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Asia Morning Briefing: Are Distributed Compute Tokens Undervalued vs. CoreWeave (CRWV)?

Tech investors love to pay for potential. GameFi tokens, with sky-high valuations divorced from current user numbers or revenues, embody this optimism perfectly — as CoinDesk investigated in 2022, Decentraland's then billion-dollar market cap didn't quite match the number of active players on the platform.

But, surprisingly, distributed compute tokens don't seem to enjoy the same speculative premium even when compared to their Traditional Finance traded peers like CoreWeave (CRWV).

CoinMarketCap says the category of tokens for decentralized networks that provide GPU power for AI and other compute workloads, which includes well-known tokens like BitTensor, Aethir, and Render, is worth $12 billion.

At the same time, market data from research group MarketsandMarkets puts the value of the GPU as a service industry at around $8 billion this year, growing to $26 billion in 2030.

In contrast, CRWV closed Monday in New York at $163, putting its market cap at $79.2 billion. The company’s recent earnings forecast up to $5.1 billion in 2025 revenue, suggesting it trades at more than 15 times forward sales.

That kind of multiple might be justified in a high-growth environment, but CoreWeave also posted a $314.6 million net loss in the first quarter, driven in part by stock-based compensation and continued infrastructure buildout.

Despite this, investors continue to reward CoreWeave for its dominant position in centralized AI infrastructure with its stock up 300% year-to-date. The company is tightly integrated with Nvidia and has high visibility through contracts with OpenAI and other enterprise clients.

Meanwhile, decentralized compute networks are delivering similar services— AI inference, rendering, and compute power — without needing to raise billions in debt or equity as they act as a broker connecting existing GPUs to users, saving the capital expenditure of buying their own server farms.

These are not theoretical networks. They are functional systems already processing real workloads, and the brokerage model works for customers.

Yet their collective market value remains a fraction of CoreWeave’s. Certainly, they don't have the same level of workload running through their networks, but the gap is striking. While the market treats GameFi with irrational exuberance, distributed compute tokens may be suffering from the opposite problem.

Despite addressing the same market need as CoreWeave, and in some ways offering a more capital-efficient and globally scalable model without the eye-watering CapEx, they remain modestly valued.

Justin Sun-Backed SRM Entertainment Announces $100 Million TRX Staking Move

SRM Entertainment (Nasdaq: SRM), soon to rebrand as TRON Inc., has staked its entire treasury of 365 million TRX tokens through JustLend, a move that could yield an annual return of up to 10%, according to a release.

The move comes on the heels of a $100 million investment round closed earlier this month to fund what the company calls a “TRON treasury strategy,” essentially, a public market vehicle modeled on bitcoin-holding firms like MicroStrategy, but for TRX.

That structure provides equity investors with indirect exposure to a network that plays a dominant role in USDT stablecoin settlement, particularly in the Global South, where TRON-based Tether serves as a dollar lifeline – arguably a 'Visa IPO' moment for the region's economy.

Sogni AI Debuts Mainnet, SOGNI Token to List on Kraken, MEXC, Gate.io

Sogni AI, a decentralized platform for generative AI workflows, has launched its mainnet and will list its native token, SOGNI, on Kraken, MEXC, and Gate.io.

SOGNI is the utility token of the Sogni Supernet. It is used for compute payments, staking, governance, and access to advanced application features.

The mainnet launch includes deployments on Base, an Ethereum Layer-2 developed by Coinbase, and Etherlink, a Tezos-based EVM-compatible Layer-2 using Smart Rollups. In a release, the platform said this chain-agnostic approach is designed to balance scalability and accessibility.

The project’s stated goal is to create an open and economically sustainable environment for creative AI applications, combining Web3 infrastructure with user tools that resemble Web2 services in usability.

The platform also uses a non-transferable credit system called Spark Points, which are fixed-value rendering credits that can be purchased or earned within the Sogni ecosystem.

Users interact with the network through three core applications: Sogni Web, Sogni Pocket, and Sogni Studio. Creators submit generative AI jobs, while node operators, or “Workers,” provide GPU resources and are compensated in SOGNI tokens.

Market Movements:

  • BTC: Bitcoin is trading at $107,200, holding a strong support zone after a 14,695 BTC volume spike near $107K, with traders eyeing a potential breakout toward $115,000.
  • ETH: Ethereum rebounded sharply from a 3.4% intraday drop, currently trading at $2,480, forming a V-shaped recovery off $2,438 support, as institutional inflows continue despite broader market uncertainty.
  • Gold: Gold is trading at $3,310.95, rebounding from a one-month low as a weaker dollar and Fed pressure offset risk-on sentiment.
  • Nikkei 225: Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed Tuesday as investors weighed Wall Street’s record highs against looming uncertainty from Trump’s expiring 90-day tariff reprieve, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 down 0.58%
  • S&P 500: Stocks climbed Monday as the S&P 500 rose 0.52% to a record close of 6,204.95, capping a strong month.

