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.
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
www.freep.com/story/money/cars/general-motors/2021/09/02/gm-semiconductor-chip-shortage-assembly-plants-close/5694047001/
www.autonews.com/automakers-suppliers/ford-idles-cuts-output-8-plants-chip-supplies-still-tight
www.theregister.com/2021/10/15/toyota_chip_shortages/
www.proremodeler.com/global-microchip-shortage-worsens-appliance-delays-may-last-until-2022I'm not saying that Desktops / Laptops demand weren't elevated last year.
I'm saying that when you have these talking heads talking about CHIP SHORTAGE, they're talking about the idle factories and disrupted supply chains that reverberated across America for nearly a year. The CHIP SHORTAGE (40nm-class) was epic, on a level almost never before seen.
The "chip shortage" (7nm class) was... a bit worse than normal but within the realm of reason. And I cite DDR4 / NAND Flash as proof of this, which really wasn't affected.
7nm factories are different than 40nm factories, and both are "chips". The fact that Presidents / Prime Ministers moved to secure more chips was more about the 40nm and 28nm classes used by the automotive industry (and other manufacturing firms), rather than the high-tech stuff like 7nm or 5nm stuff that we techies like to use.
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As such, I blame "GPU Shortages" on the cryptocoin community, as profitability was through the roof for all of 2021. Again, who builds computers with 8x GPUs per computer, but the same amount of RAM / NAND Flash as before? Cryptocoin miners. And the supply-chain disruptions (for us high-tech 7nm users) were almost entirely centered upon GPUs, not on DDR4, Flash, or other components.
"Chip shortage (40nm+ class)" is different from "Chip shortage (7nm class)". That's my point. Low-tech chips ran out completely, to the point where Ford / GM / Toyota just closed down their factories temporarily, and appliance makers also shut down.
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You're talking about "Chip shortage (7nm class)", which... was negligible in comparison. We never saw a disruption to DDR4 RAM or NAND Flash supply. Or hell, even CPU supply was 100% fine all of last year. Only GPUs were in a shortage. As usual, the CPUs would sell-out upon release, but after a week or two things were fine again.
When people talk about "COVID19 chip shortage", they aren't talking about us techies. They're talking about low-tech chips for manufacturers.
AMD buys X amount of wafers from TSMC, Covid strikes & demand spikes up at least 20% across the board, you don't remember the 5xxx series availability in the last two years? So what does AMD do ~ invest more in securing higher capacity for their dGPU or just sell every CPU they can make, especially EPYC, & then try their hand at IC version of Russian Roulette?
It's relatively easier for Nvidia because dGPU is their bread & butter, shifting or apportioning capacity between their consumer & enterprise lines is much easier for them as compared to AMD who have what 10 different major product lines?
Basically I'm blaming (both) manufacturers & OEM's more for this (pricing) mess than the cryptocoin bubble which seems to have popped.
What did we run out of? GPUs. And GPUs only. Why would we run out of GPUs only? Is there any particular customer who was beyond-the-norm profitable in 2020 and 2021 that would have gobbled up every GPU they could get their hands on?
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If this really was a broad-market 7nm shortage, like you allege, then we would have run out of laptops, phones, and desktops last year. But we didn't. We only ran out of GPUs. You need to explain why the GPU market was specifically in high-demand, and no other market (CPU, NAND Flash, or DDR4 RAM) was in high-demand.
Just checked local micro center
There is no plummet only new thing is reserve is live on instock gpu's so fake news on the plummet bit :laugh:
AMD 6900xt cards in particular are nearly MSRP at my Microcenter at $950 right now.
But its not like Intel ran out of chips last year.
I think you have a point on the consoles, which could be explained by the COVID19 situation (more people indoors, fewer people on trips). But the Nintendo Switch (NVidia-made chips) didn't run out. Since its "just" AMD who ran out of chips in this example, the common-thread / occam's razor is that AMD didn't buy enough chip capacity from TSMC.
USDC is holding steady, as always.
Why did Rx 6900 xt graphics card prices drop by $500 over the past few weeks? PS5 and XBOX are still sold out everywhere. The only thing that has changed is that Ethereum has gone from $3500 to $2000ish highly suggesting a change in miners. Gamers are still buying up PS5 / XBOX consoles at the same rate.
GPUs are suddenly available at MSRP. This sudden supply glut coincides with a historic Ethereum crash.
that post has more creditability.
People have enough faith in that to assign US dollar as the world's primary coin to determine value and trade assets. They work and earn dollars directly too.
Everything in the economy is about faith.
PayPal offers realistic return rates on dollar deposits. Something funky is going on with Gemini or USDC here.
There is no risk-free AAA bond or security earning that amount in a short term deposit account.
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PayPal, as a bank, is required to be backed by short term money market accounts, real dollars, and US Bonds (which at best, yield 3% right now)
Since Gemini can offer 6+% and still make a profit on USDC, that basically proves that USDC is being backed by something riskier than money market and bonds.