Cryptocurrency
This is Hollywood’s favorite crypto. | by RiskHedge Research | Coinmonks | Apr, 2025
Ever hear of the “Uber for pixels”?
A little-known crypto project is doing for rendering what Uber did for taxis.
It’s unlocking a massive pool of idle hardware and turning it into cold, hard cash.
It’s already helping power Netflix, Disney, and Apple productions. And it’s turning ordinary folks’ laptops and gaming rigs into mini Hollywood studios.
Yet most crypto investors never heard of it.
It vaulted Steve Jobs into the billionaire club.
Steve Jobs was one of the greatest inventors ever. Apple’s co-founder created the iPod… iPad… and iPhone. Not to mention the first “easy-to-use” computer, the Macintosh.
But did you know Jobs made his first billion off a kids’ movie?
Apple’s co-founder was the majority owner of Pixar, the animation studio behind hit movies Monsters, Inc.… Finding Nemo… and Toy Story, its debut film that ushered in a new era of filmmaking.
Toy Story was the first fully computer-generated movie. No live shots or movie sets. Every scene was created by computer software.
The movie raked in $360 million at the box office, putting Pixar on the map. In fact, it IPO’d on the stock market just 10 days after Toy Story hit the big screen. Steve Jobs owned 80% of Pixar shares… and the IPO made him a billionaire.
Pixar invented the art of using computers to create “life-like” animated images and film.
Rendering is involved in the making of almost every blockbuster film and TV series. It’s the foundation of the $220 billion videogame industry. Architects use 3D rendering software to design new buildings and see how they would look in real life.
Rendering is also key to manifesting the metaverse — the next version of the internet. A virtual world where you can work… learn… shop… attend concerts… hang out with friends… and do dozens of other real-life activities.
Big movie studios like Walt Disney Co. spend billions of dollars building their own giant render farms.
But that’s not feasible for companies and individuals who just want to produce a short film or a few images. They usually rent rendering space on the internet from the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. These firms have data centers full of GPUs, which anyone can tap into to render images and videos.
The problem is there are only so many GPUs available to rent. And a few large jobs can soak up every ounce of processing power from those GPUs. Those same GPUs used for rendering are also used for AI operations, making them even scarcer.
Luckily, Render Network (RNDR) invented the perfect solution for this problem.
GPUs aren’t confined to giant data centers.
Crack open any smartphone… tablet… laptop… or PC… and you’ll find a powerful GPU inside.
And here’s the thing… the majority of these graphics chips lie idle most of the time. We’re not using GPUs when we’re sleeping, commuting, or out for a jog. This represents a massive pool of untapped rendering power.
If just 1% of these chips were available to rent, it would boost rendering capacity. This is the potential Render Network is trying to unlock.
Render Network was created by Los Angeles-based OTOY, which dominates the rendering software market.
A few years back, OTOY’s founder Jules Urbach had an idea to create a network that could tap into the millions of idle GPUs. That’s exactly what Render achieves. It connects creators who need work rendered with folks looking to make a few bucks from their GPUs (like how Akash Network works, as I mentioned earlier).
Creators love Render. It gives them access to computing power previously reserved for giant Hollywood studios — and at a fraction of the cost, as I’ll show you in a moment.
It’s also great for folks who sign up to rent their idle GPUs. When your chip is used to render work, you get paid in Render’s crypto token (RENDER). Folks can then sell RENDER for real US dollars.
This way, everyone involved wins.
Creators can render projects cheaper and faster than ever before. Folks with spare GPUs earn some extra cash. Render Network sits in the middle, taking a small 0.5%–5% cut on each job. Users collect the other 95%+.
It’s like “Uber for rendering.” Most of us have cars. But research shows our cars sit idle for almost 23 hours a day, on average. Uber puts all this spare capacity to work connecting drivers with riders.
The app allowed anyone to become a taxi driver and make money chauffeuring folks around. On the flip side, users could ditch their cars and hail an Uber when they wanted to go somewhere.
Render is taking the same approach to transform graphics processing.
Not many folks know about Render. Even several crypto insiders I chatted with hadn’t heard about the project until recently.
But get this… founder Jules Urbach has been working on this idea for over a decade. He filed a patent for a crypto-based rendering service in 2009. Bitcoin was barely six months old at the time.
Render launched in April 2020 and now has tens of thousands of active users.
It already counts many of the world’s largest firms as paying customers. Disney… Netflix… HBO… Microsoft… Google… Apple… Amazon… Nike… and Tesla all tap into its network of GPUs.
Ever see the intro to HBO’s Westworld? It was produced in Render:
Ditto for scenes from Netflix’s hit The Crown… Marvel’s Captain Marvel… and Amazon’s Jack Ryan.
Google even shut down its own cloud-rendering division and adopted Render. Google’s head of product management said, “Render is a gamechanger for ultra-high-resolution production… machine-learning rendering workflows… and next-generation immersive media.”
Remember, there’s a major shortage of GPU capacity today. That means creators compete for every ounce of processing power… which pushes up prices.
Render unlocks the ocean of idle GPUs that were previously off-limits. With millions of new graphics chips available to rent, it makes rendering a lot cheaper and faster. Render’s own figures show it slashes the cost and time it takes to render jobs by 70%–90%.
Bottom line: Render is one of the best Web3 businesses today. It should continue to thrive in 2025 and beyond. Add some to your portfolio. You can buy Render on Coinbase.
P.S: Learn about two other small cryptos to buy in 2025 by clicking here.