Question are video card prices headed down yet?

[Aapje]

Not if he bought them at retail before "the crisis". Anyone else could have bought those.

Precisely my point.

You can argue that, depending on when you bought them and the production choices of Nvidia, you didn't contribute to the shortage because Nvidia produced 10 more cards due to your sales than they would have otherwise. However, this is highly speculative and given that you bought them just before the crisis, highly questionable.

However, I need to point out that I never claimed that you dropkicked a gamer in the face and took a card from his limp hands, while he was standing in line at Microcenter. I merely claimed that your cards would have gone to gamers if miners hadn't bought them. Which is unquestionably true.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Of course, that also means that as you add more hardware to get back to where you were, you're just inching close to the next tipping point.

That's how the birdbrained mass mining farmers created the whole mess. If they could only understand that the more hardware they threw at the problem, the slower it would become and then they would need to buy even more hardware raising the mining difficulty even further. It was an unwinnable situation but to comprehend that, they would have needed enough brains to not get into this madness in the first place.

 

[Aapje]

@igor_kavinski

It was designed that way so new coins become available gradually and can't just all be hoarded by the early adopters. Also, if a coin becomes more popular and thus worth more, mining becomes more profitable, so more coins get mined. This is exactly what you want: that the money supply increases if the demand for that money goes up.

It's actually quite ingenuous and if it didn't cost so much energy and so many video cards, it would be quite a good system.

And miners do understand that the difficulty increases, which is exactly why (judging by the prices during the crisis) they demanded to break even on their purchase (ignoring resale value) after merely 1.5 years.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Although, it is worth keeping in mind that it was the excessive purchasing before the lack of video cards that helped lead to the lack.

That's not really true. If you have a market fully-supplied with product, small buys that can't move the peg on street price have no overall bearing on availability for anyone else. If there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of 1660s on the market, buying 10 of them doesn't prevent <insertrandomgamerhere> from getting his hands on them.

Odds are very good that if anyone over the last two years was somehow unable to get a 1660, that same someone had a chance to grab one in between 2019 and 2020 that simply chose not to at the time.

 

[igor_kavinski]

It was designed that way so new coins become available gradually and can't just all be hoarded by the early adopters.

The creators probably had good intentions and they figured EVERYONE would join in on the fun. But it was just the relatively smaller mining community that tried to get all the coins they could and in the process, hoarded millions of GPUs, driving their prices up.

Oh well, at least now some kid in Africa can have a Geforce 1660 for pennies soon and enjoy decent visual fidelity and framerates in games released in the past 5 years. Keeping them glued to the screen will also have the happy side effect of fewer of them killing each other for food and resources.

 

[Aapje]

@DrMrLordX

If supply is fixed, then any extra customer must result in someone else not having a card, because it is physically not possible for people to own more cards than there are. If 10 cards get sold and for a certain price there are 10 buyers, but another buyer comes who is willing to pay that price, then 1 of those 11 people have to go without a card, for example by raising prices sufficiently to price out one of these people.

This is fundamentally no different from the situation where there are hundreds of thousands of cards and buyers. It is a fallacy to think that the quantity matters.

Of course, buyers being priced out is merely one of the two ways in which demand and supply can be made to match up. The other is to increase production. When the factory is underused and can just increase production to make up for the extra buyer(s) it is not necessarily true that anyone needs to get priced out of owning a card.

Of course, there are some complicating factors like stock levels (which is used as a buffer, so extra demand will initially eat into stock), a delay between stock reducing and factories producing more, a delay between production and delivery, etc. Yet all of these do not change the fundamentals. If stock gets low, sellers will raise prices, while they lower prices if stock gets high. So extra demand will result in higher prices, which prices out potential buyers, unless that stock is replenished in time.

If you want to know whether Larry prevented one or more gamers from getting a card, you need to know whether Larry's purchase made the factory produce more cards at a time when they were underused, which is something that we can only guess it.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

It's actually quite ingenuous and if it didn't cost so much energy and so many video cards, it would be quite a good system.

You do see the contradiction inherent in that sentence, right?

 

[Aapje]

You do see the contradiction inherent in that sentence, right?

There is no contradiction, but you are free to share your misreading of what I wrote, if you disagree.

 

[DrMrLordX]

@DrMrLordX

If supply is fixed, then any extra customer must result in someone else not having a card, because it is physically not possible for people to own more cards than there are.

It's just not likely in a pool of products where supply is fluid.

 

[Aapje]

It's just not likely in a pool of products where supply is fluid.

Supply stopped being fluid during the crisis.

And it is not uncommon for a demand-spike to cause stock drops, with the factory being unable to renew stock in time. There might have been an unexpected ramp up to the crisis where Nvidia continuously underestimated future sales, until the factories they use were at full capacity. If Larry then contributed to that, he might have actually caused (part of) a stock shortage which could never be replenished and thus caused gamers to lose out.

Ironically, the same is true if Nvidia foresaw the huge demand and was already producing maximally by the time that Larry bought his cards. Although I consider that unlikely.

And there can be all kinds of weirdness, like Nvidia ordering cards in batches, where Larry's buys might have resulted in them rounding their factory order up rather than down.

Ultimately, we know too little about Nvidia's contracts with the manufacturing plants to be sure one way or the other. How flexible are those contracts even?

 

[igor_kavinski]

Larry

He isn't the posterchild for miners. Has he ever touted pics of his mining farm? Did he ever even have one? For me, the worst miner is the one who makes a profit and keeps buying cards and expanding their farm to encompass rooms or floors or even data centers. And they pretend to be all innocent. Just like drug dealers.

