Thursday, May 12th 2022
Bitcoin Bloodbath Brings Cheer to Gamers as Graphics Card Prices Plummet
Bitcoin, along with most cryptocurrencies are going through a cycle of devaluation. They may rebound in the future, but for now it means that crypto miners will halt purchases of graphics cards, and possibly even sell what they have, to raise capital for next-generation GPU purchases (late-2022). What this means is a flooding of the market with used graphics cards, which will put tremendous pressure on graphics card manufacturers to lower prices. It's also a means for NVIDIA and AMD to clear out their current-generation inventory, to make room for the next-gen. The inflection of all these factors brings cheer to PC gamers, who can finally have an NVIDIA "Ampere" or AMD RDNA2 graphics card at prices that are either at or below MSRP (launch prices).
Bitcoin has crashed nearly 60%, from its November 2021 price of 65,000 USD, to 27,150, as of this writing. This will have a direct impact on the economics of mining cryptocurrencies using power-hungry high-end graphics cards. Those with mining farms will look to stop mining, and possibly get rid of some of their graphics cards while their market-value are still at an acceptable level. The competition between pre-owned graphics cards and brand-new ones from the market, will bring down prices of both.NVIDIA recently announced the "Restocked and Reloaded" marketing campaign, where the company is reaching out to gamers, telling them that their RTX 30-series cards are back in stock, at MSRP pricing. AMD, on the other hand, has refreshed its RX 6000 series product stack with three new SKUs, signaling gamers that it has new hardware on the shelves.
An AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT can be had for as low as $899, which is also the price for the cheapest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080. The cheapest RTX 3060 Ti is $529, while the cheapest RX 6700 XT is $498. The cheapest RX 6600 XT is at $399, while the cheapest RTX 3060 is going for $419. Rejoice!
Bitcoin has crashed nearly 60%, from its November 2021 price of 65,000 USD, to 27,150, as of this writing. This will have a direct impact on the economics of mining cryptocurrencies using power-hungry high-end graphics cards. Those with mining farms will look to stop mining, and possibly get rid of some of their graphics cards while their market-value are still at an acceptable level. The competition between pre-owned graphics cards and brand-new ones from the market, will bring down prices of both.NVIDIA recently announced the "Restocked and Reloaded" marketing campaign, where the company is reaching out to gamers, telling them that their RTX 30-series cards are back in stock, at MSRP pricing. AMD, on the other hand, has refreshed its RX 6000 series product stack with three new SKUs, signaling gamers that it has new hardware on the shelves.
An AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT can be had for as low as $899, which is also the price for the cheapest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080. The cheapest RTX 3060 Ti is $529, while the cheapest RX 6700 XT is $498. The cheapest RX 6600 XT is at $399, while the cheapest RTX 3060 is going for $419. Rejoice!
122 Comments on Bitcoin Bloodbath Brings Cheer to Gamers as Graphics Card Prices Plummet
Why is this so hard to understand ?
RX480. Hasn’t hurt me. Actually saved me and my family 100s of dollars. I was waiting for price drops but now that I have been waiting so long I have lost interest. I will probably wait for 7k series to see if they have full DP 2.0 and a revised media engine. If I can get a 7600 for under $425 CAD I might buy one.
oh ya and crypto crash yes finally and good!! Lol
I dont see much reason to celebrate the current situation.
Just look at how Ethereum price correlates with Bitcoin's price.
Past 24hrs, Bitcoin:
Past 24hrs, Ethereum:
People are correct that Bitcoin isn't mined with GPUs, but when Bitcoin suffers, all other cryptocurrencies share the fate of dropping. If Bitcoin goes down, other coins go down that use GPUs and therefore the idea of buying up GPUs to mine becomes less profitable to a point where miners stop buying and then eventually start dumping.
The whole market is intertwined, and any hit to crypto leads to all cryptos falling, which leads to low profitability (because the only way to make money at this is to mine coins then hold and drive the price up). I think the recent actions against NFT scammers has a lot to do with this collapse too, there has been action against those pushing NFTs and the tax man is looking at others, it's spooked the whole market, and the whole point of NFTs was to drive up the price of crypto.
I remember picking-up a $250 Zotac Amp Edition refurb clearance for $140 - I'm hoping to grab a RTX 3060 for around $250 (or I can compromise on a 3050 for around $150, but I'll probably just throw that straiht in the HTPC)
I've just been waiting an extra year for cycling this 1060 to my HTPC for better HDR 4k gaming than my GT 960 can currently provide (1080p, with HDR-off)!
At new low low prices
By the way, have you seen a wolf lately?
A smart miner would buy the cheapest cards possible, using a overclocked premium card for mining makes no sense, it would be downright stupid to do so, a smart miner would under clock the card to make it more efficient, so manufactures that don't want them to be used for mining should focus on premium cards.
I've purchased new hardware and I've had it fail after a few uses.
Using your logic, based on my personal experiences, I shouldn't be buying new hardware because it's failed on me more often than my used, abused and aged hardware.