The future of cryptocurrency mining with Arm

[gustavopi]

"This is a game changing" I've read... is it? In football we learn there is no played game already before get into the field. I have taken a look at the crypto mining market and there is already real life test with M1 Macs. They are not making money yet, but we also know is too early for a conclusion. Also, they don't share much...

In fact, the home-made CPU/GPU mining is uncertain right know, these machines demands a lot of power and support. But this is precisely the a point that make me curious. The M1 suppose to be much more efficient that old Intel model. A Mac mini demands only 150W to operate, so what if we can better customize the relationship hardware-software, obtain more H/s with this 150W, this can be a game change! Instead of focusing in powerful muscle PC, focus on low cost and low support.

But I also had difficulties in gathering some reliable data, make comparisons etc.. Mostly are only speculation. What do you think about? Have some info to share?

 

[ArPe]

Just stop it bruh

Melting your machine for internet magic tokens is pointless if some dictatorship somewhere can simple put up some big mining operation and take control of all the hash power and win nearly all the rewards for themselves. Just like they did already.

That day when you can play these schemes at home is gone now. The moment you try it these big gangs grab control. They just reprogram an ASIC and it belongs to them.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Haven't GPUs been the standard for crypto farming for awhile now?

I remember doing Folding@Home and World Community Grid for ... years... and years... then when they started doing GPU crunching - it only took me a few months to outdo what took me years with my CPU. lol.

I didn't think that people were farming on CPUs, at least for awhile now?

 

[flopticalcube]

Depends on the coin. RTX 3070/3080's are so good at mining Ethereum that laptops are being employed to mine because stock of the GPU itself is non-existent.

ASICs are the bee's knees for Bitcoin.

I think the biggest obstacle is what you pay for power.

 

[mi7chy]

Nobody mines with CPU nor integrated GPU. It's done with discrete GPU.

 

[dmccloud]

The miners just switched back to dGPUs when the RTX 3xxx cards were released. It had been heavily dGPU based in 2017-early 2019, but it actually switched back to CPU based for a while, in part because many miners found themselves spending more on electricity than they earned from mining for bitcoin. That's why the dGPU market suddenly went from "good luck finding one" to "everybody gets a GPU!". Sadly, we're back to good luck mode now.

 

[gustavopi]

Melting your machine for internet magic tokens is pointless if some dictatorship somewhere can simple put up some big mining operation and take control of all the hash power and win nearly all the rewards for themselves. Just like they did already.

They have their guns, we have ours, there is still people with farms at home.

I think the biggest obstacle is what you pay for power.

Exactly. A dedicated miner machine by the same price as a Mac mini will eat 1500W against 150W - is it really ten times faster? Is there a way to make the mini more faster (as is still new on the market)?

This guy did some experiment with a M1 Mac, but I din't find further details...
https://iphonewired.com/common-problems/56275/

 

[leman]

Exactly. A dedicated miner machine by the same price as a Mac mini will eat 1500W against 150W - is it really ten times faster? Is there a way to make the mini more faster (as is still new on the market)?

Can't commend on mining (and frankly, I don't care — you won't be making any money this way as a person, IMO you are better of just buying crypto directly), but M1 Mini draws 30 wats — tops. The GPU is 10 watts for ~2 TFLOPS.

 

[ArPe]

They have their guns, we have ours, there is still people with farms at home.

You have no guns. They took over everything and they make the chips that you use. They are even bribing their way around into other countries to take over electricity grids. They are causing big black outs in Iran now.

 

[ArPe]

Depends on the coin. RTX 3070/3080's are so good at mining Ethereum that laptops are being employed to mine because stock of the GPU itself is non-existent

You can’t compete against China using ASICS. They take over everything by central command. These laptop photos you saw online are a stunt to make people accept stupidly inflated GPU prices. You see how it works. They take over the mining with ASIC, then they throttle the GPU supply, then they pressure you to pay inflated prices for a GPU. Incredible scam and criminal with all the money going to the dictatorship. You wanna fund this?

