Not long ago, Tesla announced its Q2 earnings report, in which a piece of information caused market concern, that is, Tesla has sold 75% of its bitcoin holdings into fiat currency. The reason for this is the collapse of Bitcoin, which Tesla can no longer afford.
Since the beginning of March, the price of bitcoin has continued to plummet, and as of now, it has been cut back from its March high. And the plunge in bitcoin has caused a chain reaction, the most direct manifestation of which is that the mining cards are crashing.
There was a time when bitcoin’s surge triggered a mining boom that had countless people excited, which led to an explosion of mining cards, but now that the tide has receded, the price of mining cards has fallen to the freezing point and the market is unattended, while the price of ordinary graphics cards is also affected and falling.
Mining fever ebbs, graphics cards plunge
In the past two years, the graphics card market is very hot driven by mining, the proliferation of the mining tide in the world, making a variety of graphics cards were bursting at the seams, once a card difficult to find scenes, the market price of graphics cards far beyond the original price is common, and in the behavior of channel merchants hoarding, the market price of graphics cards was once more outrageously high.
It’s just that, along with the big crash in the cryptocurrency market, cryptocurrencies such as ethereum and bitcoin have fallen all the way, and bitcoin even fell below $20,000 at one point, dropping two-thirds from its high price of $66,000 last November.
Publicly available information shows that since 2022, the used price of graphics cards has dropped by more than 50%, RTX 3090 is as high as 60%, in addition, RTX 3080, RX 6800, RX 6600 XT price reductions are also in the range of 60%.
I learned from AMD’s official website that graphics cards such as the RX 6750 XT, 6900 XT and 6950 XT are also already in stock at their original prices.
According to statistics, of the 20 graphics cards currently on sale in Jingdong Mall, 11 are already below the original price, with RTX 3080 Ti and many of the top cards above having broken the bank.
“As far as the mining card itself is concerned, it has been at an abnormal level for a long time before, so if you take the price that was hyped in the past and compare it with the present, the conclusion drawn is also abnormal.” An analyst said to the author.
According to my understanding, due to the “mining disaster” caused by the plunge in the price of graphics cards, in fact, is not the first time, as early as 2018, bitcoin had a collapse of the situation. That year, bitcoin plummeted from $17,000 at the beginning of the year to hover around $4,000 for most of the year.
The “mining disaster” led directly to a massive oversupply of GPU production lines leading to a wave of falling graphics card prices, and now it’s just history repeating itself again, a situation that not only makes retail prices threaten sales, but also floods the market with mining cards and used cards as the market gives up on mining.
Some channel merchants say that the end of mining demand, mining difficulties have led to many used graphics cards are now mining cards, Huaqiang North selling mining machines has been much less, the demand for mining cards is also naturally declining. Now we can only wait for this part to be digested by the market before the graphics card market can return to its regular posture.
In addition, according to the PC supply chain, as the mining boom receded, graphics card shipments in 2022 fell by as much as 2-3%, graphics cards show a price decline, which from Nvidia, AMD, Intel, to the board, related chips and other supply chain at the impact is huge.
Among them, Intel’s new CEO Pat Kissinger said in an earnings call that the company will not be able to achieve its goal of shipping 4 million GPUs within this year.
High-performance demand remains, RTX 40 series will be released soon
Due to the plummeting prices of mining cards, which directly triggered a decline in the graphics card market boom, the entire graphics card market, which has seen dramatic changes since the beginning of 2022, has seen a major de-stocking by channel vendors.
It is reported that although the graphics card manufacturers also held up during the 618 did not reduce prices, but the inventory pressure is too great, graphics card manufacturers have to face price wars. Sources said that after 618, the first brand of domestic graphics card seven rainbow take the lead in action, for the Internet cafe market to increase efforts to grab a single, and give dealers higher price flexibility.
According to the data released by the third-party agency BoBoTang, domestic graphics card shipments increased by 8% in June compared to May and 16% compared to June last year. Among them, the first ranking is exactly seven rainbow, followed by Gigabyte, Asus, Shadowrun, etc.. In addition, graphics card prices were relatively stable in June, especially for low-end and mid-range models.
“In fact, the overall view, the absolute demand is still there, buy a computer with the graphics card can not be less, but some people with APU, but the requirements for high performance and demand is still very strong, at least the demand for this part of the unique display is not declining, just that there may be a decline in shipments.” Industry insiders told the author that the market demand for localization has also always existed, which is not going to have any logical changes.
The industry insider added that for Nvidia and AMD to say, they will push a lot of categories out every year, on this year’s situation, at most, the amount of preparation may be down, and then there may be cut orders; and they launched the A card and N card more or game level or desktop rendering, workstation and so on, at least in the game market demand is no decline.
“Therefore, the overall view is actually okay, may be for some special applications, such as non-graphic card design intended application of those market demand may be a significant decline, such as mining cards.” The above-mentioned industry sources pointed out.
In addition, RTX 40 series graphics cards will soon make their grand debut, and this is something that the market has been waiting for, perhaps to the current pessimistic mood of the graphics market has changed.
Information shows that this year’s SIGGRAPH conference will be held from August 8 to 11, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang will give a special speech at that time. Last year NVIDIA released the RTX A2000 graphics card here, so now it’s time to see the RTX 40 series of graphics cards also debut.
According to previous revelations, RTX 40 series graphics cards in late July to early August will complete verification, August to September to start mass production, the first batch of RTX 40 series graphics cards will be shipped to Chinese suppliers in less than a month.
So, overall, the excessive pessimism in the graphics card market, as well as the plummeting prices, the source appears in the mining card, and thus bring crash the entire market, with the gradual clearing of the mining card, RTX 40 series graphics card release, the situation may turn around.
