Ethereum post-Merge review. 1 year later. Is GPU mining dead?
The Ethereum Merge took place on 15 September 2022 and put an end to mining ETH with graphics cards. A little over a year later, and back from a long summer break, we take stock in this video (in French): is GPU mining still profitable, which cryptocurrencies came out on top, and what options are left to keep mining in France?
Video from September 2023: the figures below date from that time.
GPU mining in the red
The first observation comes from profitability calculators such as WhatToMine or Hashrate.no: with an older-generation RTX card, one of the most widespread, and electricity at about 10 euro cents per kWh, everything was negative as of 19 September 2023.
Yet in France, on EDF's regulated tariff, a kWh already cost almost 20 cents before 1 August, and it has risen to 22 cents. Our verdict is blunt: traditional GPU mining, the old-school kind where you just mined quietly, is dead in France, unless you don't pay for your electricity. Before any investment in graphics cards, the first question to ask is therefore the price of your electricity.
The year's coins: winners and losers
- Kaspa: the big winner, up 1,000% over a year and approaching the top 100 by volume. But ASICs have arrived on Kaspa, the hashrate has exploded, and it is no longer worth mining with graphics cards.
- Dynex: its price went from about $0.10 to almost $1 at its peak, and was holding at around $0.50, a 5x. Its hashrate stayed calm until April, then started to swell.
- Ravencoin: after the Merge, the hashrate was multiplied by more than 8 (from about 2 to 16–17), before falling back to around 6. On the positive side: profitability is still poor, but the hashrate has dropped a lot.
- Flux: the hashrate was multiplied by 8 after the Merge, then there was a halving around February. The price, which had climbed above $1, fell back to $0.30, and the much-touted "Proof of Useful Work" has not yet borne fruit.
- Ergo: the hashrate went from 10–15 TH/s to about 60 TH/s after the Merge. The network had a difficulty adjustment problem, as the difficulty was not updating fast enough; this has since been fixed. The hashrate was back at around 18 TH/s, still slightly above its pre-Merge level.
Speculative mining, the new trend
No coin has really taken over from Ethereum for GPU miners. A few months earlier, profitability was mainly holding up thanks to Kaspa and Dynex. On MiningPoolStats, the number of new coins has exploded: there used to be about 5 a month, now there are around thirty. The trend of the year is therefore "spec mining", speculative mining: mining new coins from launch and betting on how they will evolve.
How to keep mining in France
- Change your electricity contract: with the blue, white and red day contract (Tempo), 300 days a year have peak-hour rates between 10.5 and 13.5 cents. You just need to avoid the red days, about twenty of them. On average, you will be close to 13 cents per kWh.
- Produce your own electricity: with a rooftop solar installation, EDF buys your surplus at 13 cents per kWh. Plug-and-play solar kits cost €600 for one panel and €1,000 for two: that is approaching €1 per watt, and it is starting to become worthwhile.
- Go through a company: a small business can expense its electricity.
- Heat with your rigs: mining rigs can heat some rooms instead of radiators.
These are precisely the reasons why we keep mining: we have solar panels, we already own the graphics cards, and we can expense these costs.
A good time to buy hardware?
Graphics card prices, and hardware prices in general, have fallen sharply: RTX 3070s could be found for €250, whereas there was a time when they sold for €1,000. Buying second-hand graphics cards can therefore be worthwhile. In an upcoming video, we will review our first months of Kaspa mining.
For another use of graphics cards, have a look at our GPU and AI page. To keep mining, browse our ASIC miners, discover our miner hosting if electricity is too expensive where you live, and read the review of our 6 kW solar installation.