Elsewhere in Crypto:

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A Startup Is Looking to Pay 30% Yield by Tokenizing AI Infrastructure

Compute Labs, a startup that turns the industrial-grade GPUs that power AI data centres into fractionalized yield-bearing tokens, and enterprise AI cloud firm NexGen Cloud, have joined forces to begin distributing ownership of a $1 million “public vault,” the companies said on Wednesday.

The power and profitability of AI infrastructure are largely centralized and generally confined to hyperscalers like AWS or large venture-backed firms. However, Compute Labs is attempting to bring its token holders direct access to the earning potential of enterprise hardware such as NVIDIA H200 GPUs, which would retail at around $30,000 for a single unit.

“For investors, this pilot [project] represents the first-ever opportunity to earn stablecoin yield directly from live AI compute without having to manage the hardware or rely on overvalued public equities,” Compute Labs said in a press release.

Europe’s NexGen, which gives its customers access to AI computing power and had raised $45 million in April, will handle the initial financing through its investment arm InfraHub Compute.

How it works

The funds raised will be used by InfraHub to buy GPUs, which will then be fractionalised for investors and customers, according to the press release.

The first “vault” has already raised $1 million from investors. The initial vault will have top-of-the-range NVIDIA GPUs, which are currently used for “AI training and inference,” the firm said. The firms are projecting to have a yield, in USDC, that might go over 30% per year based on active enterprise GPU rental agreements.

Nikolay Filichkin, chief business officer at Compute Labs, talks to the type of data center operators who might have additional floor space and are looking to add extra capacity; the data center equivalent of “mom and pop shops,” he said in an interview with CoinDesk.

“When the data center is using the GPU owned by an investor, Compute Labs manages that through its protocol and balance sheet, and leases the GPUs to the data center,” Filichkin said in an interview. “The net revenue, minus things like hosting and energy costs, goes back to the investor who owns a slice of the GPU processing power.”

The firms tokenize and fractionalize these GPUs within the vaults, which can then be offered to individual investors in increments of a few hundred dollars. NFTs are also used to distinguish between varying types of tokenized GPU hardware investments.

Compute Labs is backed by Protocol Labs, OKX Ventures, CMS Holdings and Amber Group, among others. The firm operates with a flat 10% fee structure across tokenization, asset management and performance yield.

“This model assigns concrete, tradable value to each GPU cycle, rationalizing the AI market by removing the speculation of investors, and directly linking supply, demand, and price,” said Youlian Tzanev, co-founder and chief strategy officer at NexGen Cloud.

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Can you mine Bitcoin with a gaming PC? Here’s what you need to know

Can you mine Bitcoin with a gaming PC? Here’s what you need to know

Is your gaming PC capable of mining crypto?

As of May 2025, Bitcoin mining is looking attractive again. With Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $95,000 and transaction fees hitting new highs after the 2024 halving, mining rewards — though smaller — are worth chasing. From home setups to industrial-scale farms, the question of whether Bitcoin mining is profitable is back in the spotlight.

And if you’re a gamer, chances are you’ve looked at your rig and wondered: Can a gaming PC mine crypto? After all, modern gaming computers are packed with powerful GPUs, solid cooling and lots of downtime, especially if you’re not gaming daily. It’s a fair question: Can you mine Bitcoin with a gaming PC?

The short answer: Yes, but it won’t be worth it. 

The long answer: 

Understanding Bitcoin mining

Mining is the process that adds new BTC to circulation. More importantly, it’s how the Bitcoin network stays secure and functions without a central authority. Every time someone sends or receives Bitcoin, miners verify and record that transaction.

This is all powered by proof-of-work (PoW), a consensus mechanism where miners race to encode transactions in a format that is acceptable to the network. It’s essentially just a massive guessing game, where miners try different inputs until one generates a hash with enough leading zeroes to meet the network’s current difficulty target.

For example, a valid Bitcoin block might start with something like 00000000000000000000956e9ff76455…. The first miner to hit that valid hash wins the reward: currently 3.125 BTC, plus transaction fees.

The issue is, to generate that many leading zeroes in 2025, you’re looking at around 10³¹ hash attempts on average to produce a valid hash.

As you can imagine, that takes a lot of power.

Did you know? The energy used to mine a single Bitcoin block today could power an average US household for over 10 years. That’s the cost of making sure the network stays decentralized and tamper-proof.

