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Clampdown on Crypto Mining Cuts China's GPU Prices Nearly 45 Percent

posted by martyb on Sunday June 27 2021, @07:12PM   Printer-friendly

upstart writes:

Clampdown On Crypto Mining Cuts China's GPU Prices Nearly 45 Percent:

China's non-stop effort to crack down on cryptocurrency mining farms has started to pay dividends. As the South China Morning Post reported today, graphics card pricing in the country has decreased substantially over the past few weeks. Following up on the South China Morning Post's tip, we've analyzed the historic pricing for various Ampere graphics cards. You can see the pricing trends in our breakdown below, but the clear takeaway is that pricing has receded as much as 45% since Beijing began pulling the plug on big mining farms around the country.

Besides being some of the best graphics cards for gaming, Nvidia's GeForce RTX 30-series (Ampere) cards are also very popular for cryptocurrency mining. It's impossible for us to look at pricing for every single Ampere model, so we randomly picked custom models from each tier to get a general idea of pricing behavior.

The price war is intense, so there's considerable pricing variation for the same graphics card model at different retailers. However, graphics card makers typically have their own online stores at major online retailers, such as Tmall, which is one of the biggest in China. We pulled the pricing from the official stores via Manmanbuy, a popular price tracker in China.

We observed a reduction in pricing up to 45% on some of Nvidia's latest graphics cards, such as the GeForce RTX 3060 — this mid-range Ampere card was one of the more popular models among mining farms in China. The higher-up models exhibited a smaller price reduction, though.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Username on Sunday June 27 2021, @09:13PM (3 children)

    by Username (4557) on Sunday June 27 2021, @09:13PM (#1150096)

    Or nvidia caught onto it and started making more to meet demand. Well, at least that is what a smart company would do. Buy our $5,000 USD dedicated crypto mining card. 30% faster than a graphics card.

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by EvilSS on Sunday June 27 2021, @09:27PM (2 children)

    by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Sunday June 27 2021, @09:27PM (#1150103)
    Yea, no one would buy those. Why buy a $5,000 crypto card that's only 30% faster than a $3,000 (at scalper prices no less) card, and has $0 resale value? You can buy all the cards you want if you want to pay scalper prices. And the GPUs will have a resale value after crypto mining crashes again, greatly increasing their ROI vs hash only cards. The only way the crypto cards make sense is if they are nearly free and in infinite supply. Otherwise, you are better off buying gaming GPUs.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 28 2021, @12:08AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 28 2021, @12:08AM (#1150158)

      Because it is also 50% cheaper to run when the TCO is calculated??

      NB: That was obviously an example scenario and not based on data....

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by EvilSS on Monday June 28 2021, @01:51PM

        by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 28 2021, @01:51PM (#1150323)
        Nope, despite what people who never mined thing, power is cheap for most miners. I am in the US and the cost for power for mining on my gaming PC is maybe 10% of what the card can generate in a day and that's in a shit market like now. Like I said, for the crypto cards to work, they would have to be nearly free and in unlimited supply. If I can buy a GPU, mine on it, then sell it for 75% (and that's being super conservative) of what I paid for it, my TCO is extremely low. That's why the mining only cards are a dumb idea.