Cryptocurrencies are enduring its biggest bear run in more than a decade and it has a huge knock-on effect on the electronics used to mine it, most notably graphics cards. With crypto booming in 2021, prices of graphics cards, both new and on the reseller market, increased by hundreds of percentage points as the demand significantly outstripped supply. Crypto miners are now exiting the market in droves due to the prices of crypto slumping and mining operations not being profitable anymore. As a result, graphics cards mainly used in gaming are returning to MSRP with estimates saying the sales might decrease by a third.
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This will have a knock-on effect on the second-hand market as well. With gamers and enthusiasts now able to attain new graphics cards at normal prices again, their old cards will flood the used marketplace and those prices are also following suit downwards. The other factor is that Nvidia is expected to launch its upgraded RTX 4000 series of cards by the end of the year, which has some gamers holding off their new purchase.
“People don’t want to buy GPUs knowing they’re potentially going to be obsolete in two quarters,” said Tristan Gerra, an analyst at Robert W Baird & Co. “We believe that crypto-related purchases have steadily declined.” Nvidia’s share price nearly tripled in twelve months ending at its peak in November 2021 at around $330 per share, when the demand started to turn. Since then, it has more than halved as the demand continues to dry up in line with the crypto market slowdown.
“With less crypto demand, speculators have also withdrawn from the market,” industry researcher Jon Peddie said. In the past two months, the price of Nvidia’s GeForce 3080 model fell from $1,100 in late April to $793 on eBay, according to data from MarkSight. That’s good news for gamers, who can now get their hands on the hardware without paying a massive premium or waiting in long lines outside electronics stores or sitting on waiting lists for online stores.
