What exactly caused the boost in AMD’s shares?

Due to the recent reinterest in cryptocurrency mining, AMD’s shares went up 6.9% on the 6th.  An AMD spokesperson told CNBC, “we are seeing solid demand for our Polaris-based offerings in the gaming and newly resurgent cryptocurrency mining markets based on the strong performance we are delivering.”

AMD is getting a lot of business from cryptocurrency miners who use several of their graphics processing units at a time in their mining rigs, which are attached to motherboards complete with their own power supplies.

Why do cryptocurrency miners need AMD GPUs?

The 160% bitcoin surge is indicative of miners’ activity, which requires certain kinds of computer hardware to be successful. In particular, AMD’s RX 570 and 580 are becoming increasingly difficult to find online, selling for high prices even secondhand. Even older RX 470 GPUs are being looked at by miners that can’t get their hands on the sold out models.

However, Mitch Steves says that AMD’s GPUs are actually being used to mine Ethereum, not bitcoin, as many have reported. This is because bitcoin is mined with ASICs, “application-specific integrated circuits” that are put into USB ports, while Ethereum is mined with GPUs. AMD’s in particular are widely considered some of the best for dealing with altcoin mining algorithms.

In fact, since the introduction of newer hardware such as ASIC miners, GPUs have become obsolete for bitcoin mining by comparison. Instead, miners use GPUs for alternative cryptocurrencies or “altcoin” such as Ethereum. Once obtained, they can be traded for cash or regular bitcoins at exchange websites.

Unsurprisingly, Ethereum is over 2,900%, which correlates to AMD’s shares rising from notice of their hardware being consistently sold out.

What could this mean for AMD and cryptocurrency?

If cryptocurrency miners continue their serious attention to mining hardware, they could potentially influence the development of new hardware besides ASICs. Perhaps manufacturers and developers will turn their attention to more mining-oriented products. As far as AMD is concerned, however, “the gaming market remains our priority,” said a company spokesperson in the aforementioned email to NBC.

Do you mine any kind of cryptocurrency? Do you use ASICs or a rig of GPUs? Or maybe you’re a gamer wondering why the AMD RX 580 you had your eye on went out of stock when you went to purchase it?

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