Crypto-miners are turning off their machines and considering selling their GPUs as very few, if not all cryptocurrency are profitable to mine them, after the Ethereum merging.
Are you looking to mine cryptocurrency using your computer’s graphics card? Don’t bother. In the wake of the Ethereum Merge GPU-based mining of all cryptocurrency is currently inefficient, at the very least for the moment.
On Thursday morning, Ethereum–one of the most lucrative mineable cryptocurrencies–finally phased out GPU-based mining, which will help cut down on its energy consumption. But this isn’t good news for those who mine crypto exclusively on Ethereum as their main revenue source.
“(The Merge) killed it completely,” says one miner known as Philip Robb. “All my equipment is idle in the moment.”
At first, miners had hoped to shift to alternative cryptocurrency that include Ergo and Ravencoin as well as others that can be mined using computer graphics cards. Both currencies are of such tiny value, just pennies and dollars. mining them isn’t profitable in comparison to Ethereum which is valued at $1,500.
We attempted to mine Ravencoin with an Nvidia RTX 3080 graphic card and quickly realized that it was a losing venture. According to the software for mining it’s estimated that we’d earn an average of $0.13 to $0.26 every day. And this was before we paid California’s high electric bills and resulting in an overall loss.
A miner known as Blake Teeter tells PCMag he’s experiencing the same issue despite having numerous GPUs that have a lot more processing power. “With my electricity costs the majority of coins are unprofitable in the moment,” he says.
In fact, WhatToMine.com(Opens in a new window) illustrates GPU-based mining of any cryptocurrency is not profitable when you are in California. It’s only a profit-making venture with a few dollars when you live in a place with relatively low costs for electricity. However, even then, the return is low less than the hundreds of dollars you could earn from mining Ethereum in the days prior to the Merge depending on your hardware configuration.
The dire situation is leading certain people to declare(Opens in an entirely fresh open window) the “GPU mining has gone out of business.” The lack of profit has led some in the mining industry to switch off(Opens in the fresh window) their machines in order to save the cost of electricity. Others are considering selling their old PC graphics cards to buyers via Facebook as well as eBay. “No one is earning money currently,” says one miner who prefers to keep his identity secret. “I’ll begin selling my equipment in the near future. I have about fifty GPUs.”