 

[Aapje]

@igor_kavinski

I never called him the worst or even attacked him for his mining.

I did quite dislike how he dismissed those with a smaller budget, but that is not related to his mining.

 

[amenx]

The merge is in a couple days. Google put up a countdown timer for searches for the merge.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If you want to know whether Larry prevented one or more gamers from getting a card, you need to know whether Larry's purchase made the factory produce more cards at a time when they were underused, which is something that we can only guess it.

Actually, I bought most of them refurb in May 2020, but please, continue on with your attempt at false narrative. It piques my interest to read someone's thought that is just so wrong about everything.

 

[VirtualLarry]

For me, the worst miner is the one who makes a profit and keeps buying cards and expanding their farm to encompass rooms or floors or even data centers. And they pretend to be all innocent. Just like drug dealers.

Well, there is one LITTLE difference, using PCs, GPUs, and electricity to make money mining IS LEGAL, whereas, being a drug dealer IS NOT. (So yes, (home) miners ARE innocent.)

 

[igor_kavinski]

miners ARE innocent.

Mass miners are not. Anyone keeping a few GPUs mining at home, that's their business. But someone expanding their mining empire and paying way too much for GPUs or buying them directly from suppliers and keeping them from gamers is not innocent. That being is a malicious POC.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

There is no contradiction, but you are free to share your misreading of what I wrote, if you disagree.

Apparently not.

 

[moonbogg]

The most successful miners are youtubers who convince legions of floopy derps to get into mining. Also, they use youtube money to make up for their electricity costs and pretend like their derfloopy followers can somehow make it work financially without youtube income to take up the slack. That's what they do right now, pretend like a new golden age for mining is right around the corner, getting all excited and stupid and crap.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Very interested to see what happens on eBay after the merge. Prices have been quite sticky and stubborn on there. A lot more 6800/3080 cards being posted with starting bids of $200, but god dang bidders keep bidding up to $500+ its nuts. Feel like I see a lot of reposting too, so not sure if what I'm seeing are miners offloading cards one at a time to maximize resale price, or if there are a lot of buyers stiffing sellers when they lose control of bidding or get the old "Don't buy anything for more than $500 right now" advice that is getting louder and more prevalent on Reddit r/buildapc and other watering holes.

 

[Aapje]

Actually, I bought most of them refurb in May 2020, but please, continue on with your attempt at false narrative. It piques my interest to read someone's thought that is just so wrong about everything.

This is actually the 2nd time that you've withheld relevant information and then instead of clarifying it nicely, declaring victory over a misunderstanding that was fueled by your unwillingness to share certain information.

Yet that you bought the cards second hand actually increases the chance that your purchases priced gamers out of the market.

And I feel compelled to explain to you again that I originally never claimed that you deprived gamers of a card, nor made any insults. Yet you accused me of those things. So your haughty assertion that I'm the one who is wrong about everything tell me again that you have a rather self-serving and hypocritical perspective, which is quite evident in this discussion.

 

[Aikouka]

That's not really true. If you have a market fully-supplied with product, small buys that can't move the peg on street price have no overall bearing on availability for anyone else. If there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of 1660s on the market, buying 10 of them doesn't prevent <insertrandomgamerhere> from getting his hands on them.

Odds are very good that if anyone over the last two years was somehow unable to get a 1660, that same someone had a chance to grab one in between 2019 and 2020 that simply chose not to at the time.

I think it's important to keep in mind that my point that you quoted is meant to be very pedantic. I'm just touching on the idea that shortages really don't happen all of a sudden... unless most/all video cards get destroyed in a disaster/accident or something like that. In other words, by the time we were claiming there's a GPU shortage, I'm quite sure that GPU sales had already risen quite a bit. It's that heavy increase in demand without an increase in supply or with a pandemic-induced decrease that eventually sees the entire supply channel start running on E. It's kind of like how my mom was one of those people that bought a bunch of toilet paper. She didn't single-handedly cause the shortages, but she definitely didn't help either.

Even with that, as I mentioned, I still don't think there's much use in pointing fingers at the small-time folks. If someone told me that they did a bit of mining and bought a card or two, I wouldn't shun them. Although, out of morbid curiosity, I might ask what they ended up doing with them though!

 

[VirtualLarry]

that I originally never claimed that you deprived gamers of a card

You alone kept at least 10 perfectly viable 1080p cards out of the hands of gamers.

Hmm.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Supply stopped being fluid during the crisis.

Duh. He bought these before there were shortages, remember? And again they were already old/previous gen by the time he bought them too, so they weren't even "new" product!

Leave Larry alone.

I think it's important to keep in mind that my point that you quoted is meant to be very pedantic.

Fair enough.

Even with that, as I mentioned, I still don't think there's much use in pointing fingers at the small-time folks.

Agreed. Mining is about to change and possibly die forever anyway. Or at least dGPU mining.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Guys, don't direct your anger at the mom & pop miner.

A little ribbing in good fun is fine, but your anger should really be reserved for the AIBs that shipped pallets of cards to mining warehouses in central asia and other places without letting your average consumer even get a look, at the speculators that poured money into ETH that allowed its profitability to stay ahead of otherwise titanic increases in difficulty, at scalpers and gougers who took advantage of the situation, the people that paid scalper prices, and at regulators who are essentially asleep at the wheel when it comes to any sort of new investment vehicle they don't know how to make heads or tales of.

Larry's 12-15 mass market mid-range prior gen cards didn't have anything to do with the BS we all went through with the current gen over the last 2 years.

 

[mastertech01]

Nvidia took a 10 percent hit on the exchange today. That had to sting a bit.