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It has been about half a year since the RTX 3080 GPU launched worldwide. Ever since, the chaos of the scalping problem has ensued. There is a handful or major reasons that caused the shortage of these GPUs and, in turn, the higher and higher prices for not just the new, but used GPUs on the 2nd hand market. And of course, I will put it in the simplest and easiest to understand form. Problem #1: Increase in BuyersBecause of COVID-19, we all had to stay inside, and that had more people buying technologies, including GPUs, to pass the time at home, or even to get computers for school or work Zoom calls. With an increase for demand, this produces a market deficit (when demand exudes supply). To combat this, the sellers raise prices, or at least should have. The GPU prices for the RTX GPUs were not priced to similar components, such as the RTX 2080 Ti, with a $1000/$500 price different (2080 Ti to 3070 price). This caused a market deficit as the prices were not changed (at least the 1st hand prices weren't), and caused a supply shortage, even when NVIDIA did produce as much supply as possible on their end. Symptoms of a supply shortage are the inability to purchase the product for the average user, and higher prices on the 2nd hand market. Problem #2: Silicon Shortage and Other Tech ReleasesI am going to combine these two problems into one, as they are very similar. Silicon shortage is caused by 1) an increased demand for computer chips 2) a decreased supply, due to either short staff, or lack of raw materials. Both are in play here. In 2), the cause is short supply due to, you guessed it, COVID. The combination of increased demand for computer chips and the decreased supply of workers producing these chips are the reason there is a "silicon shortage". Symptoms of silicon shortages is the decrease of supply to related markets, and (sometimes, not really in this case) increase in the prices for related products.\ The other tech releases didn't help that much, and those markets don't have it off easy either. They are experiencing similar symptoms to the GPU market. The Game Console market, and the CPU market are examples. Problem #3: Increase in Scalpers & "Botting"The increase of people at home (a cause of COVID) has inevitably caused the increase of people's free time, which in this case, connects to an increase of people waiting around to refresh product pages in hopes of scoring a brand new product on launch. Some percentage develop programs ("bots") in order to automate and purchase new products for themselves. The products that they have obtained don't go to use right away. They are sold on the 2nd hand market. On the second hand market, scalpers try to sell these products for 3x or even 5x retail value. This is actually very similar to IRL scalpers, the people outside sports games with extra tickets to try to get rid of them for an inflated (artificially increased) price. I know that these scalpers don't exist as much, but the strategy they use is to try to tempt your Average Joe to buying things at inflated prices because they can. Remember when I referred to the shortage of the GPUs on the first problem? These scalpers can increase the price to meet demand, instead of the 1st party (NVIDIA) selling them at an adjusted price. Problem #4: (Recent) Crypto Mining Boom & NVIDIA's ResponseCoIn 2021, there has been a big cryptocurrency craze (blog post coming on that soon) occurring, which essentially increases demand, not just for the new RTX 3000 GPUs, but any GPU that can mine crypto. This inflates the price even more on the 2nd hand market as discussed earlier. NVIDIA's Response NVIDIA's response to the "crypto-craze" was, of course, to limit mining on the RTX 3000 series, as to try to decrease demand originating from miners trying to grab a card that would produce $5-$10 a day, and is very power efficient (a quality seen as valuable for miners). blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2021/02/18/geforce-cmp/ if you want to read the article regarding this. If you did read the article, it did announce a new "CMP" (Computer Mining Processors) product, essentially convincing gamers that the new CMP product will draw attention to miners, and decrease demand for the RTX 3000 GPUs. This probably will do the opposite. Along with reducing the supply of actual RTX 3000 GPUs, as there is limited silicon production (every CMP made is potentially a RTX GPU lost), their "unhackable" blocker on running mining algorithms such as DaggerHashimoto is probably as effective as a 1-person ticket master at the movies, not seeing people go through the back door. In the long run, NVIDIA just reduced the RTX GPU supply without changing the demand one bit. Conclusion and (Potential) SolutionIn conclusion, the GPU shortage was caused by many different factors, most of which were caused by, yes, COVID. I know that taking about it can be sensitive, but this is an acceptable fact at this point: COVID has affected many markets, and the ones not affected are the ones that weren't that effective to begin with.
To that, I have some ideas/scenarios that would solve some of the problems, and lighten the blow to the GPU market:
"Those who know when to halt are unharmed." Tao Te Ching - Chapter 44 If you "halt" and do not join the crowd, you are going to better off then when you do join.
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