nvidia announced special crypto mining chip, perhaps it will get the miners off GPUs and things can stabilize, but who knows when it hits the markets and what impact it'll have...

Maybe it's just that people now are in quarantine or semi-quarantine and have nothing better to do than playing video games rather than watching those Netflix politically-correct "series & movies". IMO they can keep every card that they want to sell above MSRP.

There might be thousands and thousands of great older games I haven't played that my current system can run just fine!

Prices are up, but still nothing compared to what used to be.... I like my new charts on site. If you look at some retro cards prices, they were crazy.....
For example IBM VGA - $595, Ati Mach64GX - $699, Paradise PVGA1A - $799, Matrox Impression Plus - $898, IBM EGA - $982, Number Nine Imagine 128 - $1999 ..... record so far holding IBM with $8500...
http://vgamuseum.info/index.php/charts/price

It's a culmination of many different factors. One reason for new cards is covid is much worst in china than reported and is responsible for semi conductor shortages. When you read something that says anything otherwise it is just communist state run propaganda. Also Crypto miners but they mosty are going for newest cards.

As far as the old stuff is concerned it vary in degrees of scarcity base on a lot of things. Theres no single thing to blame and you have basically 3 options, be patient, lower expectations, or pony up. Best case is you have to do all 3 thing at the same time if you want any shot at a item. Because there is no supply and a lot of competition.

Theres a lot of very impatient buyers out there with deep pockets and since there is no supply its what drives prices so high. You need a lot of luck at this point because collectors have ruined this hobby I think for everyone and now that the supply is dry everyone wants the same thing and theres very little of it.

It's all because of scalpers!!!!111 😮

I'm guessing my original post was too long. I've got a spare 1080 Ti. I bought it for $400. I might be able to sell it for over $800. Do you think we're at the peak? Should I sell now? Or will the madness continue? And I should wait to sell it for $1000?

I think if you are holding something for the express purpose of selling and turning a profit now is the time to sell. I wouldn't risk waiting.

I've got a 1080ti and a 2080ti I'm not using right now but I wasn't planning on selling them. Maybe I should.

https://twitter.com/michaeljburry/status/1363 … 0979228673?s=20

What if BTC is just a symptom of USD inflation?

I'm spending a $100 dollars more a week at the grocery store.

On this topic, someone locally was selling four 1070 Ti cards that had been used for mining for only $200 each a month or so ago. It seemed like a great situation because the guy was very knowledgeable and was a respectable PC technician (I live in a small town where such people are few and far between). I thought about it for one evening, decided I should do it, and then I couldn't get in contact with the guy the next day. The day after that I contacted him a different way and he said he'd never gotten any of my messages and that he ended up shipping the cards to some guy (even though his listing said absolutely no shipping). I was really disappointed. A 1070 Ti would have been a fine upgrade from my 970 and the RX 570 in my HTPC, and I likely could have upgraded a friend's computer with one of the others for a few bucks (not ebay markup). Then I could have sold one and the RX 570 to make ~$500-$600 after fees total, which would cover more than half of my initial investment.

Now, fast forward a month and I see the stupid RX 570 in my HTPC is selling for over $400, and 1070 Ti cards between $450 and $600 on ebay... UGHH! I could have probably upgraded three systems and made ALL of my money back after fees if I'd gotten those cards. 😮

Oh well.

I'm fuming about this reluiclolus prices too. Why is the need for people to "hire" their GPU cards so for much "kilowatts" to crank the hash the someone else's transactions work and get paid so little?
What is all for?

Not quite understanding how this process works, had read the texts on some websites but they did not make sense like what is the "transaction" means (I was thinking bank's view of point) vs blockchain (view of point). Cut the jargon words.

The bits cannot be created from nothing unless someone buys the "wallet of bits" in other word convert their money from one currency to another blockchain currency and back would make sense to me.
Also cannot "inflate" the blockchain's value because this is not investing in stock or investing in some else's. But blockchain is too different from that. Why is people inflating the blockchain value solely based on blockchain transactions?

Will someone educate me better than what out there?

Cheers,

Bitcoin and other "cryptocurrencies" aren't really currency. They're more like very unstable stock shares. Someone will be banking big this year and price will drop down significantly again, just like in 2017.

Crypto currencies are the future of currencies , they are less volatile and less tools of governments for inflation. Ignore them at your own peril. As the US heads towards Weimar Germany style inflation people who buy crypto will find a safe haven.

So far they're just another playground for financial opportunism and machinations.

P.S.
Bitconnect!

I don't disagree with that either.

This cannot be created in a vacuum, where does hard currency is converted to Crypto currencies (buy-into)? But remember you need to use crypto currency aka "The money" to buy something else too. Does somebody use the blockchain to invest into businesses, if not then that's not what I'm thinking about is not seeing where the flaming inflation is going? Which is what precursors of market crash had happened before. Not the block chain currency itself, which are not under influence of aka bank/ federal for taxing and stability but does need rules for the crypto currency to stabilize the value and inflation, if not, then this is quasi-illegal and uncontrolled.

