You can almost see a glimpse of light in the cryptocurrency tunnel as China continues its crackdown on miners. GPUs have become a luxurious and rare commodity now due to their need in mining bitcoin. Bitcoin mining requires the solving of complex calculations that can only be efficiently done by GPUs. So miners set up bots that buy GPUs as soon as they come in stock. It’s not only the miners as scalpers also do the same and sell the GPUs double or triple their MSRP after buying them.
This coupled with the semiconductor shortage due to the pandemic has caused the prices of any device remotely related to semi-conductors to skyrocket. Large TV models have risen in price by as much as 30% since all this started. It’s safe to say that the cryptocurrency boom has left gamers in quite a pickle. You need the lasted generation cards if you want to play the most demanding games in high fidelity graphics.
But things seem to be finally taking a turn for the better. China has banned cryptocurrency mining and has since been cracking down on already established mining operations whilst stopping new ones from opening up again. This has forced many miners to sell off their GPUs which are useless since they can’t mine with them anymore. This has flooded the market with used GPUs and prices are starting to go down in China.
Many other countries might also follow suit with China and all of this means that you could finally see GPUs in the market that is closer to the MSRP than ever before. The miners selling their used GPUs also does bring up the question of whether should you buy these or not. The reality is that mined GPUs have gone through a continuous high-processing workload so their life is much lower than a card that was used the same amount for gaming.
China’s ban has also caused a big drop in the prices of many cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin used to be as high as over $63k but is now going for over $32,700 at the time of writing this article. That’s actually lower than yesterday’s price by the way. The price drop has also deterred new miners from entering the scene somewhat but the good news is that GPU prices are dropping in Europe as well.
Prices in the US are still high and stocks are emptied faster than a KFC on a Saturday night but we did hear news of the New York Senate passing a bill to ban bitcoin mining in the city but it failed to be passed by the New York Assembly.