Crypto crash forces miners to sell hundreds of graphics cards during livestreamed auctions

Miners and Internet Cafés selling their GPUs due to crypto crash

With Bitcoin and Ethereum crypto currencies rapidly loosing value miners are forced to sell the graphics cards that were hoarded for profit. 

We have discussed how Internet Cafés were making money by buying large number of graphics cards with sole purpose of mining. This problem appeared at the same time as Bitcoin price had skyrocketed and people were restricted from visiting Internet Cafés due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However over the course of the last few months the situation has significantly changed.

Chinese miners selling their GPUs, Source: Baidu/Hassan Mujtaba

Miners and Café owners are now selling mining cards in masses. These cards are now sold during livestream auctions where models such as RTX 3060 Ti can be obtained by as little as 300 to 400 USD.

Hoarders, Scalpers, Miners and Internet Café owners are now forced to sell their cards, which were usually purchased at much higher price anyway. But given the recent Ethereum price drop, the return of investment should now be calculated in years, rather than months. This means that miners who were looking for easy profit are now left with a choice of selling their cards as soon as possible to at least retain part of their profit, or to keep mining and hoping for crypto to bounce back.

NVIDIA RTX graphics cards sold by miners, Source: Baidu

Ethereum is also scheduled to switch to Proof of Stake model between Q3 and Q4 this year, ending the Proof of Work model that depends on GPU power. This leaves a very short window for miners to make profit, if there is any window at all.

The alternative is to sell these cards as quickly as possible, which is exactly what is happening on Chinese auction sites. One can easily find RTX 2060 or RTX 3060 Ti listed below MSRP. However, one should note that these cards have very low value due to how extensively they were used. At least in this case graphics cards sold through auctions are clearly labeled as former mining equipment.

Source Baidu via Hassan Mujtaba: