AMD Radeon RX 500 series graphics cards, particularly the RX 580 and 570, have been out of stock for weeks now owing to the cryptocurrency mining craze. The market had shifted away from GPU mining a couple of years back after several China based companies launched specialized ASICs that were much faster and more power efficient at resolving the block chain equations necessary to mine Bitcoin and Litecoin, the Gold and Silver of cryptocurrencies.
However GPU mining has seen a massive resurgence over the past little while due to the rising popularity of ASIC resistent coins. Chief among which is Etherium which has seen its price more than triple in a matter of months. AMD's Add-In-Board partners have caught on to this and have already started directly advertising to miners.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @05:28PM
Processing power will accumulate around the most successful operations. Decentralization will never result from the fact that Joe Miner can afford to run mining hardware, but rather from the fact that geopolitical considerations will always result in multiple successful operations dotting the planet.
Decentralization results from mutually hateful world powers having to compete with each other.