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There are still two minutes until the RTX 3070 graphics card goes on sale on JD.com. During the countdown, Xiao Yang, a junior student, who was "squatting" on the pre-order purchase interface, felt his adrenaline soaring.
As early as October 2020, when NVIDIA released this high-performance graphics card, Xiao Yang took a fancy to it at first sight. However, he did not expect that this graphics card would be "sold out" by miners who focused on "mining coins".
In desperation, Xiao Yang could only "hunt" on the e-commerce platform. Although he had experienced more than a dozen "sold out in seconds" pre-order purchases, this time, Xiao Yang still hoped to be the "lucky one" among the tens of thousands of people who made reservations.
The result was no surprise. The graphics card that Xiao Yang had been eyeing for half a year turned gray and said “Sold Out” in an instant. Xiao Yang wanted to give up.
"It's like being played with monkeys." Xiao Yang was not the only one who complained like this. Zhang Jian, an IT person in Beijing, also felt the same way.
Compared with those "capital-rich" miners, getting a high-performance graphics card is "harder than a thousand troops crossing a single-plank bridge." Zhang Jian lamented that the RTX 3080Ti, whose performance is between the 3080 and 3090, will be available in half a month, but he is still hesitating to buy the older generation of graphics cards.
"Buy early and enjoy early, everyone knows this principle." Zhang Jian refers to consumers like himself who are waiting for high-performance graphics cards as "common people." In his opinion, the current graphics card premium is too high, "common people are thinking about 'buy later and wait for discounts'."
Comparing the selling price shown on NVIDIA's official website, the reporter found that the trading price of RTX 3080 in the market has soared to 18,000 yuan, with a premium of more than 220%. Even the price of the previous generation RTX 3070 has increased by nearly 200%, reaching about 12,000 yuan.
"The price of graphics cards has never stopped rising," Yang Wei, a Wuhan computer parts dealer and computer DIY service provider, told reporters. Most people are now affected by the premium of graphics cards, mainly because "the increase is too outrageous." Recalling the graphics cards in the past, "the price of a piece increased by 500-800 yuan at most," and the increase was about 10%-20%. "Now it has directly reversed."
Yang Wei said that at the end of last year, the price of RTX 2060 rose by 35%-40%, from more than 2,000 yuan to more than 5,000 yuan, while the prices of RTX 3060 and subsequent high-end graphics cards were "crazy" due to the pursuit of miners.
"Now we can only pay a higher price and place orders with middlemen who have priority supply opportunities with manufacturers." Dealers like Yang Wei, even if they have cooperated with graphics card manufacturers for many years, may still encounter situations where they cannot get the goods even if they pay a higher price.
Zhang Jian, who was unable to purchase offline and switched to online, originally held out a glimmer of hope. He understood the price increase, "After all, there is a lot of demand and limited supply." However, the online pre-order purchases that lasted for more than half a year were sold out as soon as they were launched, and the normal situation of "it's hard to get a card" made consumers like Xiao Yang and Zhang Jian miserable.
In the JD.com graphics card hot-selling list, the reporter saw that only 4 of the 30 graphics cards on the list were available for sale, and the rest were all shown as "restocking". Even for the graphics cards that were not sold out, the number of people who made time-sharing reservations on the product interface exceeded 200,000.
"No matter how hard you try, you can't get it." Xiao Yang was distressed, and he began to look for spot goods through some third-party channels other than the official self-operated ones. However, "tight inventory" is often linked to "high prices", ranging from 16,000 yuan to 20,000 yuan. Even if some stores priced slightly lower than the above prices, it was still unaffordable for Xiao Yang, who was still a student.
Zhang Jian has given up hope of buying a new high-performance graphics card, so he plans to recycle "good old cards" on second-hand trading platforms. The idea is good, but the reality is bleak. He has seen that the "selling price" of many second-hand graphics cards is much higher than the launch price of new cards.
"blackk", a deep CS:GO player, told the reporter about his experience of "selling cards". He once put an AMD RX580 graphics card, which he won as a prize in a team competition a few years ago, on Xianyu. At that time, no one was interested in it even though it was priced at 1,000 yuan. In the end, he sold it at a discount of more than 900 yuan.
However, since the second half of last year, Bitcoin has begun to rise sharply, and the price of the same second-hand RX580 has risen to 3,200 yuan, which made blackk feel that he had lost money by selling it.
