WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.280 When we started putting this video together, GPU prices were still pretty high, but the supply 00:00:05.280 --> 00:00:10.480 situation was starting to get just a little bit better. So does that mean that NVIDIA and AMD 00:00:10.480 --> 00:00:16.000 have found a way to make more chips? Not exactly. It turns out prices were gently dropping because 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:22.000 of miners trying to liquidate their stock of GPUs. In fact, over in China, used graphics 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:26.000 cards were practically flooding the market. I mean, think about how insane it is these days 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:32.400 to get a 3070 for 400 bucks. You see, Ethereum is currently the most popular cryptocurrency that 00:00:32.400 --> 00:00:37.840 people are mining on graphics cards because unlike Bitcoin, it's still often profitable to do so. 00:00:38.480 --> 00:00:43.840 But similarly to Bitcoin, the difficulty of mining Ether is gradually getting harder and harder, 00:00:43.840 --> 00:00:48.880 meaning you get less of a payout for the same amount of computational power your GPU expends. 00:00:48.880 --> 00:00:55.520 This is all leading up to the launch of Ethereum 2.0, which won't rely on GPU mining at all. 00:00:56.000 --> 00:01:02.640 Or any mining. And yes, although we already have had the London hard fork, which some people believed 00:01:02.640 --> 00:01:08.160 would cause GPU prices to fall, we haven't gotten the full Ethereum 2.0 release just yet. 00:01:08.160 --> 00:01:12.880 The current Ethereum uses a consensus mechanism called Proof of Work, where you get rewarded 00:01:12.880 --> 00:01:18.640 because your system expended energy working on a cryptographic problem. But Ethereum 2.0 will scrap 00:01:18.640 --> 00:01:23.600 Proof of Work entirely and instead move to Proof of Stake. But don't worry if you're vegan, 00:01:23.600 --> 00:01:27.360 as there's no red meat involved. Proof of Stake means that Ethereum rewards 00:01:27.360 --> 00:01:32.560 won't be decided by how good of a GPU or ASIC miner you have. Instead, you'll need to already 00:01:32.560 --> 00:01:38.480 have some Ether on the network. Staked on the network. This is the stake in Proof of Stake. 00:01:38.480 --> 00:01:42.480 The more Ether you have staked, the higher the probability of being assigned 00:01:42.480 --> 00:01:46.880 transactions to validate and the higher the amount of cryptocurrency you'll ultimately get paid. 00:01:46.880 --> 00:01:51.760 Of course, this means you'll have to keep some Ether on the network instead of just selling it for 00:01:51.760 --> 00:01:58.320 real money, but you're just holding it all anyway, right? Now, this might sound not too great if you 00:01:58.320 --> 00:02:03.120 don't already have a fair amount of Ether saved up, but you can still grow how much you have over 00:02:03.120 --> 00:02:09.680 time with Proof of Stake. Even though the official amount needed to stake is 32 Ether, around $125,000 00:02:09.680 --> 00:02:14.800 US at the time we wrote this video, you should still be able to join a pool with far less crypto 00:02:14.800 --> 00:02:20.800 on hand, similarly how current mining pools work. We're all in this together. But why is Ethereum 00:02:20.800 --> 00:02:25.360 moving to Proof of Stake? Well, one big concern is the environmental impact of the current Proof 00:02:25.360 --> 00:02:31.360 of Work scheme. As you know, mining crypto on GPUs or ASICs is an incredibly power-hungry process, 00:02:31.360 --> 00:02:35.280 and taking the vast majority of the number crunching out of the equation, no pun intended, 00:02:35.280 --> 00:02:40.640 will go a long way toward a cleaner future for crypto. Another huge advantage is speed. Getting 00:02:40.640 --> 00:02:44.480 rid of Ethereum's dependence on Proof of Work means transactions can be processed much more 00:02:44.480 --> 00:02:48.800 quickly. Instead of its current rate of approximately 15 to 30 transactions every second, 00:02:48.800 --> 00:02:55.360 we could instead see numbers closer to 2,000 to 100,000 transactions per second, which 00:02:55.360 --> 00:03:00.160 may give Ethereum more appeal as a mainstream blockchain protocol. ThroughPit will also be 00:03:00.160 --> 00:03:05.440 helped along by a technique called sharding, where each computer doesn't have to hold a copy of the 00:03:05.440 --> 00:03:11.120 entire blockchain. Sharding with a D, guys. But when can we expect Ethereum 2.0 to replace the 00:03:11.120 --> 00:03:16.720 current system? Well, reports are indicating that it could happen by late 2021 or early 2022, 00:03:16.720 --> 00:03:20.880 so be on the lookout for this if you're a miner, or even if you don't care at all about crypto, 00:03:20.880 --> 00:03:25.920 and just want to play some games. Hopefully there will be actually an affordable used graphics card 00:03:25.920 --> 00:03:30.560 under your Christopher Shiori and your Easter basket as miners offload them. I'm assuming they 00:03:30.560 --> 00:03:35.760 don't just find something else to mine. Maybe this is a good time for us to launch Linus coin? 00:03:35.760 --> 00:03:38.960 So thanks for watching, guys. If you liked this video, hit like, hit subscribe, and hit us up in 00:03:38.960 --> 00:03:43.760 the comment section with your suggestions of videos and topics that we should cover in the future.