From CPUs to ASICs: How mining hardware evolved

It didn’t use to be this hard to mine Bitcoin. As more miners joined the network and the total computing power surged, the protocol automatically ramped up the difficulty. 

That’s by design. Bitcoin adjusts to keep block times steady at around 10 minutes, no matter how much horsepower is thrown at it.

Back in 2009, Bitcoin mining for beginners meant using a regular laptop CPU. Then came the rise of GPUs — graphics cards originally built for gaming — which dramatically improved mining performance.

But then came ASICs, application-specific integrated circuits, designed solely to mine Bitcoin. These machines are vastly more powerful and energy-efficient than any GPU. By 2015, they had effectively taken over the mining scene.

Fast forward to 2025: ASICs still reign supreme. If you’re wondering about the best setup for mining Bitcoin on PC, know that ASIC vs. GPU mining isn’t a fair fight anymore. That doesn’t mean your gaming rig is useless, but it does mean you’ll want to consider alternative strategies.

Did you know? After Sept. 30, 2025, 4GB GPUs will no longer work due to DAG size limits. 

Gaming PCs vs. ASIC miners

Bitcoin mining with a gaming PC, even with a high-end GPU like the RTX 4090, is inefficient and unlikely to be profitable due to low performance, high energy costs and hardware wear-and-tear compared to ASIC miners.

Performance: Can your GPU keep up?

Let’s say you’re using an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 — top of the line. Sounds heavy-duty, right?

Not for Bitcoin GPU mining.

That card might do well on other algorithms like Ethash (used in Ethereum Classic), but when it comes to Bitcoin’s SHA-256, it barely scratches the surface. Even the mighty RTX 4090 gets crushed by ASICs. A high-end ASIC like the Antminer S21 Pro pumps out 200 terahashes per second (TH/s) — that’s trillions of hashes per second, compared to maybe a few hundred megahashes per second from a GPU. That’s a millionfold difference.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090

Efficiency: The electricity bill tells the real story

Let’s talk about power. A GPU like the 4090 pulls around 450 watts. But the hashing performance it delivers is minuscule compared to the watts consumed. ASICs, by contrast, draw more power (e.g., 3,500 watts) but deliver far better output — roughly 17.5 joules per terahash.

In short, even if you’re mining Bitcoin on a gaming PC 24/7, the energy cost per dollar earned is painful. Is Bitcoin mining profitable with a gaming PC? Not really. Especially when you factor in cooling, hardware strain and your local energy prices.

Economics: Does it make any sense?

Even with low electricity rates, the ROI on mining Bitcoin from home with a gaming computer is near zero — if not outright negative. Solo mining? Forget it. The chances of hitting a block are microscopic. Pool mining? Your contribution is so small compared to ASIC farms that the payouts will be negligible.

And then there’s the wear and tear. GPUs weren’t designed to run at full capacity around the clock. Long-term mining can shorten their lifespan and may void warranties.

Did you know? WhatToMine is a useful site that shows what coins are most profitable to mine with your exact setup. Just plug in your GPU, and it does the rest.

Alternative cryptocurrencies for gaming PCs

If Bitcoin mining on PC feels like bringing a Nerf gun to a tank fight, don’t lose hope. There are still coins designed to be mined with GPUs in 2025 — and some even reward users fairly for it.

Let’s take a look at such cryptocurrencies:

Ethereum Classic (ETC): GPU-friendly legacy chain

Still using the Ethash algorithm, Ethereum Classic (ETC) is a solid option for GPU miners. Blocks are mined every 13 seconds with a 3.2 ETC reward. 

Ravencoin (RVN): Built for the people

Ravencoin uses KAWPOW, an algorithm specifically designed to resist ASIC domination. It’s friendly to GPU miners and offers quick one-minute blocks with 2,500 Ravencoin (RVN) rewards. Mining altcoins with GPU setups is still very viable here.

Monero (XMR): Privacy-first and CPU/GPU accessible

Monero relies on the RandomX algorithm, making it accessible to both CPU and GPU miners. You won’t get rich, but it’s a way to earn passively, especially if you’ve got cheap electricity and want passive income from mining.

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Making Sense of Web3’s Burgeoning AI Ecosystem

Although the intersection of Web3 and AI has great potential, there is a lot of confusion about this emerging technology in the market today. Mapping out the GPU supply chain, layers of the tech stack, and various competitive landscapes can help investors better understand the ecosystem and make more informed investment decisions, says David Attermann, at M31 Capital.

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Render Delivers With 40% Gain As RNDR Dominates Sunday Charts

Among the top gainers on Sunday, CoinMarketCap shows that Render (RNDR) has achieved a 41% growth over the past week. The crypto actually dominated the roster of the day’s leading coins.

