Unfortunately Brazil is not the main source of mining capacity. China accounts for 50% of all Bitcoin mined where electricity generation is at least 2/3rds fossil fuel based.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
The future of cryptocurrency mining with Arm
- Thread starter gustavopi
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
The 5950X is a 105 W TDP processor itself, but the whole machine built around it will draw at least a bit more. The Mini may draw 39 W for the whole machine, but the TDP of M1 is probably somewhere around 15W (we don't know for sure because Apple doesn't disclose this and because TDP does not equal real power consumption).
There's also the thing that the 5950X is a 16-core multithreaded (32 threads) CPU that's optimized for this kind of performance. The M1 performance cores are exactly as powerful as the 5950X cores, but there's only four of them and if you simply multiply the amount of M1s to get a comparable figure, you're multiplying the hardware parts of the M1 that don't need to be multiplied in a lots-of-cores chip. So it's all a bit apples to oranges.
And I also think that the low H/s figure of the M1 is weird. The M1 shows the same Geekbench single-thread performance as the Ryzen, and roughly half of its multi-thread performance, and the H/s rate should reflect that.
This is a rather naive stance. Yes, traditional finance system uses a lot fo energy, but you can't just compare an entire financial world system to Bitcoin with it's 600 billion market cap (which is not backed by anything). Not to mention that the traditional finance system scan process far more than 7 transactions per second... Bitcoin simply is not suitable as a general-purpose payment system — it's too slow, and too wasteful.
Again, this argument is not an argument per se against cryptocurrencies, it's an argument against inefficient cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. There are much more efficient crypto out there.
OK, the use of the work "illegal" was an hyperbole, however I do believe that the two should be strongly regulated.
In my opinion, Blockchain use, and any other inherently energy wasteful IT practice, should be regulated in the same way we regulate central heating, transportation, building, etc...
The case for making Cryptocurrencies illegal is actually a bit stronger for many, many reasons I am sure you are quite familiar with, starting from extreme volatility, lack of inherent value, security risk, and last but not least scalability coupled to the fact that they are based on extremely wasteful Blockchain technology.
I'd like to see someone calculating the environmental impact of all of the current VISA and MASTERCARD transactions carried out through Blockchain/Crypto.
In my opinion, the world would be a better place without Cryptocurrencies and with a strongly regulated adoption of Blockchain and other energy wasteful technologies.
They won’t listen to sense. Whenever this international scam controlled by high crime and Nazis is being pumped then we get all the ridiculous comments posted everywhere. Then whenever the high class criminals and Nazis steal their money these posters go silent and wait for the next pump.
Did you just use the words "sense" and "international scam controlled by high crime and Nazis" in the same post?
Yes where have you been for a decade?
About 80% of all crypto especially the first one are owned by a very tiny amount of people. This is their game and you are only a tourist to exploit. We know these people are mostly the oligarchs, organized crime syndicates and hackers of a Russia, China, North Korea and some American. They continue to increase the concentration of their power and influence with pumping, dumping, manipulating, hoarding and creating new schemes on top of the older schemes.
Even if they hide the identity of their biggest players and the founder of some of these pyramid schemes, we know their front men who are all very visible and we know their cheaply bought journalists. Their representatives who have faces in media and social media have a long history of criminal records, history of scamming, history of and present activity with organized far right cartels such as Steve Bannon etc
If you go deep in the theory behind Cryptocurrency, you will see that is a natural consequence of science in this area, even the traditional banks are using, they just wish better control - of course. The initial purpose was precisely to avoid volatility, it was made because of a financial crisis. Crytpo has problems and is used for bad purposes as everything else in this world (gold? diamonds?), the problem is mankind, not the technology. Besides, it's impossible anyway, it's like to drop the Internet (won't be VPN, secure files and emails, secure passwords and so on). Science won't stop, better join them!
Well, I am trying to discuss the future of Cryptocurrency mining with Apple's game change new technology, not some Hollywood conspiracy theory B movie. By the way, my country was hacked and f* by USA, not Russia or China!
I don’t know much about this - but I would assume the M-series Mac Pro coming out (probably) next year would be the real machine to try this out with. The M1 is literally the chip they designed for the MacBook Air. It’s apples equivalent of an i3 processor in comparison to what they can, and inevitably will, do over the next few years.
Theres no “Hollywood conspiracy.” Crypto people are highly criminal and we know that Steve Bannon and Richard Spencer themselves said Bitcoin is the money of the far right.
Before this energy sucking scam came Bannon and another crypto guy Brock Pierce had a massive virtual mining operation in China. They hired many Chinese gamers to mine World of Warcraft gold for endless hours so that they would have a monopoly of the supply of virtual gold which let them push the price up and make a lot of money.
Bannon then used the money to pay for far right operations in the US and EU.
Then Bitcoin comes along immediately after with a decentralized mining game and the same people involved and again the mining is monopolized in China.
Your avatar matches your 'story'.
Well it depends, some cryptocurrencies use algorithms that are specifically designed for CPU, Monero for example uses JIT compiled random work. It's slower on GPU, FPGA and ASIC than CPU.
Lotta bootlicking going on in this thread in the name of “saving the planet “ ignoring that the problem is how the electricity is generated not how it is used.
but keep advocating stuff should be bad because you don’t like it, I can’t stop you from riding the bankers cock.
but keep advocating stuff should be bad because you don’t like it, I can’t stop you from riding the bankers cock.
