The raging prices of cryptocurrencies have led to an increase in demand for GPU mining equipments thus leading to shortage of supply for PC gaming users. The subsequent rise in prices of GPU equipment is directly affecting 1.22 billion PC gamers around the globe.

Bitcoin & other cryptocurrencies driving graphic cards’ prices up

Recently, there has been an increase in the value of cryptocurrencies that led to a surge in the prices of GPUs that is Graphics Processing Units. The reason behind this cause is that the cryptocurrency miners are making a lot of card purchasing. The rising buy up is to gain access to the high powered chips of the cards that create a major retail shortage of these GPUs.

Hence, the popularity of bitcoin and ethereum is the big reason for the shortage of graphics card.

The cryptocurrency mining needs a ton of computational power and GPU chips provide just this much power. The miners have figured it out and they are making excessive use of it. But this is a bad news for the PC gamers as the miners are emptying the retail stores in order to source the powerful chips. This only leads to the rise in the overall prices of the graphic cards.

One of the biggest names in the gaming industry, Nvidia designs GPUs for the gaming and cryptocurrency markets. Last year, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 sold for $450 plus while since the rise in the value of bitcoin, the prices of Nvidia card has reached over $700. Moreover, the lower-end graphics are also indicating an increase in its price as the better card are already sold out.

According to a media source, Nvidia is not happy with the rise in the prices of GPUs and requesting the retailers to consider the needs of gamers first instead of cryptocurrency miners.

The company commented:

“For NVIDIA, gamers come first. All activities related to our GeForce product line are targeted at our main audience. To ensure that GeForce gamers continue to have good GeForce graphics card availability in the current situation, we recommend that our trading partners make the appropriate arrangements to meet gamers’ needs as usual.”

The AMD Radeon graphics cards that have once been in-expensive has been hit just as hard. Over the last few months, there has been a steady rise in their prices.

1.22 billion PC gamers affected; Retailers taking unusual measures

This rise in the prices of GPUs will be affecting a large community of PC gamers that have been estimated to be about 1.22 billion worldwide, at the end of 2017. This number is further going to grow and reach 1.4 billion by 2021.

Given the spread of PC gamers community, the retailers are taking the measures to ensure that PC gamers have access to these graphic cards before the cryptocurrency miners can get to them.

Not every retailer is willing to address the issue but retailers like Micro Centre are implementing policies so that gamers get priority access over miners to their cards. Another move made by this company is to offer discounts to those customers who are purchasing graphic cards along with other PC components that are basically required to build a gaming computer.

There have also been rumors that both Nvidia and AMD may release mining-focused graphic cards. They would be perfect for mining rigs but useless for running a gaming PC.

As a crackdown on miners, many retailers are also limiting the graphic cards they are selling per transaction. Reportedly there could be even more extensive measures to come.

What other measures do you think retailers can take to favour PC gamers? Let us know your thoughts in our comment section below! 

The presented content may include personal opinion of the author and is subject to market condition. Do your market research before investing in cryptocurrencies. The author or the publication does not hold any responsibility for you personal financial loss.