Following on a note yesterday by Mitch Steves of RBC Capital, who sounded a bullish note about Nvidia (NVDA) because of the efficiency of its chips in an experiment in “mining” the virtual currency Ethereum, Steves is back today with a bit of clarification.Steves writes it’s “fake news” that either Nvidia’s or cards from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) are being used to mine Bitcoin.Alluding to “reports” to that effect, Steves writes today that “this is not the case as Bitcoins are mined using ASICs and without becoming too technical about the terms, mining Ethereum is 'ASIC resistant' making it unprofitable."A CNBC report yesterday by Tae Kim mentioned both Bitcoin and Ethereum in the same piece.That article, which quoted AMD, was picked up in some outlets under a headline featuring Bitcoin — see “Bitcoin mining craze sees U.S.sell out of AMD graphics cards” at The Cointelegraph.Mining Ethereum, by contrast, can be profitable with Nvidia and AMD chips, he writes:  What is the key financial point?

With Ethereum trading at ~$260 today using lower end GPUs from Nvidia/AMD is largely profitable.This means the demand is likely to sustain (assuming the price of Ethereum does not collapse) given that the return on investment of a mining rig is around ~3 months.Net/ net: GPUs are used to mine Ethereum (ASICs are used to mine Bitcoin) and if the prices remain high for Ethereum then financial incentives will continue to push individuals into more mining.bitcoin worker offlineSteves also responds to some questions by readers of yesterday’s piece about “overclocking” parts.bitcoin aliens hackOverclocking plays into price considerations between the two parts, he writes:  Choosing between Nvidia and AMD GPUs today is heavily dependent on price.bitcoin go bust

Not just the price of Ethereum but the price of acquiring the GPU as well.If the price of mid-end GPUs such as the Nvidia GTX 1070 declines, miners can "overclock" the GPU to create more hashes.This is why there is a constant back and forth between AMD vs.NVDA GPUs being the "best" for small-scale mining rigs (4-6 GPUs).caida precio bitcoinLatest In Techtraderdaily Blogbitcoin hardware mining calculatorAs the calendar turns to February, major global financial institutions are becoming increasingly vocal about the blockchain tech trials taking place in their innovation labs.litecoin beginnerIn recent weeks, UBS has announced experiments with smart bond applications, NRI has discussed investigating distributed ledgers for securities use cases and even JPMorgan, long one of the more bearish among banks on bitcoin and digital currency concepts, revealed it is seeking to evaluate the technology's use for improving trading processes.is bitcoin a pump and dump

More unique among these major firms, however, has been Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), which hinted in November that it was experimenting with blockchain tech to improve its consumer rewards and loyalty offerings.For Canada’s largest bank, boasting C$10bn in 2015 earnings, the announcement seemed at first glance to be a rare consumer play among a broad industry move toward B2B applications.ethereum price notificationHowever, in a new interview, Linda Mantia, RBC's EVP of digital, payments and cards, indicated that the bank is looking at different use cases for the technology, with tests focused on applications for capital markets, cross-border payments and smart contracts.bitcoin atm machine for saleMantia indicated that for RBC, as in the industry at large, there’s a feeling that blockchain tech will become a kind of financial Internet for which the full ramifications of the technology have yet to be unlocked.

"We’re all trying to figure out what it means.If Steve Jobs had tried us to tell us everything the iPad could do, we wouldn’t have understood it."Mantia also addressed the growing hype surrounding blockchain, justifying the dialogue on the basis that, if there’s a potential for the next Amazon, eBay or PayPal-type service to be created, banks face a risk by not trying to seek out potential applications."If you look at every major advancement enabled by technology, there’s always hype.Eighty percent of the money won’t make it, but the last 20% can be massive," she continued."At the end of every hype there's something transformative."The comments come as members of the financial community are increasingly warning about the positive market sentiment being created around the technology.But as a market leader, Mantia said, RBC can’t shy away from the opportunities and risks involved, adding: "No one wants to miss it.If you don’t hop on the hype bandwagon, you’ll be left behind."

While Mantia did not reveal much about RBC’s rewards proof-of-concept, first discussed in November, she did speak to the value of experimenting with blockchain technology for the bank’s loyalty program.First and foremost, Mantia described blockchain as a technology that would help RBC better deliver on its existing loyalty value proposition for customers."We’ve always said, ‘Your points, your money’.So we don’t lock people into the rewards store.We also let in certain merchants like Best Buy, so clients can use our points to buy from them," she continued, adding: "We were moving pretty aggressively to let our clients think of it as another form of cash."She hinted that a decentralized ledger could help it more effectively enforce the rules around this payment option, while also providing RBC with a means to improve operability with its partners.RBC's control over its loyalty program, she said, also affords the bank the ability to use the technology in its own ecosystem.

However, RBC is also working with 41 of its peers as part of the blockchain consortium led by R3CEV, though it is not alone among members in pursuing private POCs.According to Mantia, RBC first began researching bitcoin internally as part of its payments division.Mantia specializes in digital banking, credit cards, loyalty and retail payments, and is part of the company’s innovation efforts.She described the culture that RBC is trying to create as one where questions are embraced and evaluated with an emphasis on business need, even if that means heading into uncharted areas."We started looking at it when it was just bitcoin to see what was it that was so interesting," Mantia recalls."It was clearly trying to solve global commerce."To Mantia’s team, bitcoin had proved most impressive when considered against past payments innovations, thus increasing RBC’s interest.But, she said the bank was early in its understanding that the blockchain represented perhaps the biggest opportunity.

"We thought this idea of getting distributed computer centers around a problem is probably the future, but we didn’t understand enough where it was going and we have been thinking through where we could use it," she said.Mantia also spoke to the idea that RBC is seeking to expand its line of payment products, while underscoring the benefits to the anonymity or semi-anonymity a form of "digital cash" could provide.Still, Mantia was non-committal about coming to a conclusion on the open, bitcoin blockchain, to date the only commercial-scale version of the technology.When asked if she sees a future for bitcoin as a digital currency, she said that she believes there’s value to the idea.“When you shop online do you need digital cash?Do you need it for the unbanked?"she asked, concluding: "There’s something to it, there’s something that needs to be solved, a currency for the global economy.” The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is an independent media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies.