It should take place in September Ethereum mergerthe expected switch from PoW to PoS. This change means that graphics cards will no longer be used for Ethereum mining, it will be switched to another mechanism. But believe it or not, the the price of graphics cards could increase further.
Note that Ethereum has been preparing for this transition from proof of work to proof of stake for years. The change makes the transaction and block validation process require significantly less computational power. Thus, graphics cards will no longer be needed to perform this complex mathematical process.
What They Don’t Tell You About Ethereum Merge
There is a lot of talk that when the transition from PoW to PoS is finalized, the lower the price of Ethereum. Another effect, since the graphics cards are not necessary, is that many of them arrive on the used market and the new ones fall in price because they have no outlet. But of course, that’s the (we might say) optimistic scenario that everyone takes for granted.
There is an equally probable scenario and that is that there is a distribution effect of mining. What does it mean? You may only be familiar with Ethereum mining, but there are a number of other proof-of-work cryptocurrencies. Not all of them are compatible with graphics cards, as is the case with Bitcoin, Litecoin or Monero, but there are many others that are.
Ravencoin, ERGO, Ethereum Classic, Beam, Zano and a few others are compatible with graphics card mining. Currently, it has less profitability than Ethereum, but an expansion phenomenon may occur. The minors they can switch to these cryptocurrencies and even those might go up in price. those who have more ballots are ERGO and Ethereum Classicwhich show two rather interesting projects.
The thing is, if those last two go up, we might see a strong demand
But why don’t they start mining Bitcoin?
You are probably wondering that if Ethereum mining ends, the most normal thing is that they go to Bitcoin. The reality is that if it were possible to mine Bitcoin with graphics cards, it is already something that would be done. Well I’m lying, it’s possible mine bitcoin with charts
When Bitcoin appeared, in 2009, domestic processors were used, then it moved on to graphics cards, and in 2012 the first ASICs began to appear. The reason they are used the ASIC (special equipment with many chips) is due to its high efficiency. They are very powerful and this makes them extremely effective, as they are specifically developed for this process. Mining Bitcoin with a graphics card would be like trying to bring down a skyscraper with your fists.
You wonder the same why is there no ASIC for Ethereum mining? Yes, there are, but they are very expensive and difficult to manufacture. the trick of Ethereum it takes a lot amount of memory and that he has a high bandwidth. Graphics cards are great because they have lots of VRAM and the bandwidth is very high. This is necessary because Ethereum has the DAG, a kind of file that helps in mining and weighs more than 4 GB. Moreover, the weight of this file increases every 2016 blocks.
In short, while Ethereum Merge may cause mining to shift to other cryptocurrencies, it may not go away. If the price of these altcoins increases, we could once again experience a chart shortage and another gargantuan price spike.
