A graphics card with an official guide price of less than 4,000 yuan now costs 10,000 yuan to get it. The promising Bitcoin market has driven up the price of computer graphics cards, making it even harder to find a card. Recently, a virtual currency called Chia Coin has made hard drives a sought-after "hard currency", and there is a trend of shortages and price increases.
"It's too difficult for ordinary computer gamers!" Hardware prices have skyrocketed in turn, leaving netizens who like to save their own computers, gamers who need high-end configurations, and even scientific researchers in professional laboratories in a helpless situation – if you buy it, it is too expensive; if you don't buy it, you will have no hope of waiting for price reductions. Hardware consumption plus electricity costs, the waste of physical resources caused by virtual currency is lamentable.
Prices soared and quadrupled in half a year
"Last month I was complaining that selling 10,000 yuan on Xianyu was too exaggerated, but now it's gone up to close to 17,000 yuan. There is no hope of buying a computer this year." He wanted to buy a computer with a slightly higher configuration to improve his gaming experience, but he was stuck with the high price of graphics cards. This was something that the player Xiaolu never expected.
Since the second half of last year, graphics card prices have been soaring, and this year they are even more expensive. Take the RTX3080 graphics card released by NVIDIA in October last year as an example. The official website price was 5,499 yuan. In January this year, the wholesale price of the corresponding graphics card products had risen to more than 8,000 yuan. In March, the new card was completely out of stock, and the second-hand price rose to 12,000 yuan. In April, the price of 17,000 yuan has become the norm.
Graphics card prices have continued to rise, while hard drive prices have continued to rise. The reporter checked on mainstream e-commerce platforms and found that enterprise-level hard drives of 6T and above from traditional brands Seagate and Western Digital are basically out of stock, and many people are selling them at high prices on second-hand platforms. The original price of the 8T enterprise disk was about 1,200 yuan, but it rose to nearly 3,000 yuan in a few days. "If you want to buy it, buy it quickly. If you go around again, it won't be the same price." The price of hard drives in offline stores keeps changing, showing a trend of crazy rise.
“Mining” is all the rage Hardware is in short supply
In the context of the decline of desktop computers, many consumers are puzzled by such a surge in hardware prices. The initiator behind the price increase is the popularity of virtual currencies represented by Bitcoin.
"The main function of the graphics card is mining." Tian Yu, an Internet practitioner, explained that the so-called "mining" is actually a common name for earning digital currency. To put it simply, "mining" Bitcoin is like solving a math problem. The first one to solve the problem can get the corresponding reward. This process of solving and verifying is "mining". Because the complexity of this calculation is low and quite repetitive, a graphics card is more suitable than a CPU. "Currency prices have a profound impact on the supply and demand of graphics cards, and in the short term, chip manufacturers also lack the ability to supply large quantities of chips."
The rise in hard drive prices stems from a virtual currency called Chia.
On March 19, Chia Coin went online and opened the “mining” function. Unlike most cryptocurrencies that use computing power to "mine", Chia relies more on hard drive space. The income of a "miner" is directly proportional to the hard disk storage space. The larger the hard disk space, the higher the mining efficiency. With the popularity of Chia currency, the demand for hard disks has increased, and hard disk prices have increased across the board. The hardest hit area is the 6T and above enterprise disks that are most suitable for mining.
When enterprise-grade hard drives are out of stock, some people resort to the next best thing and buy surveillance-grade hard drives, which heats up the related market. The shortage of mechanical hard drives has also driven up the price of solid-state drives, with ordinary solid-state drives generally rising by one to two hundred yuan.
Income is questionable and huge resources are wasted
"Now ordinary consumers cannot purchase related products at normal and low prices; at the same time, this problem has also led to a large-scale waste of scientific research funds in all levels and professional laboratories that need to purchase computer graphics cards." On the website of the State Administration for Market Regulation, many consumers left messages to complain.
However, regulatory authorities have no way to intervene in this wave of price increases caused by market supply and demand. The State Administration for Market Regulation has made it clear that graphics card prices are market-regulated prices, and operators can independently set prices and implement clearly marked prices. If the operator implements extra-price increases without notifying or marking them in advance, it will be suspected of price violations.
The huge waste of physical resources has made the behavior of “mining” widely criticized.
The Bitcoin power consumption index published by foreign researchers shows that the annual power consumption of Bitcoin mining is approximately 121.36 terawatt hours (1 terawatt hour is 1 billion kilowatt hours of electricity). This number has exceeded the annual power consumption of 12 African countries. To this end, the founder of Chia Coin proposed to create a more environmentally friendly virtual currency system and use idle hard disk space for "green" mining. However, ironically, due to the profitability, "miners" bought hard drives aggressively after the launch of Chia Coin, and agents and dealers hoarded them, further pushing up the price.
A large number of graphics cards and hard drives are consumed, can it bring expected benefits? Xuan Jiyou, director of Qianmen Asset Investment Research, said that “mining” is definitely not suitable for ordinary investors. Seven ministries including the central bank have made it clear that digital token issuance is essentially an act of illegal public financing without approval.
According to the industry, Bitcoin “mining” has long been grouped, and according to the rules, the efficiency of currency issuance is already about 25% of the past. This means that the difficulty of mining continues to rise, and it is difficult for ordinary people to have the opportunity to obtain expected profits. In addition, there is currently no theoretical support for the value assessment of digital currencies. Once the currency price collapses, investors will lose all their money.
