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Comment by mywittyname | Hacker News Reader

I doubt it.

If Valve isn't locking the hardware down, but is subsidizing it, then they might run into a situation where cryptominers (or some other group) start buying these things up in bulk, but never playing any games on them.

I could see owning one of these as a non-gaming desktop.

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They actually did a pretty smart thing, where you can only order it if you have a steam account that has spent money on steam before this month. I would guess that they also limit the amount of Steam Decks you can order as a single person so it would be some effort to start buying these things up in bulk.

Genius. Man everything about this excites me for the first time in a long time, about anything

For what coins is PC hardware competitive with ASIC?

Ethereum, because there are not ASICs for it. See the news about recent crackdowns on mining in China, that's where all the GPUs were at, mining Ethereum.

Ethereum is moving away from proof of work

While this is true they are taking their time. Here is an article from 2017 that suggests they will have finished the transition to proof of stake by 2018:

https://www.crypto-news.net/what-does-ethereums-proof-of-sta...

I'm just making up hypothetical my friend. I can't really predict what these might be useful for as an alternative to gaming, but the world is full of bright people who exploit any opportunity.

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