At first it was barter, a simple and natural form of exchange. Then we moved on to the actual exchange of goods, starting to give them a specific value. It was the development of trade that increased this phenomenon and it became essential to move to something that had a commonly accepted and recognized value. The first denarius, according to the peoples, took various forms: cocoa beans, skins, salt, shells. With the birth of metallurgy and the evolution of technology, metals became the protagonists of trade. Copper, tin and bronze became fundamental among the merchants. At this point, money was born as a necessity, as a natural evolution. Until 2007.
In that year, Bitcoin , the most famous cryptocurrency in the world , was officially launched , and the first real gap between traditional and "virtual" money was born. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, that is a 'hidden' currency, usable only by knowing the access keys (public and private). Cryptocurrency does not exist in physical form, but is generated and exchanged exclusively electronically. But if Bitcoin is the most famous virtual currency in the world, there is another competitor that has been depopulating in recent times: Ethereum .
Ethereum: the second of the cryptocurrencies, the best for mining
Ethereum is the second largest cryptocurrency by equity capitalization (after Bitcoin), and works very similar to it. Ethereum was designed to enable smart contracts and distributed applications to work in the peer-to-peer network through its Ether cryptocurrency. Ethereum is the new gold mine: in the last period it has registered a + 80% and is ready for a growth of 500% over the next few months. Among the cryptocurrencies, Ethereum is the easiest to mine .
Mining is the process of extracting a cryptocurrency from the p2p network on which its blockchain is based. The blockchain is a chain of encrypted blocks concatenated to each other thanks to keys that can only be found by miners. All you need is a powerful GPU (or alternatively a CPU).
Mining and the "famine" of video cards
The fact that video cards are currently unavailable depends on the role of GPUs in mining and the exponential growth of Ethereum. The Internet, once it discovered cryptocurrencies, understood how greater computing power offered by one's PC allows you to reduce mining times. This means reducing the time in which it is possible to derive a certain profit from them, allowing you to increase revenue in a time much lower than the average.
All you need is to equip your computer with a series of top performing graphics cards to perform mining more smoothly . Given the relative ease of finding this "system", a real hunt for the video card began in a short time, surprising even the producers themselves, who struggle to keep up the pace.
Notebooks equipped with NVIDIA Ampere GPUs are also starting to raid. The very high demands from both gamers and those who mine cryptocurrencies are therefore creating a real "famine" of cards that will impact the market in a fundamental period for the sector. The impact is already evident throughout Europe, with some video card models hard to find or completely sold out, and with prices that are higher than a few months ago. If the price of Ethereum still rises as expected, the hunt for the video card could turn into a "gold rush".