So here I am, planning my new gpu mining rig, when I stumble upon this ETH switching to PoS news, and it's looking terrible for gpu mining. So I open the forums expecting a wide spread panic, but there are even now topics on front page about it. On other topics, hero members are expressing their belief that "gpu-mining will flourish in 2018". A reputable cloud mining sites are offering ETH mining contracts and state that "Should Ethereum (“ETH”) switch to proof-of-stake before the end of the term, we will use the leased hardware on a best-effort basis to mine the most profitable coin with that hardware for you". "Best-effort" being the keyword since after ETH switches to PoS, it will result in difficulties of all the altcoins going through the roof.
So what the hell is going on? Did everyone take the forget pill? How is everyone so oblivious?
Here are the hard facts:
1. ETH will switch to PoS soon
2. ETH network hashrate is many times higher than all other gpu-minable coins combined
3. After ETH completes switch to PoS, all of this hashrate will (try to) migrate to other gpu-minable coins
4. Difficulty of those coins will skyrocket, rendering gpu-mining obsolete or marginal
Yes miners will have no choice but to move there hashing power to a new altcoin but what you don't get is once the new coin received massive hashing power from Ethereum miners this will make the altcoin more scarce, it will revaluates it's value and this won't stop it from been profitable still