 

[mi7chy]

This guy did some experiment with a M1 Mac, but I din't find further details...
https://iphonewired.com/common-problems/56275/

800 H/s for Monero on the M1 vs up to 22,000 H/s on consumer AMD 5950x CPU so about 27x faster and goes up from there with Threadripper and Epyc CPUs.

https://monerobenchmarks.info/amd5950X.php

 

[Dozer_Zaibatsu]

I will be so glad when this Dunning-Krugerrand bubble pops and we can move on from this nonsense.

 

[Wando64]

I think that blockchains and crypto currencies should be made illegal.

 

[itickings]

I think that blockchains and crypto currencies should be made illegal.

Blockchains have plenty of good and promising use cases. Why in the world should blockchains be made illegal?

Are they making it too difficult for you to rewrite history, hide transactions, or something?

 

[Wando64]

Blockchains have plenty of good and promising use cases. Why in the world should blockchains be made illegal?

Are they making it too difficult for you to rewrite history, hide transactions, or something?

They are the most inefficient way of achieving a goal.
I understand the theoretical benefits for some niche use cases, but in the real world intermediaries add value, and most importantly, energy efficiency matters a lot.

 

[Aggedor]

I think that blockchains and crypto currencies should be made illegal.

Crytocurrencies are an environmental disaster. I was reading calculations of the per-transaction cost. It would be the same if you went to buy your morning coffee by buying a brand new iPhone, smashing it with a hammer, then burning the shattered remains on half a tonne of coal. For a single transaction.

 

[Toutou]

Crytocurrencies are an environmental disaster. I was reading calculations of the per-transaction cost. It would be the same if you went to buy your morning coffee by buying a brand new iPhone, smashing it with a hammer, then burning the shattered remains on half a tonne of coal. For a single transaction.

Bitcoin's current transaction fee is around $11. That transaction fee, along with the block reward, are the only money the miners get from your transaction, which means that the energy used to process your transaction has to cost them LESS than that. Worst case scenario: it's $11, or even $20 worth of coal energy in China. Given that coal costs around $85 per ton in China and that power plants and the grid don't run for free, I'd say that even worst-case scenario the transaction costs significantly less than half a ton of coal plus an iPhone.

 

[Wando64]

along with the block reward,

Precisely.
The cost of transactions is largely irrelevant. If Cryptocurrencies were worthless, nobody would be in the mining business.

Bitcoin consumes 'more electricity than Argentina'

The rising value of Bitcoin leads to ever-higher energy consumption, researchers say.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Aggedor]

Bitcoin's current transaction fee is around $11. That transaction fee, along with the block reward, are the only money the miners get from your transaction, which means that the energy used to process your transaction has to cost them LESS than that. Worst case scenario: it's $11, or even $20 worth of coal energy in China. Given that coal costs around $85 per ton in China and that power plants and the grid don't run for free, I'd say that even worst-case scenario the transaction costs significantly less than half a ton of coal plus an iPhone.

It's not the monetary value, it's the energy consumption. A single bitcoin transaction consumes 641.26 kWh of electricity, generates 304.6 kg of CO2, and creates 94.91 grams of electronic waste. One bitcoin transaction has the waste and consumption equivalence of 675,000 Visa transactions.

Either cryptocurrency dies, or the planet dies.

 

[Mr Screech]

"This is a game changing" I've read... is it? In football we learn there is no played game already before get into the field. I have taken a look at the crypto mining market and there is already real life test with M1 Macs. They are not making money yet, but we also know is too early for a conclusion. Also, they don't share much...

In fact, the home-made CPU/GPU mining is uncertain right know, these machines demands a lot of power and support. But this is precisely the a point that make me curious. The M1 suppose to be much more efficient that old Intel model. A Mac mini demands only 150W to operate, so what if we can better customize the relationship hardware-software, obtain more H/s with this 150W, this can be a game change! Instead of focusing in powerful muscle PC, focus on low cost and low support.

But I also had difficulties in gathering some reliable data, make comparisons etc.. Mostly are only speculation. What do you think about? Have some info to share?

