China GPU costs drop to new lows after the Ethereum Merge

by Jeremy

Because the Ethereum community’s transfer to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism drives adoption from institutional traders, the costs for graphics processing models (GPUs), typically used for mining cryptocurrencies like Ether (ETH), have gone down in China. 

Following the historic Ethereum Merge on Sept. 15, the beforehand extremely sought-out Nvidia GeForce GPUs have turn out to be considerably cheaper, in accordance to a report by the South China Morning Submit. Peng, a Chinese language service provider, gave the RTX 3080 for example because the GPU’s value dropped from $1118, or 8,000 yuan, to five,000 yuan inside three months.

In line with Peng, when Bitcoin (BTC) mining was at its peak in China, mining corporations had been doing GPU purchasing sprees. However in the intervening time, the service provider mentioned that nobody is shopping for new computer systems, not to mention new GPUs.

One other service provider known as Liu additionally highlighted that low-end RTX 3080 playing cards from producers like MSI additionally dropped by round 2,000 yuan in comparison with costs two months in the past. In line with Liu, this can be extremely influenced by the hype surrounding the Ethereum Merge.

The in-store retailers aren’t the one ones affected by decrease demand. On-line purchasing platforms Taobao and JD have additionally proven declining costs of GPUs. RTX 3080 playing cards on these web sites have slowly gone down in costs by a number of hundred yuans in comparison with their costs three months in the past.

Associated: Possession of Bitcoin nonetheless authorized in China regardless of the ban, lawyer says

After the Ethereum Merge, the blockchain transitioned from its energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism to the PoS layer known as the Beacon Chain. With this, miners that used to course of transactions and produce blocks are changed by ecosystem contributors who would stake ETH to turn out to be the brand new validators of the community.

In the meantime, a PoW fork known as ETHPoW, went reside because the Merge commenced. Nonetheless, regardless of its makes an attempt to retain the PoW consensus, it suffered technical points when it launched, decreasing the value of its ETHW token by 65%.