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by gwern 3263 days ago
Miners shouldn't be meaningfully exposed since they can sell off their ETH as soon as they mine it (deposit it to an exchange address and sell off every few minutes via an API, or something like that). And while ETH might crash enough to make it no longer profitable and risking your capex, you can switch your GPU to mine whatever is most profitable, so you're more diversified than it looks and insulated from the instability.
2 comments

If Eth crashes (more) and bitcoin continues to drop, no crypto is going to be worth anything.
Bit coin isn't dropping, yeah it had a small peak the last month but it is still at $2300 which was only first achieved in in May.
Resale value on the GPUs is also worth monitoring. While it remains high enough, you can discount much of the capital cost because you'll get a high fraction back if you decide to sell the cards.
I doubt resale values on GPUs running at 100% for months on end is going to be high.
Miners don't want to push their GPU's that hard, a hardcore gamer may overvolt their card to get a more stable overclock but a miner will undervolt it to run it cooler and increase the life of the card.

I'd rather buy a used Fury X off a miner than a gamer.

Gamers might play 3 hours a day but miners run 24...
You are much more optimistic that me if you think they'll come with a usage disclosure. There's a reason cars have immutable(ish) odometers.