So, if you’ve tried to assemble your own PC any time recently, you know that prices of things like memory and GPUs have gone ridiculously high. This isn’t the usual state of things- it is happening right now because cryptominers are buying these products, including NVIDIA GPUs, to mine bitcoins, leading to a shortage of products on the market, in turn driving up demand and price.
The situation has become so bad- we’re talking GTX 1080s selling at over $1,000 apiece here- that NVIDIA has been forced to issue an advisory to retailers, asking them to sell to “gamers, not cryptominers” in Europe, and encouraging them to limit sales of products to two per customers- cryptominers usually buy a whole lot of these in a bunch.
It sounds like a fair response, but it also beggars the question of just how practical this advice is, and whether or not it will actually end up bringing the situation under control.
[Computerbase via Hot Hardware]