Cryptocurrencies and graphic cards in packs of 6: this has to stop already

[OyaYansa]

Bitcoin may have fallen in half, but the cryptocurrency fever keeps growing. The Bitcoin is just the tip of the iceberg of what is already a market of dozens of cryptocurrencies that arise like mushrooms under the stones.

If one falls, it does not matter. Another replaces it. If one can no longer be mined, it is the same, the rest is mined and exchanged for the most booming cryptocurrency, with the sole purpose of speculating.

Leaving aside the whole economic fabric, this fever to get rich speculating is seriously damaging the PC gaming market. Damage that has already begun to affect developers and game sales stores, to the extent that many PC gamers, faced with a shortage of graphics cards or inflated prices that triple their original value, are opting not to renew your equipment or, directly, move to the consoles.

To mine cryptocurrencies you need processing power, and that's what gaming graphics cards are responsible for. We talked about it a couple of weeks ago, but the situation is getting worse. The rush to acquire graphic cards to mine cryptocurrencies has reached a point where, as PC Gamer has discovered, intermediaries sell graphic cards in packs of 6, at a price that triples their market value. Even so, the packs run out in a matter of minutes:

The image pack, consisting of 6 GTX 1060 cards, has been sold at a price of 3,780 dollars, which means that each GTX 1060 card costs 630 dollars. His starting price was 218 dollars. Despite this, the packs run out in minutes. And something similar happens in physical stores. It's easy to enter a store and meet someone who buys 10-in-10 graphic cards ...

To mine cryptocurrencies not only graphic cards are needed that are connected in parallel, but also a large consumption of electricity, since it is a hardware that consumes a lot. That is why the mining of cryptocurrencies has a great boom in countries where electricity is cheap, such as China or Russia, and even the United States. It is not a big business in Spain, where electricity is very expensive. But in a global market, the scarcity of graphic cards in countries with high mining demand, makes the price rise in the rest. And things are going to get worse, now that it has been announced that the price of silicon will go up by 20%.

The irony of the case is that there are still people who believe that buying 4 or 5 cards and riding a cryptocurrency miner in their house, will get rich. Who more power of process contributes more earns, and in China, where the electricity is almost free, already exist ships dedicated to mine cryptocurrencies, with thousands of graphic cards working in parallel:

Does anyone really think they can compete with that at the domestic level?

Mining and trading with cryptocurrencies is fashionable, and there are even people who boast about it, despite the fact that the concept behind it is speculative and anti-ecological. Using cryptocurrencies has no merit. It only demands money to buy the equipment or buy bitcoins, and consume electricity as if there were not a morning, regardless of the pollution and exploitation of resources behind that electricity consumption, which has skyrocketed in many countries.

The concept behind bitcoin is the work of a genius. His legacy, the blockchain, is a revolution. But the cryptocurrency mining, although it has a romantic and antisystem, is now in the hands of speculators, of the rich who can pay for the mining machines, electricity or the price of Bitcoin, and of the big Chinese companies They take advantage of the advantages of their economy to mine cheaper than anyone else.

On a more earthly level, it's time for graphics card makers to step up and defend the interests of their most loyal customers: gamers. So far we have seen shy announcements from companies like NVIDIA and AMD, which have asked stores to only sell two graphics cards per person or, directly, not sell to those who recognize that they will use them with cryptocurrencies. A completely useless measure, because the stores can sell to whoever they want, and they do not care what the buyers use the cards for, what they want is to sell. The more the better.

Manufacturers and stores profit from the mining of cryptocurrencies, if only because of the number of cards they sell. But the ones who earn the most are the intermediaries. They buy them from the manufacturer at a standard price and then sell them in packs of six, tripling the price.

The big losers, the gamers, who can not buy cards to play because there is no stock or cost three times their value, ask the manufacturers to include measures to block the mining, something that will not happen, for commercial and legal reasons .

Perhaps the solution is in putting on sale cards of AMD and NVIDIA specialized in the mining of cryptocurrencies, as some brands have already done. Manufacturers make money, miners shift their preferences, and gaming cards are reused for what they were created: to play.

Many are anxiously waiting for the cryptocurrency bubble to burst (there are already symptoms) and then the market will be flooded with second-hand graphic cards. Bad business: mining requires the card to work at full capacity, 24 hours a day. The second-hand market will be filled with overexploited and overheated cards, with a very short life cycle.

The rise in the price of silicon, memory chips, Meltdown and Specter fiasco, prices of graphic cards ... These are bad times to be a PC gamer. Will things improve in 2018?