A graphics card has always been the most precious item among gamers. High-end game graphics require better graphics cards. Until cryptocurrency prices went over the roof that is.
When that happened, it also brought the prices of graphics cards to an extreme level, since cryptocurrency mining demanded powerful GPUs (Graphics Processing Unit), embedded in those precious cards of gaming rigs. In the last months of 2017, almost all high-end cards were sold to miners, to build their mining rigs.
Nowadays those cards lost their value for miners due to several reasons:
- It is no longer profitable to mine individually because the required processing power can’t be matched in your parents’ basement anymore.
- It is no longer profitable because mining rigs are always power hungry, loud and require space.
Now, most individual miners are selling their rigs or at least some of their cards to be able to cut their losses. Gamers are happy again because they don’t need to pay double or more to graphics sellers for those cards.
Cryptocurrency mining is still profitable if you have a mining farm in Graphics climate or you are mining with specialized rigs. There are options like Comino, which mines Ethereum and Zcash while heating your room, but collecting GPU’s from the market and depending on them for mining is not profitable anymore.
It should be noted that even Nvidia (manufacturer of graphics cards) miscalculated their projections for 2018. According to the CFO of Nvidia, Colette Kress, company revenue projections suggested that the products related to cryptocurrencies would amount to about $100 million, and the actual revenue was $18 million.
Now there are a lot of high-end graphics cards which were listed $400-$500 last year, bought from secondary markets for $800 and put on sale for $200-$300.