When does where the processing is done then what resulting block with new hash is now what is used next for what? You have to eventually use the "two-bit" that was burnt to create new hash and what one do with it, and "money" to withdraw to purchase something tangible?

What is reason for need to have processing to crunch these then you need to decrypt these again to withdraw some to buy something else? Then what does results is next used after the processing of the block? So on?

Remember, blockchain will eventually get integrated into new generation of currency and is managed by governemts again. And also people will still need physical cash and wired transfers (aka debit, credit card, etc). So where does all the need for "Crypto" currencies comes in?

The articles I see does not say how inter-change of these leads to one to next is where I need to understand.

Buy in crypto block (converting local currency to crypto, then pay someone else to crunch to get new block hash (used up gas), now what does the resulting block hash is now where this goes to next? Does that one goes back to the original wallet waiting to be used to purchase something, then this hash is crunched again by yet again different processing owner at their expense (seller's or buyer's?), then given back to the seller who got the crypto money from the purchaser to render the services (wares or services)?

Using up kilowatts and megawatts to process the crypto and expensive GPU cards in the action is rather wasteful in resources of "banking".

Cheers,

This is hardly the place for this discussion but crypto helps get us closer to having a sovereign nation in control of it's own currency, the volume of which should be controlled by the people. Then there's no need to tax anyone, and no need to create inflation in order to be able to pay down the debts created in the past. I'm sure others would like to chime in on this, I will not respond again just to try to keep this from getting really off track. Yes, you wouldn't need crypto to achieve this but no ones going to push back against fiat in governments either. So hence I look towards crypto to be that bridge.

Update:

I turned around the words I needed to know more and found excellent articles. The "crypto-currency" was the good answer search.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/ … -things-to-know

And

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency

Basically decentralized ledger system by all. One buys into their new wallets (currency conversion) and paid part of their holdings "wallets" in form of "proof of work" fee to compute hashes to confirm any transactions by everyone including the buyers and sellers. The percentage of crypto currency from their wallets when buying anything usine crypto currency "proof of work" as ledger fee is set aside to cover sufficient unit of "gas" to compute hash and from part of this "gas burned doing work" adds up to one unit of crypto currency which in is then paid to miners for their verifying crypto hashes as a service rendered for "enabling crypto currency to function" cost fee. Nothing created from vacuum.

There is lots of choices to use like bitcoin, etherum as a ledgers and each has different ways of doing and different "proof of work" fee and how each works is different for each. Do your research into types before choosing one of these.

Cheers,

I think the higher the prices get, the fewer people will buy graphics cards, which will eventually get the supply/demand balance back to normal. Who knows when, though. Depends a lot on Covid and tariffs. Personally, I was contemplating upgrading my son's RTX2060 KO to a 3060 Ti and upgrading my 1650 Super to his 2060 KO, but that's not happening until I can get the 3060 Ti at retail price.

I think there's a lot of people buying graphics cards today for business reasons, not for entertainment. That pushes the prices a lot higher than if it was just gamers.
nVidia/ATI used to separate those 2 markets. Money making enterprises were supposed to buy FireGLs/Quadros, and consumers playing video games bought Geforces and Radeons. The price of the "professional" cards was inflated according to what those customers could be convinced to pay, and they effectively subsidized the price of gaming cards which were artificially crippled to discourage them being used for profitable work.
Segmenting the market this way is good for the manufacturer because it increases their market share / mind share, and the increased volume improves economy of scale in paying for R&D. It's good for consumers in that it makes low end products available at a cheaper price.
People used to complain about the artificial crippling inherent to this business model. That separation has broken down and is one of the reasons for rising prices of gaming cards. You can use them to make money now.

A relative of mine, who like many people got laid off because of this insanity, started doing video work from home. To work efficiently he needed a powerful graphics card that could do video encoding. I don't know exactly what card he bought but it was expensive and hard to find in stock. He has told me that the card is even more expensive now than when he bought it.
I think there's a lot of other people with various reasons they need a powerful card to work from home. I wonder how many offices have powerful workstations sitting idle that haven't been turned on in a year.
And there may be more than a few people who don't have a great economic motive but have elected to buy a gaming upgrade, because that's their hobby and they have time.

I can't say I'm particularly depressed about this particular issue. I don't play cutting edge games - there's plenty to play on my old outdated "junk" so it's not a problem for me. Even if I try to empathize with modern gamers, I just can't get there. We're talking about video games, and not even all games, just the newest ones, and not whether you can play them, but whether you can play them at the same settings as the coolest people on the internet.
The recent "Linus Tech Tips" thumbnail on youtube, where it looks like some hippy is whining about nVidia "not caring about gamers".. is pretty hard for me to take seriously. I have bigger concerns than whether everybody can afford to play games on a Geforce GTX4997-UltraTurbo right now. Apparently somebody needs it more than "The Gamers" do.
It reminds me of "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" where 3 guys are feuding over a gold stash while the Civil War is going on.