Hardware The heck is going on with GPU sales?

AkikoKumagara

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Sucks because I'm working on building a PC and the prices of GPUs are really hindering my plans. It's not just BTC, btw, but cryptocurrency in general is on the rise and people realize this and are mining whatever hot new coins come around.

Edit: remember, this price rise started with Ethereum.
 

FAST6191

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Some strong feelings on display here. As a general concept I reckon such currencies are great (can be anonymous with a bit of work, fairly quick, minimal fees and more things besides are all very attractive features) but the implementations and markets for some of them leave a lot to be desired. To dismiss them out of hand as a result seems remarkably short sighted.
 

TotalInsanity4

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Some strong feelings on display here. As a general concept I reckon such currencies are great (can be anonymous with a bit of work, fairly quick, minimal fees and more things besides are all very attractive features) but the implementations and markets for some of them leave a lot to be desired. To dismiss them out of hand as a result seems remarkably short sighted.
Completely agree
 

Futurdreamz

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Some strong feelings on display here. As a general concept I reckon such currencies are great (can be anonymous with a bit of work, fairly quick, minimal fees and more things besides are all very attractive features) but the implementations and markets for some of them leave a lot to be desired. To dismiss them out of hand as a result seems remarkably short sighted.
I'm talking about Bitcoin in particular, but really all the proof-of-work cryptocurriences are jacking up GPU prices. Bitcoin, however, was designed with arbritary restrictions from the start (such as max memory usage) and now they can't pass any upgrades to alleviate that because the miners refuse to incorporate those necessary updates.

And all of these alt coins are no good either as they just create multiple thin markets. If you have one singular currency it can become big enough that massive jumps up and down are extremely difficult to pull off and take a long time to move, but a smaller altcoin all you need to do is mine a few, convince a few people to buy in, then sell all your stock leaving those dupes holding the bag while you run off with millions.
 
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AkikoKumagara

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I think retailers need to step up their game to counteract these price hikes, but they probably won't because it's likely that they're making more money because of them. Limiting purchases of particular items isn't unheard of and can do a lot of good, but I don't think enough places employ those kind of restrictions... or people cheat their way around them.

People are buying places out-of-stock of given GPUs in single purchases, then heading to the next store to buy another dozen. We're at the point where some GPUs have 70% markups (or more) from MSRP, and I don't completely blame the consumers. But a lot of it does fall back on the fact that people are buying up a dozen GPUs at a time.
 
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FAST6191

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I'm talking about Bitcoin in particular, but really all the proof-of-work cryptocurriences are jacking up GPU prices. Bitcoin, however, was designed with arbritary restrictions from the start (such as max memory usage) and now they can't pass any upgrades to alleviate that because the miners refuse to incorporate those necessary updates.

And all of these alt coins are no good either as they just create multiple thin markets. If you have one singular currency it can become big enough that massive jumps up and down are extremely difficult to pull off and take a long time to move, but a smaller altcoin all you need to do is mine a few, convince a few people to buy in, then sell all your stock leaving those dupes holding the bag while you run off with millions.
You could do a variation of pump and dump with anything and I don't find it a good reason to only have the one, certainly does not outweigh the problems with only having one.

With all this though I can't find my way to being upset at all. Best I can do is sucks, guess we get to wait out the storm.
 

nero99

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for those of you complaining about the prices.. You just need to look for the deals every day until you see what you want. That's how I got my 1060 6GB for just $100 over retail. It's also how I got all my ram and SSD and HDD for good prices.
 

Captain_N

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Its all the noobs trying to jump on the bit coin mining bandwagon. Dumb noobs should have been doing it more than 6 years ago.... The demand is high now. Its 3 GPUs per system maybe four. Not enough to go around. There is also the scalpers trying to make a profit. Its like all the wiitards buying amiibos just to scalp them.....
 
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Bladexdsl

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Because I think that a lot of the "professional" miners think that if prices bounce back up, they'll magically get their ROI back from the market even if they buy market-inflated cards
which won't happen bitcoin is going down and good riddance too. in the middle of putting my new build together with my NEW evga 1080 ti ftw3 which i will be using the hell out of for GAMING :P
 
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FAST6191

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[if bitcoin prices bounce back up] which won't happen bitcoin is going down and good riddance too.

While I joined many in wondering when the bubble was going to burst I would still have to wonder if the price is going to normalise at some point (as a currency rather than some investment tool). Even if bitcoin is going down won't another such currency rise up to take its place? The attributes of it all seem too good to pass up.
 

Xenon Hacks

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While I joined many in wondering when the bubble was going to burst I would still have to wonder if the price is going to normalise at some point (as a currency rather than some investment tool). Even if bitcoin is going down won't another such currency rise up to take its place? The attributes of it all seem too good to pass up.
BTC goes down this time of the month every year, it will go back up and if it does not most will just shift all efforts to ethereum or XRP.
 

AkikoKumagara

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for those of you complaining about the prices.. You just need to look for the deals every day until you see what you want. That's how I got my 1060 6GB for just $100 over retail. It's also how I got all my ram and SSD and HDD for good prices.

As nice as that is, you still paid $100 over retail...
 

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