The Community of Gamers Doesn't Want to Integrate with Cryptocurrency Due to Rivalry Over Graphics Cards

The video gaming community seems to be quite hostile towards the cryptocurrency industry. They have been very negative about the rumours of Discord integrating with the Ethereum blockchain.

On November 8, Jason Citron, the CEO of Discord, a social platform popular among gamers worldwide, tweeted a screenshot showing the possibility of integrating the messenger with Ethereum wallets. The community went wild at the idea, flooding social media with harsh criticism. The most aggressive among them even called for boycotting Discord's paid subscription.

As a result, Citron had to clarify that the company currently has no plans to integrate cryptocurrencies.

Thanks for all the perspectives everyone. We have no current plans to ship this internal concept. For now we're focused on protecting users from spam, scams and fraud. Web3 has lots of good but also lots of problems we need to work through at our scale. More soon.

— Jason Citron (@jasoncitron) November 11, 2021

Gamers want graphics cards back

Most users cited environmental and security concerns to oppose the idea. Indeed, mining Ethereum is quite energy-intensive, and the industry in general has some issues. For example, by hacking an account of a popular NFT artist, criminals managed to get Discord users to give away over $170,000 in Ethereum. 

In fact, hackers use Discord quite often to scam people. Usually, they hack popular accounts and then announce fake Ethereum or Bitcoin giveaways. As Kaspersky Labs found out, this is how they try to steal users' crypto assets or personal data. This has probably created quite a negative image of cryptocurrencies among Discord community members.

However, there could be another reason for this hatred. The growing popularity of mining cryptocurrencies has caused the prices of graphics cards to skyrocket. As a result, many gamers can not afford powerful graphics cards to play the games they want. It has also made the second-hand market much more unreliable. Cards that have been used for mining are out of order within a short period of time, and sellers tend to hide the fact that they have been used in this industry. As a result, the cryptocurrency industry brings a lot of problems for gamers. No wonder they do not like it.

Energy eaters

Of all the reasons cited by gamers, the environmental aspect seems to be the most ridiculous. After all, the video game industry is one of the biggest energy consumers in the world. According to a 2018 study by environmental research platform Grist, video gamers consume about 75 terawatt hours annually, which is equivalent to the capacity of 25 power plants.

At the same time, mining cryptocurrencies consumes about 91 terawatt-hours, Business Insider reports. Mining still leads the pack, but the difference is not that big. Moreover, miners tend to switch to green energy sources. As reported by CoinIdol, a world blockchain news outlet, around 78% of miners use renewable energy sources. The same can not be said for gamers. That probably makes miners more environmentally friendly.

Still, it seems like video gamers are not going to welcome the cryptocurrency industry. At least not until they have issues with the lack and affordability of graphics cards.