- After the Merge, the prices of Graphics Cards drove down and could go even lower.
Ben Gagnon, Chief Mining Officer at bitcoin miner, Bitfarms (BITF,) shared a Tweet on September 15, 2022 “Graphics processing units (GPU) mining is dead less than 24 hours after the Merge. The three largest GPU chains have very low profits, and “the only coins showing profit have no market cap or liquidity.”
In the previous month, Chip giant, Nvidia, announced preliminary results suggesting weaker-than-expected demand for its high-end cards. On which the company stated “Changes to cryptocurrency standards and processes including, but not limited to, the pending Ethereum 2.0 standard may also create increased aftermarket resales of our GPUs and may reduce demand for our new GPUs.”
However, the hashrate of some PoW altcoins like Ethereum Classic (ETC,) and Ravencoin (RVN,) almost doubled after the Merge. But the increased hashrate is like rising difficulty which means the miners are not actively mining a block and gathering the block reward.
Ethan Vera, Chief Operations Officer of mining services firm, Luxor Technologies, also stated in a Tweet on September 15, 2022 “As suspected, too many ETH miners switched over to ETC.
He further added in the Tweet “Even running new generation hardware at sub 3 cent power is not profitable on ETC now … That electricity price is much lower than what households in the U.S. pay, and even to what industrial consumers like bitcoin miners pay in several parts of the country.”
He further estimated that around 23-30% of ETH miners found temporary new homes while the rest of them simply shut down.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2022/09/17/is-the-end-of-ethereum-mining-becoming-a-gold-rush-for-gpu-shoppers/