Hot Hardware published a review on the AMD Threadripper Cryptocurrency Mining: How To Pay For A CPU In Just Months A quote from the article:

The effect cryptocurrency mining has had on the PC gaming industry, specifically the now sky-high cost of graphics cards, is profound. However, someday mining algorithms may change enough such that GPUs aren't the only non-specialized compute engines capable of processing cryptocurreny hash algorithms effectively, or at least aren't so dominant. That said, one fairly popular coin that's based on a CPU-optimized algorithm right now is called Monero. Monero or XMR utilizes the CryptoNight hashing algorithm (as do a few other altcoins). It also just so happens that AMD's Threadripper family of processors is relatively adept at mining it, or so we've learned recently...

 AMD Threadripper Cryptocurrency Mining: How To Pay For A CPU In Just Months @ HotHardware