I see that (which also explains that BTC nosedive graph), but I keep hearing mention of GPUs...
Odd how the price of BTC seems to have risen in the face of this, though...
Well, you can see what look like a few stacks of blower cards in the first few pictures. I suppose where you see a handful at the site of a huge mining op site, you assume there are many more. That and people probably just care more about the GPU miners. ASIC miners aren't cutting into stuff we want, after all.
I find that kind of interesting, how mining becomes morally wrong when you use GPU's. But ASIC... ...bah who cares about Bitcoin they aren't hurting us!
Like, I get the outrage - it is frustrating to try and get even mid-level right now, but it's not so simple as GPU miners ruined the market. A new demand came in and the market didn't react well. They just want what we all want. And suppliers just want to sell as much stock as they can at a profit that they can grow off of.
I can kind of understand why vendors might take advantage of the increased demand to charge more. Besides, without any more cards, they are not easier to get because the price is lower - they're even harder to find when more people can access them! The same number of cards sell either way. Difference with a lower price is just that a different, smaller market (enthusiast) gets more of them for less profit than the larger markets would deliver.
It doesn't make sense to do this as a business. The rest of the time they are operating, they are making no money on graphics cards. Operating a business costs money every single day. Every day you're not making that money, you're still eating costs. So they charge more to make up for not having constant volume moving. You can either go low-volume/high-margin or high-volume/low-margin. If the supply ain't there, the margin has to be higher relative to demand. Lowering the prices with demand so high might be better now, but a whole lot worse than it is now, later. Possibly for a very long time. If suppliers don't make their money, they can't, well... supply things. It's hard to picture, but I think they really are trying to supply as much of the market as possible, now and in the long run... ...by trying right now to get into a position to make and move more product in the end. Scaling takes starter money. The more they make now, the sooner more cards come.
I don't know if it's always right but I get that this is just how it works. And on the supply end, successfully executing production runs take a ton of time, planning, and money. Chip manufacturers have to be careful. It's a huge risk to assume that a boom will stick around while they try to anticipate how much to produce to catch supply back up. IF the people who put them into cards don't want to buy everything they have, they lose money. Same with the companies who make the cards. If they don't sell those chips Nvidia and AMD make their money, but
they don't. In the long run they both lose. Can't sell their cards and can't buy more chips. It really is iffy to assume the market will be there by the time shipments actually roll out. Just getting the things to the market is not a straightforward process. And there's no going back... ...it's just this insanely convoluted balancing act. I don't envy any of those people's jobs, man.
Overshoot and you wind up with a ton of cards you now have to sell at a lower price just to get rid of. That can be a huge margin loss. EVGA can probably attest to this about now. They seem to have too many cards atm. Undershoot and you won't have the budget to scale up production and maximize profits, plus everyone thinks you're evil money grubbers for failing to supply the full demand and charging a huge premium, when really you're mostly just trying to stay in the game long-term and not lose money or opportunities. Maybe at times they have been, but I really doubt it's all a big evil conspiracy. Of course some will take advantage...
Point is... ...there are a lot of easy ways to really ruin things for a lot of people, both the market and the suppliers. It's not miner's faults for wanting their GPU's and doing whatever they can to get them, nor is it entirely the suppliers faults for misjudging the market and doing whatever they can to produce and move as much volume as is fiscally possible. Squeaky wheel gets the grease. The largest market sector gets primary attention. Enthusiasts are not the largest by any stretch. And honestly with the way things are now, I bet GPU mining could die tomorrow and it'd be a long time before anything changed.
Then of course there's the memory shortage, which is a whole nother deal.
Saw a few people talking about the mining GPU issues. Wanted to chime in. I'm no expert on this stuff, just kinda some base-level observations. This business isn't simple or easy.
I AM happy to see what seem to be some really shady miners get some poetic justice. But remember, cockroaches thrive in the worst environments.