Render (RNDR) has been among the top performing crypto assets in the last few weeks. Render allows owners of the increasingly powerful graphics processing units (GPUs) industry to deliver computing power during periods of low demand.

Render (RNDR) – At A Glance

The Render (RNDR) Network is a blockchain-powered, decentralized, high-performance, distributed-computing platform. It was developed to help businesses in the film, animation, gaming, and architecture industries complete complicated rendering projects quickly and affordably.

To fulfill the need of large-scale rendering projects, the RNDR Network offers a scalable and decentralized solution by letting users leverage underutilized GPU capacity from other network participants to speed up their rendering processes.

The RNDR coin is the in-network currency that may be exchanged for computer power, staked for network rewards, and used to elect leaders. In sum, the RNDR Network utilizes blockchain technology and distributed computing in an effort to completely overhaul the rendering process.

Network Gains Traction And Attention

It’s no surprise that Render has been getting a lot of attention lately, what with the proliferation of the metaverse and the growing need for rendering services in a wide range of enterprises. So, the recent uptick in RNDR should not come as a surprise: widespread consensus among the rendering community to get ready for the inevitable increase in demand.

Render debuted in 2017 and spent the first half of 2018 in private sale. Render takes advantage of Ethereum’s built-in security features when uploading and transferring nodes to operators, as the network is based on the Ethereum blockchain.

RNDR Rallies Strong

At the time of writing, RNDR was trading at $2.47, up 41% in the last week. Over the course of a two-week timeframe, the token has rallied 46%, while maintaining a solid 93% increase in the monthly period, data from crypto market tracker Coingecko shows.

Render Network Proposal 002 and Render Network Proposal 003 have both recently been given the green light by the Render project’s governance section.

The goal of RNP-002 is to allow for more users to take part in the network’s decentralized infrastructure by adding more Layer 1s.

To integrate the Solana network into its services, RNDR holders voted overwhelmingly in favor of the idea.

On the other hand, RNP-003, which was also accepted by the Render Network community with a two-thirds majority, concerns itself with the accumulation and distribution of project funds.

The objective is to provide the organization with the tools and infrastructure it needs to carry out its objectives. It can then focus on its mission and the expansion of the network.

-Featured image from Invezz

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China Reports GPU Price Fall To All-Time Low Post Ethereum Merge

The successful Ethereum upgrade to proof-of-stake consensus is receiving more backlashes from the market. Therefore, the Ethereum upgrade should produce only positive feedback, but where there are merits, demerits must exist.

One of the aftermath challenges the industry faced since the Ethereum upgrade was the drop in GPU prices. Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) in crypto mining increased over the years because they proved very efficient.

GPU companies were earning huge profits due to the increased demand from ETH miners. However, it is no longer so, as the price of GPUs has dropped drastically over the past three months. Furthermore, the prices of GPUs dropped further after the upgrade.

Is Ethereum Merge Major Cause Of GPU price Crash?

South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that GPU prices in China dropped to the lowest due to the Ethereum merge. ETH mining has reduced. So miners’ demand for GPU went low. Miners’ demands for expensive cards such as GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 became low and caused a reduction in price to trice the factory prices.

Also, due to the China mining ban and COVID lockdown, the demand for costly GPUs fell and worsened during the bear market. A Shanghai trader, Peng, told SCMP that RTX 3080 dropped by over 37% in the last three months.

According to Peng, the price of RTX 3080 went from 8000 yuan ($1,140) to less than 5000 yuan (%712). Peng attributed the drop in the price of GPUs to the poor condition of the crypto market.

Ethereum mining was one of the highest contributors to the high demand for GPUs in the past years. Traders noticed a slump in GPU prices as the Ethereum merge drew near.

Ethereum price climbs above $1,300 l ETHUSDT on Tradingview.com

SCMP reported that retailers at ‘Buy Now,’ a large electronics market in Shanghai, are experiencing low GPU demand.

Retailers Lower GPU Prices

Chinese retailers reduced factory-suggested GPU prices by over 33% in a few weeks to sell their equipment. The reason for this is the crypto bear market and GPU correction market.

According to data from Baidu, traders are losing the selling price compared to the factory cost of GPUs. Analysts estimated that the average price drop of GPUs per week is about 10%.

Some reports show that NVIDIA, a large GPU manufacturer, is reducing the price of their GPU for board partners. This report is still unconfirmed, but it would likely cause further reduction in the coming weeks.

Although the crash in GPU prices may adversely affect many businesses, others think it marks the end of two years of nightmare. Many GPU retailers would previously raise the prices as high as possible because of the high demand by miners.

The crash in GPU prices could prove beneficial to AI coders, gamers, and other users because Crypto miners caused an unnecessary increase in GPU prices.

Featured Image From Pixabay, Charts From Tradingview