ASIC-based miners simply outperformed the home gamer, and individuals suddenly discovered that their rigs were not worth much since there was a stampede of people trying to sell off their high-end GPU’s all at once.. Unlike Bitcoin, anyone with a half decent graphics card or decent gaming rig can mine Ether, giving them the chance to make some digital currency.. It’s much easier to imagine that a small number of large players would, for instance.
And while the Bitcoin world is dominated by professional, purpose-built mining rigs, there is still room in the Ethereum ecosystem for the little guy or gal.. Suddenly, used high-end graphics cards are worth something again And there are effects in new equipment market.
This year alone, the Ether has risen in value by around 4000%, and at time of writing is worth $375 per coin.. Some would go on to buy or build an ASIC but the vast majority just stopped mining.
By now, everyone and their dog has at least heard of While no government will accept tax payments in Bitcoin just yet, it’s ridiculously close to being real money.. We’ve even paid for pizza delivery in Bitcoin But it’s not the only cryptocurrency in town.. Economies of scale like those in Bitcoin mining tend to favor a small number of very large players, which is in tension with the distributed nature of cryptocurrencies which relies on consensus to validate transactions.. Ethereum initially launched in 2015 is an open source, it has been making headway among the 900 or so Bitcoin clones and is the number two cryptocurrency in the world, with only Bitcoin beating it in value.. Small-scale Bitcoin miners were stung when the mining technology jumped from GPU to ASICs.. While I thought mining any cryptocurrency was too technical for me, I now see getting started on a small scale is relatively straightforward with scaling up possible.. They were out of the game they couldn’t compete with ASICs and be profitable since mining in its self uses huge amounts of electricity. 5ebbf469cd