Reasons to be cheerful: 'GPU mining is dead less than 24 hours after the merge'

pcgamer.com:

The ethereum merge has finally happened! After years of planning, development, and delays, ethereum’s shift to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism has seeming gone off without a hitch. Ethereum miners have been made redundant, and hopefully, this is the official end of large-scale GPU mining—the bane of PC gamers worldwide—forever.

In the lead up to the switch, miners mostly stopped buying new GPUs, while others dumped their cards on the second-hand market. Both of these are significant factors behind the graphics card price drops that have been happening this year. In fact, many cards have halved in price since the beginning of 2022.(opens in new tab)

But not all miners are shutting up shop. The ethereum hash rate didn’t drop as much as expected in the days and hours before the merge, meaning many miners were holding out for the last few blocks and rewards up until the last minute. Other miners switched to other coins, hoping to use all of that GPU hash power to snag some easy rewards. However, they’re quickly finding that nothing comes close to the rewards of ethereum.

«GPU mining is dead less than 24 hours after the Merge,» said Ben Gagnon of bitcoin miner Bitfarms in a recent tweet(opens in new tab). «The only coins showing profit have no market cap or liquidity. The profit is not real.»

Ethereum was by far the most profitable proof of work coin. Ethereum classic is the currently best post merge alternative for GPU miners. ETC is a hard fork of ethereum that occurred in 2016 following a factional split and it's seeing an influx of ex-Eth miners over the last 24 hours. But miners hoping to maintain profit levels anywhere near that of pre-merge Eth are quickly being disappointed.

The market cap of ethereum currently