Ethereum went through one of its most chaotic phases in mid-July with an abrupt drop in its value, some very high-profile hacks, and distortions in the graphics card market. However, there are miners who see that chaos as an opportunity and decided to double down. The need to start operations with new hardware as soon as possible is so critical that some miners went to the extreme of renting Boeing 747s to speed up shipments…
The current madness over cryptocurrencies has a name, and it is Ethereum. At the time of writing, its price stands at $179.58, down 6.22 percent. The $400 that ignited the new “Ether fever” are long gone, and its swings were so abrupt that many miners decided to throw in the towel, trying to cut losses by selling their hardware. Now, everything seems to indicate that Ethereum will enter an era of “big fish.” Large-scale miners have the capacity and economic resources to withstand the currency’s fluctuations much better, and they apparently are convinced it will rise again, to the point that they have begun renting Boeing 747s to move graphics cards.
The person who confirmed this maneuver was Marco Streng, CEO of Genesis Mining, a group dedicated to offering mining services in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies. Streng said that time is such a critical factor that any other type of shipping equates to lost opportunities. In essence, if receiving and deploying new hardware takes ten days, that’s ten days of mining absolutely nothing. With that view, the shortage of graphics cards is inevitable. Ethereum went from $10 in February 2017 to $400 in less than four months, multiplying miners’ potential profits, while hardware prices remained relatively intact.
And as expected, manufacturers are starting to see benefits. In its latest official report, AMD CEO Lisa Su acknowledged “elevated demand” from the cryptocurrency market, and after that announcement, the Sunnyvale-based company’s shares rose 11 percent (although they have already returned to a more stable floor). Still, AMD decided not to include cryptocurrencies as an element in its economic projections.
