Ethereum promises to disrupt many industries, but few thought that would include GPU manufacturing where demand has skyrocketed, with AMD’s Radeon RX 400 and RX 500 graphics cards flying off the selves, according to the gaming news-site TweakTown.
They complain Ethereum miners are driving up prices to $400 and even $455, “which is simply insane,” they say, for gaming. For mining, though, it may make sense as ethereum’s price has risen from around $15 at the beginning of the month to now nearly $250, an all-time high.
Poor gamers. At least there’s some consolation as ethereum plans to move towards Proof of Stake (PoS) and ditch beefy hardware requirements such as GPUs or Asics, so the rush might be temporary.
But a lot of goods are going out of stock nowadays. Ledger hardware wallets are sold out for weeks, some ethereans complain. While Coinbase could not keep up with the flood of money last week.
That’s because the space has expanded considerably. Around 100 active online users was the norm just weeks ago, now it can be as high as 3,000, with Google searches for ethereum trending to the top 20 keywords.
Because, money is being minted, not by banks but by everyone. So everyone is diving in, especially the millennials and the younger generation which thinks they have found a solution to the banks going under while at the same time partying like it is the 90s.
Because the hottest race nowadays is not Usain Bolt running 100 meters, or even Formula 1, but bots racing to buy the latest ICO, sending wallets down crashing, kicking everyone else out of the network.
Because music and movies no longer inspire, so being centralized with high barriers to entry, stifling creativity, while ethereum’s permissionless code, with no barriers in a flat world, allows us to dream once more.
So heads are turning. From the President of Russia who met Ethereum’s inventor, Vitalik Buterin, to the rulers of Dubai, the regulators of Britain, China’s central bank, Germany’s industry, Switzerland’s Crypto Valley and America’s Silicon Valley.
The world is coming, whether ethereum is ready or not. Sinks or swim time eth, round two.
