Recently, the price of graphics cards on the market has plunged in a large area, ending the price surge pattern of more than 2 years. What is causing the price of graphics cards to plummet? How big is the decline? The reporter recently visited the Huaqiang North Market in Shenzhen.
"Mining" tide retreats Graphics card prices plummet across the board
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In Shenzhen Huaqiang North, known as the "first street of Chinese electronics", many stalls are placed with popular models of graphics card packaging boxes, merchants told reporters that the price of graphics cards of various brands has dropped sharply, and the current price is at a low level in the past two years.
A merchant in Shenzhen Huaqiang North: Now the price has fallen, and it has dropped almost 1,000 yuan in the past month.
Not only the stalls of offline stores, but also the price of graphics cards on online e-commerce platforms and second-hand trading platforms has declined. Taking one of the most popular graphics cards, the ASUS RTX 3080, as an example, JD.com's offer reached nearly 20,000 yuan at the highest last year, while jd.com's current offer is less than 7,000 yuan. The market demand and price of graphics cards show a high correlation with the price of virtual currencies such as Ether.
A merchant in Shenzhen Huaqiang North: This card was taken by others to mine before, and now it is not allowed to dig, 3080 just came down, we just started to sell, and basically could not sell it later, because it was basically swept away to mine, and if it was sold, it was also taken away in a whole box.
Industry insiders believe that the plunge in graphics card prices is related to the rectification of virtual currency. In September 2021, the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments jointly issued the "Notice on Rectifying virtual currency "mining" activities", and subsequently, the People's Bank of China and ten other departments issued documents to prevent and deal with the risk of virtual currency transaction speculation, clearly stating that virtual currency-related business activities are illegal financial activities. As the policy continues to tighten, the price of virtual currency has fallen, the "mining tide" has gradually receded, and the price of graphics cards has also begun to fall sharply.
A graphics card loses thousands of yuan Speculators can't hoard goods for loss reduction
During the investigation, the reporter learned that many speculators hoarded goods at high prices in the early stage, and a large amount of inventory was smashed in their hands and finally forced to reduce prices, with heavy losses. In the future, with the reduction of the demand for graphics cards on the market and the increase in supply, there is still room for the price of graphics cards to decline.
Different virtual currency systems have different requirements for mining machines, among which Ethereum's mining machines have graphics cards as the core. Since the second half of 2020, the price of Ethereum has continued to soar, attracting many players to pour into it, and the price of graphics cards has risen with it, and the phenomenon of difficulty in finding a card has occurred frequently.
A merchant in Shenzhen Huaqiang North: This is mining bitcoin, the graphics card is mining Ethereum, the other digs Ethereum has 8 graphics cards, it is a group to go in, last year a machine earned three or four hundred a day, two or three months to return to the cost.
Among them, many speculators take the opportunity to stock up on goods at a price of several thousand yuan higher than the official guidance price, and plan to sell them to the market after the price increase. However, with the cold virtual currency, a large number of miners withdrew from the currency circle, and the price of graphics cards fell significantly. These players are in a dilemma with large stockpiles in hand.
A merchant in Shenzhen Huaqiang North: The graphics card is at a reduced price, unwilling to sell, a loss of three or four thousand. If everyone dumps the goods, the price falls faster. Slowly release the goods, put 100 a day. When they take the goods, they take them at a premium.
Even though graphics card prices have dropped significantly, the prices of popular graphics cards on the market are still higher than the official guidance price. According to the 3DCenter report, in December last year, the premium of Nvidia and AMD graphics cards once exceeded more than 80% of the initial suggested retail price, and is still 25% higher than the initial suggested retail price.
At the same time, from the demand side, the Ethereum blockchain system is expected to be upgraded in the second quarter of this year, when Ethereum's consensus mechanism will be transformed from proof of work to proof of stake, which means that node operators only need to pledge a certain amount of Ether, that is, they can verify the form of nodes to obtain benefits, and no longer need to use graphics card mining machines for mining. Some merchants predict that in the future, speculators may release a large number of goods, and the price of graphics cards will further decline.
Yu Jianning, executive director of the Meta-Universe Industry Committee of China Mobile Communications Federation: Miners basically no longer buy new graphics cards, but have begun to sell in large quantities, and in the case of non-mining computing power demand such as games, graphics processing, and video and audio processing remaining relatively stable, the downward price of graphics cards has become inevitable.
From the supply side, since the beginning of this year, graphics card manufacturers have been improving the supply situation. January 2022 RTX 30 Series supply increased by 15% compared to the end of last year. Major graphics card manufacturers such as NVIDIA and AMD have said they will increase investment this year to meet the market's demand for graphics cards. (Source of this article: CCTV Finance)