In a nutshell: Nvidia’s new mobile RTX GPUs became available around the world last week in a bit enticing new laptops. But in some regions, the release was mutilated by Ethereum miners who buy it directly from the manufacturers.
The price of Ethereum has quadrupled in 2020, and after a sudden acceleration in January, it exceeded the previous everyday high of late 2017. The rise has helped the mining industry in the cryptocurrency to experience an unfortunate renaissance that could lead to a repeat of the 2017 disaster. .
Normally, it is only possible to mine profitably with desktop GPUs sold alone. Prefabricated systems and laptops have a higher storage and contain components that are not useful to miners. But these disadvantages have recently been denied, partly due to rising prices by crypto, and partly due to the improved performance offered by the new Nvidia GPU versions.
So it became profitable to play with cheap laptops. Some miners in China have purchased shipments of new laptops and installed them in dedicated mining racks. The images below are of brand new laptops, possibly with RTX 3070s and RTX 3060s inside.
Chinese miners are crazy 🤣🤣 https://t.co/yOA1wC5U3a pic.twitter.com/EvQccY6DHG
– I_Leak_VN (@I_Leak_VN) 6 February 2021
Mining has also become easier. A mining tool can be set up within minutes using simple (evil) software and informative (evil) articles from unacceptable news sites. It’s so easy to do on the go, as one Chinese content creator demonstrates in this hilarious video.
If you do not want to watch the video in Chinese, here is an overview: she just bought a new Asus laptop with an RTX 3060 and took it to a Starbucks. Plugged it in. Ethereum is starting to exploit. Brought a coffee. Work done. And two hours later, she recovered the cost of the coffee and went home. That’s ridiculous.
Fortunately, laptop mining is unlikely to be profitable except on a large scale in specific regions, and so it should not affect global availability. But it does emphasize the strength of cryptocurrencies.