NVIDIA Bracing for a Cryptocurrency Demand Drop

[Basard]

I can't see any of them surviving, long term, unless they are backed as legal tender by a stable government. When and if that ever happens you can bet you wont be able to "mine" them.

At least some people got rich off it while it lasted. Good riddance to the beanie baby moneys.

 

[dozenfury]

I'm glad John Oliver did the segment on crypto since there is so much misinformation and confusion out there about it, especially by non-techies. Probably the biggest mistake is that people often confuse miners with bitcoin investors. I mine but I don't invest, since I sell as soon as I reasonably can after mining. I'd call people who put $100,000+ into filling their garage with industrial-scale crypto rigs investors just as much as people buying $100k in coins hoping they'll go up, but I'm not in either of those boats.

Unfortunately though as soon as you talk anything about cryptocurrency, people that don't understand it immediately jump to assuming that you are an idiot putting your entire 401k into Dogecoin...

I'm fairly certain Wall Street investors know very well though that NV and AMD's income would drop over the artificially inflated revenue of the last couple years if the the crypto gold rush crashed, and that the odds of a crash are pretty high. That's something that they've factored in stock price for sure.

 

[nickbaldwin86]

I can see the SH GPU market flooded with cheap cards in a few months time

....Of burned out cards that I wouldn't buy for 1/4 of the price. Mining puts the hurt on the GPU, heat and stress for 24/7 periods of time with little to no air flow when they are stacked one on another.

I only hope that it cools off before 2080 cards hit the market so they are "cheap" but the rumor mill of $1500 for a card has got to be false or I will never see one, and most people can't even bare $600.

 

[neatfeatguy]

Only thing different with this gen is the fact that MSRP has been exceeded almost from the get go due to the take off of crypto prices and the large jump in mining.

The GTX 9xx series, I originally grabbed a Zotac 980Ti AMP! Omega for $669 shortly after they came out. Once the GTX 10xx was coming out and EOL was given to the 9xx the exact same card I picked up for $549 new (from what I can find, MSRP on FE 980Ti is $649) which is $100 under MSRP.

GTX 1070 MSRP is $349. One of the cheaper ones I find is at MicroCenter for $549.99 - still $200 over MSRP! If Volta comes out within the next 3-6 months and current GPU prices don't come down, people are going to hold out for the new Volta cards and then Pascal cards will start going out used while a lot of new stock is still available. Nvidia should be worried about getting stuck with a lot of Pascal inventory if things persist as they are. So, 1 of 2 things needs to happen:

1) Prices need to drop all around to help clear out the EOL inventory of Pascal (10xx series) and this will only happen if crypto drops enough. I personally don't know anyone that's going to drop hundreds of dollars over MSPR on an EOL GPU.

OR

2) Crypto needs to take off again and press out another spike of high demand for GPUs. Granted, this is not the option gamers want, but this would be the most ideal one for Nvidia and even AMD. Thus allowing Nvidia to put a halt to manufacturing Pascal GPUs and allow inventory to go out as fast as possible to fill orders so they're not stuck with oodles of GPUs

 

[trog100]

it could stop 2080 cards from hitting the market.. or at least delay things for a very long a time..

currently a gpu can be looked upon as an asset subject to supply and demand factors.. if a ton of perfectly usable ex mining cards hit the market all at once the asset price will crash..

second hand or new it dosnt matter.. its all affected..

trog

 

[ppn]

Perhaps 1080Ti is no longer in production.
1080Ti on 7nm will be shrinked to 1/3 of its original size, 471/3 ~~ 150mm2, so yeah brace for 2050Ti.

 

[R-T-B]

John Oliver covered this ponzi scam of Crypto currency on last episode of Last week tonight nicely.

He really just covered the ponzi scheme of ICOs. He was actually almost positive on the actual concept of crypto.

All in all, I found his coverage refreshingly neutral.

The Modernday Affliction is the inability to absolutely separate Benevolence from Malevolence [and vice-versa]. For example, this “CryptoCurrency” agenda is about Greed-Fear Running Amok and yet The Vast Majority [TVM] are seeing this as another opportunity for, “Gaining An Advantage”. That of expressing one’s selfishness as some sort of test for one’s “Intelligence”. Just like that Electioneering Circus, which is actually a test for one’s ability to select from “The 2 Faces of The Same Coin”, in addition to being an excuse for unleashing Prostitution, Drugging, Chemistry, and that gem, “Gladiatorial-Events”.

So yous wanna, “Git Riche Qik”, eh? AMD is suggesting that, perhaps, their “ThreadRipper” is a suitable candidate, much like having the ability to “Vote-For” either, “Trumpeting”, or “Clinging-On”. Or as Dem [by now truly rusted] Iron Maiden was reputed to have said, “Dats Mah Boyo” – or sump’fing like zat, perhaps ! Incidentally, how come when Dat Kowboyo, “Reagan”, said, “Jump”, Dem Iron Maiden was reputed to have replied, “How High?” Now, that will make you really ‘Fink, ain’t it !

Wut.

 

[lexluthermiester]

hurt bottomline for gpu makers and a good chance investors would be angry.

They would go back to business as usual. The investors will get over it. A great many people are sick of the fact that a budget card like the 1050 is still upwards of $300. Pathetic.

nether of us wants to end up with a load of worthless gpus..

