Razer has a new cryptocurrency mining program and it’s an awful scam

Don’t fall for this

Remember those fundraiser catalogs from elementary school, the ones where kids sell a ton of shit door-to-door with grand hopes of earning some overpriced plastic trinket? Razer just launched a new program that’s ostensibly the same thing — except it’s cryptocurrency mining instead of candy sales. And the rewards are Razer peripherals. And it’s actively bad for the environment.

Razer Softminer is an initiative to turn inactive PCs into moneymakers. It’s proprietary software of Razer’s that serves to harness a person’s GPU power to mine cryptocurrency when the PC isn’t running other applications. Theoretically, anyone can do this on their own, but Razer has made it particularly user-friendly.

However, it’s Razer that gets to keep all the crypto profits. Razer Softminer is a loyalty program that pays out in Razer Silver. Razer states that it’s possible to earn up to 500 Silver per day (presumably if you keep Softminer running for 24 hours). Silver can be exchanged for select rewards.

As someone on Twitter points out, the most expensive reward is the Huntsman Elite keyboard which costs 280,000 Silver. It normally retails for $200. Earning it through Softminer (at a rate of 500 Silver per day) will take approximately 560 days. That’s more than a year and a half of running your PC nonstop for $200 in value. You will far exceed that amount in increased electricity bills and wear-and-tear to your graphics card. Also, inexplicably, the Silver expires after a year which means it’s functionally impossible to buy the Huntsman Elite exclusively through Softminer.

Don’t fall for this scam. If you’re going to get into crypto mining, you might as well keep the spoils. The extremely-occasional PC peripheral doesn’t cut it. Razer’s just hoping there are enough idiots who download the software without really thinking it through.

Razer Softminer [Razer]