Now I am not planning to slam or criticize miners because mining is a business like any other so we have to expect a certain amount of the profit seeking motivation.

So here are some thoughts…as we aren’t in Kansas or 2009 with Satoshi anymore with over 6,000 crypto currencies in 2022.

Miners mine to make money and they make money by running their computers 24 hours a day 7 days a week trying to solve the quintessential number in the blockchain.

But what happens when the well runs dry is the question many are asking?

What happens when the 21 million bitcoins have all been minted and there is no reward for the miners to continue to mine other than the transaction fees?

What will happen to Ethereum with the new Ethereum 2.0 coming out?

What happens when miners shift from one more profitable token to another and is this some form of mercenary work and is it good for the global economy and the average guy crypto was supposed to help?

These are questions that many of us are trying to figure out.

If you listen to any one of dozens of miners its fun but its a business and they have no problems shifting their operations from the one not making enough money to the next.

Its not charity work despite the humble and heart tugging stories told around the campfire in 2009 when Satoshi was cradling his new crypto baby in his arms and cooing and patting its crypto bum.

We certainly know that the massive warehouse crytpo warehouses in China (shut down now ) and in Texas and elsewhere were always in it for the money and then only because of intense pressure from people complaining about the vast energy they used did they try harder to try other kinds of less wasteful mining.

So no its not a charity but should we worry about what happens when all these money wells run dry and the miners pull up stakes and they all sell their graphics cards to animation houses and the local dumpster.

The two worries about when bitcoin puts out its last coin is two things

  • miners get together and set prices and raise prices
  • miners could apparently hide some stashes of coin and release it at times that make most value to them

Lets talk about the changes to mining Ethereum as we go away from whats called POW Proof of Work which is the current way to mine Ethereum to the POS (proof of stake) which is the upcoming Ethereum 2.0 which does not use mining any more.

It can be hard for the average non miner to understand these crazy terms…mining and staking…minting…foraging.

It all has to do with the pressure put on the mining industry about how much energy and heat was being wasted to mine coins with POW.

So it was decided to go a different route and essentially way to compensate miners with POS.

Yes there are other coins which could be mined so why would some people continue to mine Ethereum 2.0 and can you do several coins on the same rig?

Will this be the end of GPU mining and will there be a flood of used GPU mining or gaming cards and what can they be used for outside of mining and some gaming?

(under construction Jan 2022)