I personally and professionally welcome this downtrend. Bring on the cheap GPU's!

 

[Kaapstad]

It would be good if the vendors produced GPUs for mining without video outputs and SLI fingers.

This would make them useless for gaming and these cards could never flood the market when the mining craze slumps.

 

[trog100]

They would go back to business as usual. The investors will get over it. A great many people are sick of the fact that a budget card like the 1050 is still upwards of $300. Pathetic.

I personally and professionally welcome this downtrend. Bring on the cheap GPU's!

yep apart from holding back the release of the next generation of gpus from a buyers points of view initially at least.. it all seems good..

from a sellers point of view its a f-cking disaster just waiting to happen.. he he

trog

 

[kuwlness]

No stopping the mining craze. Not even a 50% drop (or upwards of 75% in several of the top-mining coins in recent weeks) has made people consider quitting mining [myself included]. There's just no reason. Even now it's still profitable to mine compared to the cost of electricity in most places, and assuming crypto prices are likely to increase in value from here means profitability will be even higher if you HODL until prices go back up.

Long-term trend is still upwards for cryptocurrencies. Good luck telling people with 100s of GPUs that they should sell and quit mining ... not gonna happen. Us crypto enthusiasts and general computer nerds are a stubborn crowd, fixed in our ways.

I can't see any of them surviving, long term, unless they are backed as legal tender by a stable government. When and if that ever happens you can bet you wont be able to "mine" them.

At least some people got rich off it while it lasted. Good riddance to the beanie baby moneys.

Looking back at history, very few "legal tender" backed by "a stable government" have lasted longer than 50 years. The average life expectancy for government-issued currency is only 27 years. Most currencies get eroded by inflation or corruption, even the US dollar has only 1/20th the purchasing power it once had (see St. Louis FRED chart here -- https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUR0000SA0R)

Clearly there is an issue with a central authority when it comes to currency, which is eliminated in most cryptocurrencies. I agree, a lot of cryptos will fail over the long term, but so will many fiat currency offered by the majority of countries around the world.

 

[pjl321]

What nVidia could do (and possibly is doing) is if they have bought up all the RAM for the last few months for their upcoming Volt/Ampere/Turing cards so that on release day they can massively flood the market with normally priced and much faster cards then this would be a huge win for nVidia on so many levels. They seem to be selling Pascal faster than they can make it but i agree this could all stop in a second if crypto goes boom.

But releasing totally new cards will have two massively important benefits for nVidia, if one of the cards is aimed at the crypto mining market and can significantly beat AMD's current offering which lets face is very old tech now so should easily be possible (I have an AMD R9 290 from 2013 and it still matches pretty much anything out on the market today for ETH) it would kill AMD graphics at least until Navi in 2019 and so increase nVidia's own sales hugely but the other important benefit is it would go someway to protect nVidia against a crypto mining crash. If suddenly the crypto market stopped mining, total market collapse, maybe some environmental law was passed or a new coin suddenly comes out that is better than anything else and doesn't use mining (IOTA or similar) then the market would be flooded with cheap second hand cards. But if nVidia was already selling much faster, brand new cards with full warranties then most gamers would buy their new cards rather than a old, slower card that has been mined within an inch of its life 24/7 for the last 2 or 3 years, plus they could sit on this stock much longer as its only just come on the market and so has a 2-3 year life.

I think this is the only way that gamers and miners will get some cards at normal prices. I know nVidia has tried to say they are focusing on gamers but they are a company wanting to make money like any other and miners are (were) willing to pay 2x or 3x the price and want to buy 10x to 100x more cards than gamers so they will not ignore them. I believe nVidia will release a mining card (Turing is a perfect code name) and a gaming card (maybe Ampere based), they might release them/one at GTC in March or it might be GamesCon in August, I know rumours are now Q3 but nVidia are missing out of so many sales by waiting i'm just not sure they will as there is no competition at all until Q1 - Q2 2019 when AMD's 7nm Navi might be arriving, nVidia could make an insane amount of hay if they use this time wisely and can get production even close to the level demand is currently at.

 

[Vayra86]

The Modernday Affliction is the inability to absolutely separate Benevolence from Malevolence [and vice-versa]. For example, this “CryptoCurrency” agenda is about Greed-Fear Running Amok and yet The Vast Majority [TVM] are seeing this as another opportunity for, “Gaining An Advantage”. That of expressing one’s selfishness as some sort of test for one’s “Intelligence”. Just like that Electioneering Circus, which is actually a test for one’s ability to select from “The 2 Faces of The Same Coin”, in addition to being an excuse for unleashing Prostitution, Drugging, Chemistry, and that gem, “Gladiatorial-Events”.

So yous wanna, “Git Riche Qik”, eh? AMD is suggesting that, perhaps, their “ThreadRipper” is a suitable candidate, much like having the ability to “Vote-For” either, “Trumpeting”, or “Clinging-On”. Or as Dem [by now truly rusted] Iron Maiden was reputed to have said, “Dats Mah Boyo” – or sump’fing like zat, perhaps ! Incidentally, how come when Dat Kowboyo, “Reagan”, said, “Jump”, Dem Iron Maiden was reputed to have replied, “How High?” Now, that will make you really ‘Fink, ain’t it !

Laugh of the day.

 

[INSTG8R]

Laugh of the day.

Thanks that was exactly what came to mind...word salad...