Bitcoin remains a big deal despite huge stability issues and various companies dropping support, like Steam. A single bitcoin, despite big drops and fluctuations, is still worth several thousands of dollars. Because of this, mining, especially bitcoin mining, is still in high demand. This is having an undesirable effect on hardware prices, particularly graphics cards.
Because of the high demand of graphics cards, which are needed to offset the high power needs of cryptocurrency mining, prices are shooting well above retail price. Even older cards are going up, something that has historically been unheard of in the PC parts market.
This of course means that if gamers can’t find or afford high end graphics cards, the PC market as a whole suffers, and game sales as well. NVIDIA obviously doesn’t want this to happen. In an interview, the PR manager for NVIDIA stressed that “gamers come first,” and that the company is trying to get its retail partners to do more to make sure gamers can get ahold of its products.
While some retailers have imposed purchase limits on cards, many sellers like Newegg are still struggling to keep stock, and third-party sellers are still using insane markups.
Source: Polygon