains are great, but the rarity of an item alone does not make it valuable - it must be coupled with a strong demand. Right now crypto has strong demand, but what guarantees that will last? A Circuit City stock certificate is pretty rare to own right now, what's that worth? With traditional stocks at least there is something anchored in the real world that acts as a sort of collateral for that value, I guess that is what they call valuation. Crypto, despite all the resources being poured into it right now, still has too much in common with a fad and not enough in common with anything tangible other than perceived value. Many may not perceive my stake in British Pounds or American Dollars to be worth anything - fair enough. But those things are backed by a nations, with governments, and industry, and populations, and militaries, and so on.
 
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