Fresh out of a Norton 360 controversy, Norton subsidiary Avira is also adding an Ether extraction feature to its antivirus product.
The company says the characteristic, which is on (and off by default), is designed to “mine cryptocurrency in a safer and easier way” by putting the processing power back inactive. Of course, safety and ease come at a considerable cost, reducing the already slim profits.
The rule of thumb is that your PC – and especially its GPU – might be better used when you’re doing something else, like mining the Ether coin from Ethereum.
But there is a catch
The unfortunate part of Norton’s plans for crypto mining is that Ethereum contains a structural weakness: gas fees (also known as transaction fees). According to Etherscan.io, you can expect to pay $ 33 to cover a single ETH transaction.
When combined with Norton’s 15% reduction in mining, users will have virtually nothing unless they fully engage their GPUs in mining, which will drive up the consumption costs. associated energy.
While other coins, like Solana, seek to reduce these fees, they are a fact of the cryptocurrency world and in some ways a barrier to its wider adoption. Consumers hate credit card fees, which are significantly lower than many ETH transactions.
On top of that, you are unlikely to mine that much. The edge find that one night of mining for ETH generated $ 0.66 in ETH and cost $ 0.66 in electricity, meaning they broke even.
