Following restrictions by the Chinese government on mining bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the country, graphics card (GPU) prices begin to show a decline. During 2020 and in recent months, the lack of stock it had generated significant increases in its value.
According to what was published by South China Morning Post this Monday, June 21, the price of these units has fallen more than 65% on electronic sales platforms. The main reason for the decline is lower demand from cryptocurrency miners, an activity whose furor had left the sector out of supply gamer, the main historical customers of manufacturing companies such as Nvidia or AMD.
According to the media quoted, the basic model Nvidia Quadro P1000 went from $ 463 to $ 375. Similarly, a more advanced card like the Asus RTX3060 dropped from $ 2,086 to $ 726 in just over a month. While the price may vary on other platforms outside the Asian continent, such as Amazon, prices are also going down on these as well.
While this could be beneficial for miners, who could get the necessary hardware for their mining equipment at a lower cost, the reality is that the outlook is not very favorable for this sector in China. As Crypto News reported, in recent weeks the authorities have imposed strong restrictions in various parts of the country for mining of cryptocurrencies.
Thus, the mining power (also known as hash rate) has suffered a significant decline. As reported by this media, in total it could have lost 57% of hash rate as a result of the five Chinese provinces that suspended mining activity on their territory.
GPU makers cornered by miners and gamers
In addition to generating historical highs in the prices of graphics cards, the unprecedented demand for these products, generated during the past year and the current, put in trouble the manufacturing companies, which had to look for the method to satisfy an immense and expanding niche such as miners without neglecting their lifelong customers, gamers.
That’s how the company Nvidia launched an exclusive model for Ethereum mining, which was called CMP HX. Its main competition, AMD, also did the same with the update of the Navi 12 model.
Finally, another measure Nvidia had to resort to was to limit the hash rate for mining some of its newer boards, such as the RTX 3060, RTX 3070 and RTX 3080, with the aim of limiting its use for running video games, its original purpose.