TL;DR - The ASIC mining landscape is evolving. Future scheduled halvings may reduce the future overall necessary hashpower to maintain integrity for the bitcoin blockchain. The present hashpower we see might be considered a "peak". There is a possibility that some miners today relinquish their future green energy and that it gets put back on the grid. None of this will compromise safety of the bitcoin blockchain.

Scheduled bitcoin halvings: https://preview.redd.it/8pjk6h4jrzn81.jpg?width=373&auto=webp&s=d6f52937ed723cf6c67e37b3e3cfca491481bffa

Present bitcoin hashrate (click "all time"): https://www.blockchain.com/charts/hash-rate

I do not hold anything like a Six sigma blackbelt (which makes you a master manufacturer), but I've worked for various PC hardware manufacturers, so I have a bit of familiarity with this market from first hand experience.

Let's start with the ASIC chip landscape: right now the world is a little-bit bottle-necked with production surrounding every device you can think of from GPUs to modern vehicles because of one major semi-conductor manufacturer: TSMC, and this has caused mining ASIC devices and GPU prices to climb faster than a brand new Rolex watch 1 year after its purchase. Intel is getting in to the ASIC manufacturing game and this will reduce scarcity of these devices significantly. However, I've seen and heard ideas like miners will be able to "build their own ASICs" a little something like how you can build your own PC, but I imagine the level of customization will be limited.

This part is slight speculation, and relies on hearsay from Michael Saylor on a podcast, however: the next 2 bitcoin halvings could potentially reduce the amount of hashpower necessary to maintain the bitcoin blockchain, and mining devices then will be far more energy efficient - if nothing else I don't see it growing much more. With that in mind if you run a large-scale hydroelectric, solar, wind, or nuclear-powered bitcoin mining operation then it may be possible that the energy used to maintain that operation today is higher than it will be later. That energy still has to go somewhere.

Maybe it will go to the grid instead?

Hello!

I am new to crypto and I'm just looking to experiment while making a little money.

Electricity is green and cheap where I live. (About $0,05 per kWh)

I have a very generic Dell Vostro Motherboard (054KM3) with about 8Gb of RAM and an i5 750 CPU. Not a very good machine. It runs on Windows 10.

Someone offered to sell me a GTX 1060 Gigabyte GPU with 6Gb of VRAM for around $230.

Will this cheap motherboard be able to run my new graphic's card?

Will I mine that money back in about 10 months, as NiceHash says I will?

How will the ethereum merge affect my revenues?

I have no intention to invest more than $300 for now.

Thanks for the tips!

I'm rather bewildered by the past few days. I've been talking to my dad about my crypto investments (yeah I know we're not supposed to) regularly for the past year because I knew he would find it all very interesting. Apparently he's been paying attention and wants to get in on it since out of the blue he dropped a bomb on me: He wants to buy me a mining rig! His only requirement is that he'll keep 50% of the profits. More than fair if you ask me.

He doesn't want to bother with all the hardware or research and doesn't have a good internet connection since he lives out in the country. So he's willing to fund the whole operation if I do the research, put it together, and host it at my house. The crazy thing is that both my wife and my mom are totally fine with it. I know right? My mom just doesn't care since it'll come out of my dad's personal IRA and not their 401k. My wife thinks it's cute that I'll have a fun hobby that makes us money so long as I can control the heat and noise.

Is this the jackpot or am I about to lose my family?

Here's the initial chat I had with him for reference, we've had a lot more communication since but I won't post all that since it's intermixed with personal affairs: https://imgur.com/a/nBekXt2

Please note that at the time of writing this it looked like the ETH Merge was imminent, I know there's talk of it being delayed again. Please also note that my knowledge of mining was far less a week ago than it is today and not everything I said to him was completely accurate at the time (he knows this now).

Are any of you miners? What kind of coins do you recommend mining and what kind of setup should I get? Should I buy new or refurbished? How do you deal with the heat and noise?

I'll see about giving an update in a few weeks after everything is set up and working!

TLDR - My dad knows I'm into crypto and out of the blue told me he wants to start mining and will buy a rig for me to set up in my house for 50% of the cut and somehow both my mom and my wife are fine with it.

EDIT:
I've added more pictures for you haters that think it's fake. Also yes, he understands it's risky and a slow ROI at the moment. I also tried to sell him on stablecoins or DeFi (and more recently, Real Estate), but he's not having it. He wants to do this. Thanks for those who support the family bond!

So, I recently got my hands on a good gpu, which was pretty expensive. What do you guys think is the best free mining software to help me recoup some of the costs of the card? I've tried BetterHash, but it crashed my PC during the benchmark tests, and NiceHash kept throwing privacy errors when I tried to access their website.

My main consideration for software is decent-ish returns with no charges to me (like no sign-up fees, minimum investments, etc.). I'm just looking for something I can run on my computer for free while I'm not at home.

For reference, I have a 3080Ti, Ryzen 9 5900x, and 64GB DDR4

Hey Y'all,

I'm moving to an apartment that has the electricity bill fully covered with the rent. As such, I'm thinking it might be fun to take my PC and Laptop (both of which are extraordinarily powerful devices) and learn to do a bit of crypto mining in my spare time, maybe even set the devices to run over night and during the day when I'm at work or asleep.

Where should I start for learning? I know very little about crypto. But I'm pretty tech savvy, a fast learner, and eager to learn.

Thanks!

The future is in your hands, climate change is real.

PoW crypto is unsustainable, all the BS whataboutism is irrelevant. Reports that say PoW will help renewables are just nonsense. PoW supports fossil fuels by making energy more scarce and pushing energy prices higher. As renewables are cheaper that just supports more expensive fossil fuels.

No time for PoW to clean up its act, UN IPCC lays it out flat, action is required today.

PoS is proven secure, is more decentralized and uses 99.9% less energy.

You can demonstrate your commitment to the future by selling PoW and buying PoS.

The power is literally in your hands.

And no, downvotes dont hurt me, my cause is just.