Friday, January 21st 2022
Bitcoin Drops Below the $40,000-mark, Raises Hopes of Graphics Card Availability
The most popular cryptocurrency by market-cap, Bitcoin, has dropped in value to below the USD $40,000-mark, to $38,429 as of this writing. This amounts to a whopping 43% drop in value from its November 2021 peak of roughly $67,600. Ethereum has also seen an 8% fall over the past 24 hours, as has the value of several other cryptocurrencies. While we won't get into the nuts and bolts of Bitcoin volatility or hand out any financial advice, this could have an impact on graphics card availability owing to a multitude of reasons.
As of this writing, we see the GeForce RTX 3080 commanding a scalper price of roughly $1,500 (brand new), for the LHR variant (lower crypto-mining performance), while non-LHR cards that are used, start around $1,900. If the fall in cryptocurrencies continues, we could see increased availability of used graphics cards from crypto miners, as gamers would be willing to buy a used RTX 30-series or RX 6000 series graphics card that's still within its warranty period (of 2 years).
Sales of used cards by miners will apply pressure on scalpers hording new cards to cut prices, more so as they'd be trying to sell newer batches of RTX 30-series cards that are LHR. Add to all this, the next-generation crypto-mining ASICs are on the anvil, including Bitmain's Antminer S19 XP, and Intel's "Bonanza Mine" ASIC that the company plans to unveil next month. The arrival of ASIC miners usually triggers an increase in the mining difficulty algorithm, which should worsen the performance/Dollar of GPUs in mining applications. The compound effect of all these, we predict, could briefly improve graphics card availability in 1H-2022. A continued fall in the value of cryptocurrencies will only accelerate this.
Sources:
Google Finance, CNBC
As of this writing, we see the GeForce RTX 3080 commanding a scalper price of roughly $1,500 (brand new), for the LHR variant (lower crypto-mining performance), while non-LHR cards that are used, start around $1,900. If the fall in cryptocurrencies continues, we could see increased availability of used graphics cards from crypto miners, as gamers would be willing to buy a used RTX 30-series or RX 6000 series graphics card that's still within its warranty period (of 2 years).
110 Comments on Bitcoin Drops Below the $40,000-mark, Raises Hopes of Graphics Card Availability
Also, this drop in price happened before - BTC went from 63K to 32K over 100 days, people got excited, graphics cards prices didn't change much at all, then it went back up again to hit 69K (nice). It is now at 40K, but we have no way of predicting how far it'll fall, if it does any more. Personally I think Intel's Bonanza Mine might hurt the situation instead of help it, but I'm no expert.
And if Bitcoin is falling, that just means those who gamble with it will start buying it again. I see no end to the intentional volatility of BTC until it's neutered by regulation or other means.
this is the new world we live in.
until companies wise up and stop all online sales and move to in-person store sales, this will never end.
but no one ever ******* listens to me so eh.
The only hope something like this offers you is that new potential miners read the headlines and think "nope, can't make money..." without understanding it. That might happen, time will tell.I'm nearly certain of that.Exactly. The bitcoin ASIC boat sailed in 2016, @btarunrThis has already happened more than once with North Korea... Just sayin'
I was actually a fairly medium scale miner for a long time so I know what goes...
But it will only last until they figure out the next GPU-Compute Coin to resume their wasted time on (but it could take awhile if everyone sells their GPUs to buy more Etherium)
This system has never been tried before (so it could have a longer-term-effect than any previous crypto crash has had.)
I'll be selling my mining GPUs with correctly-flashed original BIOSes at some point and when looking for a used 3080Ti or 3090 for myself I will be choosing cards sold openly as ex-mining cards in preference to ones owned by gamers. A good card will be listed as an ex-mining card along with the type of coin it was mining, when the last repad was performed, whether it's had a fan replacement etc. In the past I've posted images of the rigs they came out of before removing them and that seemed to secure a very high amount of interest from buyers - far more than when I sold my non-mining vega56 at around the same time.
Mine have been maintained, cooled and looked after far better than the poor workhorses in my gaming rigs. For me the fact that they've had a constant, stable, workload without thermal cycling and have run undervolted their entire life is a serious benefit to the remaining lifespan of the card.
If you want crypto to actually fall, ban it everywhere. That's the only way.
tulipcrypto mania!