Since the end of 2020, the price of graphics cards has risen on average by $100. Available models are snapped up instantly, and high-performance devices have completely disappeared from open sale. Not least in this craze were cryptocurrency miners, пишут Vedomosti.
Miners’ interest is explained by the rise in the price of Ethereum from $368 to $1300.
While the payback period for equipment lasts only a few months, miners are buying graphics cards in batches of 1,000 directly from suppliers, so devices do not reach stores.
Experts consulted by the publication say that miners’ calculations do not always match reality. The payoff period for equipment is influenced not only by sharp cryptocurrency price fluctuations but also by rising mining difficulty as new miners enter the market. As a result, they earn fewer coins.
Miners have worsened an already difficult situation with components: due to the COVID-19 pandemic and idle production of graphics cards, supply problems arose as early as the second quarter of 2020. Added to this was high demand for new gaming GPUs from Nvidia and AMD,
According to the expert, the shortage in the graphics-card market is set to last until mid-2021.
To mitigate the problem, manufacturers began strict regulation of released graphics cards by partners and issuing special mining versions of devices without HDMI output, so gaming cards reach ordinary users.
According to analysts from Avito, in Russia since the end of November 2020 there was increased demand for equipment for cryptocurrency mining. Over the course of a month, the number of corresponding queries increased by 45%. At the same time, the number of advertisements for mining equipment fell.
Against the backdrop of the rise in the price of bitcoin at the end of 2020, miners’ revenues reached record highs.
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