Motherboard: Ethereum mining rigs are becoming obsolete

Previously popular mining apparatus for getting Ethereum is becoming unprofitable, states the research made by Daniel Oberhaus at Motherboard who previously calculated that the Tesla mining rig is not a good idea. In this case, the journalist tells that his previous guides on the theme are now obsolete and they were, as some noted in the comments, nearing this state the day he published them.

The block difficulty increase, a measure invented by Satoshi Nakamoto to increase the price of Bitcoin over time and repeated by Vitalik Buterin in Ethereum, is reminding of itself once again, and there is no telling what happens with the price of both currencies once the difficulty becomes so big that only supercomputers are able to solve a block in the blockchain. And hard calculations require big amounts of power, which is both the reason why mining rigs become unprofitable and why is Bitcoin actually worth anything. Those who tell about its complete virtualness often forget it’s backed by mining costs.

Interestingly enough, while Bitcoin mining rigs are currently in the form of vast farms in hangars with GPU piles, Ethereum mining rigs, before this news appeared, were more like these classic mining rigs everybody knows.