On 15 September 2022, the long-awaited Ethereum Merge finally happened.
With it, Ethereum’s energy consumption was dramatically reduced.
It also claimed another casualty: cryptocurrency mining.
Image Credit: Hi my name is Jacco/Shutterstock
But is crypto mining dead as a result of the Merge?
Or do Ethereum miners have a chance at mining other cryptocurrencies?
What Was Ethereum Mining and Why Has It Stopped?
Pre-Merge, the two top blockchains, Bitcoin and Ethereum, worked on aproof-of-work mechanism.
That meant that people could minelend computing power so the blockchain can verify transactionsin exchange for a reward.
Every block mined rewards users a certain amount of cryptocurrencythousands of dollars per block (plus transaction fees).
The difficulty of Ethereum, however, didn’t increase that much.
With a high-end RTX 3090, you could easily make over twice that amount.
Once you’ve recovered the money you invested, it was basically a completely effortless, stable income.
Of course, all (good?)
things eventually come to an end.
TheEthereum 2.0 Mergeaims to fix both issues for the greater good, moving things forward toproof-of-stake.
But in the process, it’s leaving miners behind without their main source of income.
Let’s look at some alternatives miners are considering.
Alternative Blockchains/Coins
First off, the obvious option: try something else.
There are plenty of cryptocurrencies out there, like Ravencoin, ZCoin, and others.
Ethereum Forks
Of course, we also have Ethereum forks.
Ethereum 1.0 was actually a fork of ETC and became the more popular option.
Furthermore, post-Merge, a new fork also appeared, dubbed “Ethereum Proof-of-Work” (ETHW).
Both ETC and ETHW are potential replacements for Ethereum to keep the dough rolling.
And indeed, due to media attention and miners gathering around each crypto, their price has increased.
Looking at theCoinMarketCap ETC chart, that currency’s price has dipped.
Even if they manage to go up, whether they’ll keep the momentum is another thing.
Mining something alone doesn’t guarantee it’ll go up in value.
He’s very optimistic about it, but the outlook is muddier for us.
We also need to keep in mind that for many miners, mining was their main source of income.
They want money now.
And right now, as of the time of writing, neither ETC nor ETHW is profitable to mine.
You’ll get, at most, a few cents every day.
If you have a GPU-based rig, there’s essentially no purpose right now to mining.
You’ll be damaging your hardware, bringing your power bill up, and all for a few cents.
It’s not worth it, if you ask us.
