Ethereum has fallen in value by 22% over the past week, which will have a negative impact on miners' profits. A few days after the New Year, Ethereum prices were hovering around the $3,800 mark but have since fallen precipitously and are now down to just $3,070 at the time of writing.
To paint an even bleaker picture, for cryptocurrency miners at least, Ethereum's all-time high of $4,800 was reached early last November, and it's taken just two months to drop 38% in value. However, it's worth noting that the cryptocurrency and Forex markets traditionally slow down during the holiday season, so there's a possibility prices will start going up now that the holidays are over.
At present, GPU miners will have a far more difficult time turning a profit. While the valuation of Ethereum has dropped 22%, Ethereum difficulty continues to steadily ramp upward. The current gains (in USD) for mining Ethereum are now at the lowest they've been since January 1, 2021.
At present, miners can earn about $0.0468 USD per MH/s (on January 10, 2022). Back in November 2021, earnings were nearly double that at $0.0818 USD per MH/s. If you put that together with typical GPU hash rates, and combine that with the cost of power for running the mining calculations, net profits are now below $5 per day for an RTX 3090, and are close to $3 per day for an RTX 3080 LHR. We've put together approximate mining income per day for the latest Ampere and RDNA2 GPUs in the following table for reference.
| GPU | Hashrate | Power | Net $/Day |
|---|---|---|---|
| RTX 3090 | 115 | 285 | $4.73 |
| RTX 3080 Ti LHR | 77 | 220 | $3.10 |
| RTX 3080 LHR | 66 | 215 | $2.59 |
| RTX 3070 Ti LHR | 51 | 155 | $2.03 |
| RTX 3070 LHR | 43 | 120 | $1.74 |
| RTX 3060 Ti LHR | 42.5 | 114 | $1.73 |
| RTX 3060 LHR | 34 | 110 | $1.34 |
| RX 6900 XT | 64.5 | 183 | $2.60 |
| RX 6800 XT | 64.5 | 186 | $2.59 |
| RX 6800 | 64.5 | 166 | $2.64 |
| RX 6700 XT | 47 | 120 | $1.93 |
| RX 6600 XT | 32 | 75 | $1.33 |
| RX 6600 | 28.5 | 75 | $1.16 |
With current prices, even with a mining farm full of RTX 3090 GPUs, you'd currently make less than $5 per day per card. With average eBay GPU prices on the RTX 3090 still sitting at $2,800 per card, it would take 560 days just to break even — never mind the cost of warehouse space. That's a massive drop from May of last year where profitability per RTX 3090 at one point eclipsed $20 per day and briefly reached as high as $32 per day!
While we've seen time and again that it's virtually impossible to predict where cryptocurrency prices and mining profitability will go next, if the current trends continue it can only help the supply of GPUs for the gaming market. Ethereum mining profits are the lowest they've been in over a year, and the switch to poof of stake is still looming in the future. Maybe miners will finally get off gamers' lawn. The chip shortages are still in a woeful state, however, and we don't expect cards to sit around on store shelves anytime soon, but at least there's some potential light at the end of this tunnel.