Bitcoin is mined with ASIC's. Dedicated silicon to do one thing, and one thing only, very fast. General CPU architecture doesn't even come close to those speeds since it has to do a multitude of tasks.

Bitcoin's blockchain is probably the best invention the internet has brought us.
Suprising to see so many negative, badly informed, replies in this thread.

 

[Wando64]

badly informed,

Thanks for the vote of confidence.
I don't recollect discussing this with you before.

 

[Toutou]

It's not the monetary value, it's the energy consumption.

These two are tied together. No one would mine if the reward for a transaction was less than the price of the energy consumed to process the transaction.
If they make electricity cheaply enough somewhere so that it's viable for them to burn 641.26 kWh of electricity to make 15 dollars, then that fact itself is your problem. If you take Bitcoin from them, they'll probably still burn that energy to try and make money in a different way.

 

[leman]

There is no question that Bitcoin is a huge environmental disaster. Cryptocurrency is a great idea, but Bitcoin is as inefficient as it gets. There are other cryptocurrency technologies that consume way less energy to process transactions.

 

[ksloth]

I worked once for a company that had a bitcoin mine as a side project. A really large side project who regularly had electricity bills of 30 - 40 thousand dollars per month. Just thinking about all the wasted power, heat generation running the AC 24x7, all the various generations of ASIC miners that ended up getting thrown in the dump when they could no longer be profitable, etc. has left a really bad taste in my mouth about coin mining. It just feels really gross to me and I will be glad when/if someday it is gone completely.

 

[gustavopi]

Can't commend on mining (and frankly, I don't care — you won't be making any money this way as a person, IMO you are better of just buying crypto directly), but M1 Mini draws 30 wats — tops. The GPU is 10 watts for ~2 TFLOPS.

In Apple's website, a Mac mini is 150W device, but, looking further, the power consumption is 39W (and most of powerful CPUs I know draws the same as a heater or an electric shower). So Mac mini has just made a point here!

You have no guns. They took over everything and they make the chips that you use. They are even bribing their way around into other countries to take over electricity grids. They are causing big black outs in Iran now.

Yes I do, I can get solar power, I also have a project. I did calculate to keep my equipments working day and night with solar power. In Brazil or Paraguay you can combine power from the grid that is cheap and clean with other sources, as solar, wind, methane, etc.. I know places that did this, but got no data to share about, kinda secret you know, I just know they are making money.

800 H/s for Monero on the M1 vs up to 22,000 H/s on consumer AMD 5950x CPU so about 27x faster and goes up from there with Threadripper and Epyc CPUs.

https://monerobenchmarks.info/amd5950X.php

Ok, I am just getting to know about all the concepts, this GPU will demand 145W. So a complete PC will have about 350W of power consumption, against 39W of a mini. With 9 minis, we have basic the same consumption and about 7200 H/s. By this scenario, we are still far away of a good result power vs hashes, and I am curious to know why. This does not mach with benchmarks showing a fast CPU in comparison with traditional Intel or AMD.

I think that blockchains and crypto currencies should be made illegal.

This seams like a bait, but I will bite it... It's a serious statement that should not be written like this. You must show your references about it, or you are just being rude, to say at list. Can't just look at other's jobs and business and try to make it illegal just because you don't like it.

It's not the monetary value, it's the energy consumption. A single bitcoin transaction consumes 641.26 kWh of electricity, generates 304.6 kg of CO2, and creates 94.91 grams of electronic waste. One bitcoin transaction has the waste and consumption equivalence of 675,000 Visa transactions.

Either cryptocurrency dies, or the planet dies.

Thought this is a superficial analysis. First, you have to consider where the electricity come from. In Brazil and Paraguay, most mining plants use basically energy from waterfall generation (Hydro energy) - clean and sustainable. Second, the traditional financial system uses a lot of energy, have to consider the air conditioner, the physical transport of people and money. Also, the traditional way is leading the world to a catastrophic situation of poverty and misery that is indirectly catastrophic for the environment. By the way, Apple still uses coal power, so I won't feel guilty by using Mac to mining at my home!