Moving thread to cryptocurrency subsection.

How many algorithms are left that ASIC haven't taken over and how often are new ones made ASIC resistant? I have yet to hear of an Equihash ASIC.

Moreover, I am intrigued that while CryptoNight ASICs exist, and authors react by trying to fork Monero, would it really render these new miners obsolete?

For instance, those behind ZClassic built up the hardfork Bitcoin Private, but ZCL still seems relevant having a higher value compared to BTCP. Therefore, despite upcoming Monero fork, CryptoNight ASIC ought to remain useful. But of course there is Electronium.

I hope so. 
 
Good God EVGA has a miner sub forum......
 
 

lehpron
How many algorithms are left that ASIC haven't taken over and how often are new ones made ASIC resistant? I have yet to hear of an Equihash ASIC.

Moreover, I am intrigued that while CryptoNight ASICs exist, and authors react by trying to fork Monero, would it really render these new miners obsolete?

For instance, those behind ZClassic built up the hardfork Bitcoin Private, but ZCL still seems relevant having a higher value compared to BTCP. Therefore, despite upcoming Monero fork, CryptoNight ASIC ought to remain useful. But of course there is Electronium.

There are only a double handful or so of algorithms that have ASIC available - SHA256, Scrypt, most or all of the "X series" and it's components (about 10 used in cryptocoin mining, but NOT the algorithm that Ravencoin uses SO FAR), the algo SIA uses, and widely rumored but not yet seen Ethash, and the disaster of the Cryptonight ASICs.
Equihash is the "most GPUs mining on it" algorithm that does NOT have an ASIC available for it to date.
 
The Ethash ones are an interesting issue, since Ethereum itself is by far the bulk of the hashrate for that algorithm (and accounts for the majority of GPUs used in cryptocoin mining IN TOTAL) but has been working on a move to Proof of Stake with a likely initial "partial POS" implimentation timeframe of later this year - so any ASIC that shows up for Ethash only has a limited (but uncertain length) time to repay itself before it's primary coin goes POS and mining on it goes POOF - though there will still be the spinoff coins like Ethereum Classic to mine on for those miners and some of those MIGHT still be profitable when Ethereum goes POS - barely, with very low cost electric.
 
Cryptonight looks like it was a major mistake on the parts of Baikal and Bitmain - Monero has already announced a fork to change the algorithm due in early March BEFORE THE BITMAIN MINER STARTS SHIPPING (the Baikal was a much lower hashrate item and not that big of a threat, being about equal in hashrate to 10 x Vega GPUs), and about half of the other "smaller" coins specifically including Electronium (the SECOND biggest CN hashrate coin) have also announced forks to change algorithm, likely to whatever Monero moves to so the smaller coins can use the same miner software.
Basically, well over 85% of existing CN hashrate will be moving out of the current CN algorithm to the new algorithm (I think Monero is calling it CN version 7 or some such) once all of the announced forks happen.
By the time the dust settles, there isn't going to be enough left for the Baikal and Bitmain Cryptonight ASICs to mine ON to ever pay themselves off - and Bitmain has ALREADY been forced to do massive price cuts to try to move the miners they already have in the pipeline, and even did something never before seen in cryptocoin mining - they gave a REFUND to Batch 1 and Batch 2 buyers (though it was in the form of a "coupon for discount off buying future Bitmain products").
 
The XMR hashrate spike in November was a combination of 2 things - a widely reported "major botnet" deployment, plus a TON of guides that showed up in November about "Vega is a KILLER CN miner GPU" - Newegg had a SALE on those cards about 2 days before the big demand spike hit caused by those guides and Vega cards suddenly became crazy-gouge-priced when you could find them AT ALL, less than a week after folks were putting them on sale 'cause they weren't selling.
I can date that sale precisely, as that's when I bought MY one and only Vega card.
 
ETH hashrate has been DROPPING a hair for about the last 2 weeks, as coin price drops have killed most of the profitability and folks stopped adding new rigs and a few folks in VERY high cost electric areas seem to have finally started shutting down a very few rigs.
Same thing on most other coins, and Bitmain is even having problems selling S9 ASIC units as fast as they can make them, for the first time since they were introduced - despite some major price cuts their OTHER ASIC models are also having "can't sell them very quickly" issues.
 
 

Just a bunch of hype.

True for Nvidia, mining has been pretty small potatoes for them - as I've been pointing out for MONTHS now.
For AMD, it's been a fairly large percentage of their GPU sales since about March of 2017 (I'm not looking at THEIR figures except on "total discrete GPU sales", I'm looking at how many cards HAD to be sold to support the Total Network Hashrate growth for the last year or so), though demand has dropped a lot the last couple months - and availability the last few weeks has gotten a lot better on new cards with some price drop.
 
ASIC probably will never completely replace GPU mining, as it takes a long time and a LOT of cost to design an ASIC - smaller market-cap coins will probably never have an ASIC available, though I do concede that the "SIA" ones came as a major shock.
There is also the case of coins that will change algorithms to make it impossible for an ASIC to mine them, like Monero....
 
 

It's that "some argue" - with most of the members of the class of "some" NOT being miners.
 

Folding isn't even a BLIP on Nvidia's radar.
 
Crunch the numbers, even assuming the average folder uses all GTX 1070 cards (we BOTH know that is unlikely) the total PPD in folding right now amounts to less than 4000 GPUs total.
In fairness, a lot might be older GPUs so the actual number might be as high as 10,000 - but that would be several YEARS worth of accumulation if it is in fact that high.
 
I suspect a quarter to half of those cards are EVGA (even us folks that never participated in EVGA points still like their GPUs).