If putting NVIDIA cards behind some solar panels or Icelandic geothermal is such a massively lucrative operation, why did NVIDIA recently report a 52% year-on-year decline in sales of its crypto mining GPUs? It doesn’t add up.
Based on the numbers I’ve seen, I’m inclined to believe that crypto mining on renewables mostly just isn’t anywhere near profitable. The big operators all seem to be taking advantage of cheap fossil fuels. Of course if we could ban that and force mining to surplus renewables only, then fine — but it seems a long way off.
So I don’t track this closely but I’m generally of the opinion (and do correct me) that NVIDIA’s anti-mining firmware tends to last ~1 day before someone turns it into a perfectly mining-suited card. So to the extent they’re breaking out crypto cards on the quarterly? Eh, I haven’t seen a 3090RTX on Amazon or at my Best Buy at MSRP a single time since it was released, though in fairness I sucked it up and bought the ones I needed at 3.5x MSRP some time ago, maybe it’s changed.
And as to mining on geo or PV or wind or whatever not being profitable? Wind blows at night, sun shines in Arizona, and geothermal is always on. I don’t think that it’s tough to get NVIDIA gear at retail because people are running a lot of Christmas lights. I think Ethermine is making a fucking mint, but like all such “no investors welcome” type ventures, I’m only speculating.
Based on the numbers I’ve seen, I’m inclined to believe that crypto mining on renewables mostly just isn’t anywhere near profitable. The big operators all seem to be taking advantage of cheap fossil fuels. Of course if we could ban that and force mining to surplus renewables only, then fine — but it seems a long way off.