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
The price of mining changes based off of many factors. But simple measurements can determine profitability with relative ease.
Factoring for air conditioning costs in the winter is the hardest part. But reasonable estimates can be made. (EDIT: Assume 1 to 1 ratio. 100W of heat requires 100W of air conditioners, which is a gross overestimate of air conditioning costs. Look up your air conditioners efficiency specs if you really care)
Here is hoping my fellow gamers can get some good cards for a great price soon.
You can read the technical docs on how crypto works (particularly the sections on difficulty) to confirm this. Price has nothing DIRECTLY to do with profitablilty. It's the RATIO of price to difficulty... and price drops tend to bring difficulty drops.You really don't know how it works, do you?
IMO bullruns can be one of the worst times to mine, frankly. Too much difficulty rise from new interest.It really has little to do with price, as I keep saying. Profitability has to do with the ratio of price to the amount of miners present, determined by general mining interest (how many new miners are flowing in). It's very complex and you can't model it with just a price on the market, you have to consider the human side.
Obviously, if the price is higher, more tend to come though, so a lower price may help marginally.
Anyway, current card problems wont change. You are seeing mix of inflation, chip shortage and manufacturers/sellers actually liking cards being expensive. Very easy to drive price up, very hard to make it go down.
OK.
Most high quality power MOSFETs running at 80 C Junction will outlast most everything on a board. Will give you modern memory and Caps for sure if cooked will be an issue. Memory especially since it's much more specialized to replace.
I'd equate buying a mining car to buying a used rental. Need to be careful and could have been abused.
And the whole idea that you have to sit and hunt for that one piece of reasonably priced hardware sucks by itself.Remember people, corpos are not your friends.
BTC was in the beginning a alterntaive for FIAT Money but now its just a trading product like real estate.
I dont have BTC, i dont need BTC, not my problem yeah bad for gpu but what else fuck it.
This is bad reporting by a site I expect better from. This is an uninformed article I'd expect to see on some no name blog site.
After the last crash, people didn't seem too motivated to increase or revamp their mining farms.
Scalpers are also already thinking that scalping is a profitable "business". Even if bitcoin crashes even further, scalpers will still be around because they know this is easy money grab. I remember saw a video interview with a PS XBOX scalpers who said he has no regret or doesn't feel bad at all. He's even proud because he thinks he's helping other to make money from scalping "business" because based on his logic, whoever have the luxury to buy PS5 or XBOX should not mind spending extra 200-300 or more for it. The same goes for graphic card.
So yeah, if this continues PC gaming may become a hobby for the rich only.
It's like when those Chinese Bitcoin miners had to relocate to other countries. When they moved, they left their older and less efficient ASIC miners behind but they took their newer S19's and whatnot with them.And that's why Nvidia had no problem charging $1200 for the 2080ti and $700 for the 2080 back then. Remember how shocked and appalled everyone was over the price of Turding? I don't expect Nvidia to go easy on the pricing of Lovelace.