Precisely. Also, we need a money system for the internet without the corruption of "government".
Looking at the M1 architecture, it seems a game change in the perspective of how to get the most of the SoC. Among with the powerful CPU with low power consumption, there is an AI accelerator and a 8-core multithread GPU. All of this using 39W is a new field yet to be explored, but I am afraid the code for this is yet to be written. Thought it will be a new hybrid mining type. We will know the full power of a M1 only when we could make all the hardware available for mining.
A don't think this will be viable for a massive production at home, but if a dedicated M1 can get rewards to pay the energy spent plus some profit, we might have in the future a replacement for the sleep mode that is actually a mining mode. I will go to sleep or go out to work and my Mac mini will keep mining some bitcoins - why not?
Because it makes sense only in case the mined coin is worth more than the energy cost required. Its usually only liable if energy is really cheap and/or the processor used is extremely efficient.
Maybe the M1 actually is that efficient; we really don‘t know (yet?) when it comes to mining
Just updated to Big Sur, now I will start the look for something, maybe something for linux that we can port to apple's environment...
I said with cheap / clean energy in mind. If you know your energy come from some thermo generator, you should not do this.
Also, some tome ago I did a simulation of generating energy with a bike... yep, got to pedal pal, a lot, but looking at the bright side, you will lose some pounds to get some hashes!
It will take you a week of non-stop biking to mage a single $… I am sure that there is something more useful you can spend your time on… you’ll ”make” more money by spending less on food with the same weight loss effect
Cool! Is using 10W to mine, more like a lamp, guess worth the experience of leaving a moth mining at night to see how it gets. Intel M1... that's funny, but also tell us we will have to wait to see full potential of this hardware.
Updating this discussion: Bitcoin is now in a bad moment, even with still great value, as Musk declared that Tesla won't accept Bitcoins anymore. It was a psychological strike that will materialize soon. The reason is the "insane power consumption" that the network requires to work today. This is bad for environment since there is no escape from high fossil fuel consumption to generate the needed electricity. I was whit a bit outdated scenario in mind, thought things changed last couple years.
But it's also difficult to find reliable information about, there is a lot of not qualified people trowing opinion about it. You know, we say energy generation and consumption but in a serious discussion we must think about energy transformation. I have found this article, and will be opened for suggestions:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7402366/
Thought we must consider the basic concepts to analyze the problem. Bitcoin is now inside the system it was created to be an alternative to. It is now a paper. This is a problem because this system has created the main environmental problems and we still don't know it this system will lead us to a climate catastrophe or it will colapse into an economical catastrophe before that. So if "I" can make money by using coal power to mine cryptocurrency, I will do it and will have the support of the system, unless the government acts to prevent the consequences - but this is agains "my" religion, right? I see Bitcoin ecosystem as victim of the status quo we refuse to change, so there is no solution because there is no problem in the first place.
Forgetting the philosophy, Bitcoin is not more energy demanding than others, there isn't much to do about it. The math is setting that as a coin grown and need upgrades, will become more energy demanding. Coins are all in the same boat, as we. Plus, even with an insane power consumption (like a country as Argentina) it's easy to build solar/wind plants among with mining plants in remote places of earth, countries that need income - both ecological and social solution. In the opposite, the traditional bank system can't be placed in the middle of the Saara desert, it's not practical. The traditional financial system of the current capitalism axiom needs the urban centers as they are.
My conclusion is, cryptocurrency got deep issues, but also awesome solutions, if you change the glasses.
Finally, I wrote this in a rush, if I am mistaken, tell me.
But it's also difficult to find reliable information about, there is a lot of not qualified people trowing opinion about it. You know, we say energy generation and consumption but in a serious discussion we must think about energy transformation. I have found this article, and will be opened for suggestions:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7402366/
Thought we must consider the basic concepts to analyze the problem. Bitcoin is now inside the system it was created to be an alternative to. It is now a paper. This is a problem because this system has created the main environmental problems and we still don't know it this system will lead us to a climate catastrophe or it will colapse into an economical catastrophe before that. So if "I" can make money by using coal power to mine cryptocurrency, I will do it and will have the support of the system, unless the government acts to prevent the consequences - but this is agains "my" religion, right? I see Bitcoin ecosystem as victim of the status quo we refuse to change, so there is no solution because there is no problem in the first place.
Forgetting the philosophy, Bitcoin is not more energy demanding than others, there isn't much to do about it. The math is setting that as a coin grown and need upgrades, will become more energy demanding. Coins are all in the same boat, as we. Plus, even with an insane power consumption (like a country as Argentina) it's easy to build solar/wind plants among with mining plants in remote places of earth, countries that need income - both ecological and social solution. In the opposite, the traditional bank system can't be placed in the middle of the Saara desert, it's not practical. The traditional financial system of the current capitalism axiom needs the urban centers as they are.
My conclusion is, cryptocurrency got deep issues, but also awesome solutions, if you change the glasses.
Finally, I wrote this in a rush, if I am mistaken, tell me.
The M1 Mac mini would've been my choice for an Ethereum staking machine, but thanks to Apple's storage prices it's just not a sensible choice. So at the moment stakers are using the Intel NUCs, which actually run surprisingly hot (that or I am too used to the M1!)