After transition of the Ethereum blockchain to the Proof-of-Stake algorithm, which took place as part of The Merge event, the mining of this cryptocurrency on video cards has become impossible. And a day after the event, the profitability of mining other altcoins dropped catastrophically – mining stopped generating revenue almost completely.
Image source: Zhejiang
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As a result of The Merge, miners who were busy mining Ethereum released a huge amount of video cards. A few days ago, the Ethereum network hashrate was 900 Thesh / s, which equates to 9.5 million RTX 3080 grade video cards or 20 million mid-range video cards. Now, miners must look for other uses for these accelerators.
Many miners were hoping that after Ethereum’s transition to the Proof-of-Stake algorithm, they would be able to transfer their mining power to other altcoins that continue to run on the Proof-of-Work algorithm. For example, for cryptocurrencies like Ravencoin, ERGO, Ethereum Classic, etc. However, this calculation does not seem to work. The large-scale transfer of computing power has led to a sharp increase in hash rate and a decrease in profitability when mining altcoins. As a result, the compensation received by the miners has ceased to pay the cost of electricity as well.
Portal Tom’s Hardware conducted a profitability analysis of mining on various graphics accelerator models using data from NiceHash and WhatToMine. The conclusions for the miners were disappointing. With the cost of electricity at the rate of 10 cents per 1 kWh, as well as current prices for accelerators, with the help of mining it will not be possible to either earn or recover the purchased accelerator.
Among the 21 models of AMD Radeon RX 6000 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 graphics cards, only five of them can theoretically still make a profit. For example, the GeForce RTX 3090, Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT, which were considered the most profitable for mining before The Merge, now max out a profit of $ 0.06 per day (excluding electricity costs. ). In this case, it will take more than 20 years to cover the cost of, for example, the Radeon RX 6800. Below is a table with the current prices of the video cards (according to eBay) and their daily profitability at the moment. In most cases, it is in the red.
Image Source: Tom Hardware
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It is worth adding that the hashrate of many altcoins has not yet stabilized and mining revenues will continue to decline further, which will most likely make mining on any video card unprofitable except in situations where the miner has the opportunity. to use electricity for free. And this means that in the near future there will be an influx of video cards into the secondary market after mining at bargain prices. Such proposals should be treated with caution.
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