The reporter saw from the Xianyu Index that the average transaction price of graphics cards on the platform has risen by nearly 1,060 yuan recently, which has doubled compared to the same period last year. There is obviously a problem of overheated transactions. In order to regulate the market, Xianyu issued a "graphics card cooling-off period" announcement in early April to call on users to consume rationally. Miners hoarding goods
The price of RTX 3060 has increased from 2,499 yuan to 6,500-8,000 yuan, but this is not what makes Xiao Yang most anxious. After the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase landed on Nasdaq and became the "first cryptocurrency stock", and the value of Bitcoin broke 64,000 US dollars for the first time, there were many good news in the currency circle, making the mining circle even hotter. He felt that the graphics card dilemma he faced would only become more severe.
"If I don't make an effort now, there will be no future." Although he said this, Xiao Yang hesitated because he had to find a suitable purchasing channel.
"The price increase is so outrageous that many gamers have given up on buying new graphics cards." Blackk told reporters that he had wanted to update his computer configuration last year and replace the graphics card he bought three years ago, but he hesitated because the RTX 2070 he chose was overpriced by the market. He didn't expect that the price would soar even more sharply afterwards. Not only did the quoted price break through 4,000 yuan, it has even risen to 5,000 yuan and above.
A set of statistics from the third-party organization jonpeddie shows that from January 2021 to date, the shipments of NVIDIA graphics cards in the Chinese second-hand market have exceeded 5.3 million, and together with the shipments of AMD graphics cards, the number is close to 8 million.
This growth indirectly reflects the current tight supply of high-performance graphics cards.
Talking about this, Yang Wei opened up and told reporters, "A year and a half ago, the manufacturer we cooperated with directly cut off the supply of graphics cards for our line." It turned out that many miners would connect with factory goods through him, but after the price of Bitcoin skyrocketed, graphics cards were in short supply, so miners chose to skip dealers and go directly to manufacturers to buy goods.
"Every time graphics cards arrive at the manufacturer's warehouse, the big miners with quick eyes and hands will buy them all out." In an interview with reporters, Yang Wei revealed that graphics card manufacturers prefer orders from miners. He said that the latter are happy to buy up hundreds of graphics cards at a time by raising prices.
When the miners became "repeat customers" of graphics card manufacturers, in the bidding game around graphics cards, dealers, computer DIY channel operators, and component retailers including Yang Wei all lost, and ordinary people with "huge financial disparity" could only wait.
Zhang Jian told reporters that among those who demand high-performance graphics cards, "a small part" are game players and some editors in the short video wave. In addition, the largest group is miners who want to "dig for gold" during the period of Bitcoin price increases.
Although he does not speculate in cryptocurrencies, Zhang Jian realized from seeing some news reports about the rise and fall of Bitcoin that the raging fire in the cryptocurrency circle has already spread to the mining circle. A joke is popular in the graphics card discussion forum he joined: "The former graphics card forum has become a mining forum, and all the posts are asking what graphics cards to mine. The graphics card forum bosses wake up from their dreams and count how many graphics cards they have." Although it was a joke that the hard drive was also compromised, he told reporters that this was a true portrayal. Zhang Jian gave the reporter the following summary: graphics cards are used to mine Bitcoin and Ethereum, processors are used to mine Monero, hard drives are mainly for Chia, and memory is for Litecoin... The core components of a computer are almost used to the extreme by miners.
Because of this, not only the graphics card industry is being hoarded by miners, but even hard drives are also "doomed".
Some netizens compared the process of mining Chia coins with a hard drive to clearing land and planting vegetables. Everyone can buy in and participate without any barriers.
The reporter saw a set of data in a related forum showing that there are currently about 30,000 10T hard drives in the network used for mining, and in addition, the number is increasing by about 500 per day.
Yang Wei told reporters that a fast read and write SSD hard drive (solid state drive) is very important for mining Chia coins. Since a large number of disk read and write operations will be generated during the mining process, the hard drive consumption is extremely high. Therefore, miners who want to mine Chia coins need to purchase a large number of hard drives.
Taobao seller "Beijing Hard Drive House" posted on Weibo that the number of orders for large-capacity hard drives it received had skyrocketed, with daily sales exceeding one million, and nearly 600 orders remaining to be shipped.
Even the largest domestic memory product OEM company, Jiahe Jinwei, has publicly warned that as Chiacoin mining becomes increasingly popular, the market supply and demand of SSD hard drives may become increasingly tight, and the market price may rise sharply.
"The price of large-capacity hard drives has increased dramatically. A 16TB hard drive has increased from more than 900 yuan to around 1,600 yuan now," Yang Wei revealed.
Nowadays, everyone is keeping a close eye on digital currencies. Yang Wei said frankly, "When they see Chia coins can be mined, (miners) feel that the opportunity to make a fortune has come again." He told reporters that some wealthy miners will bid 1,500 yuan for a hard drive priced at 1,000 yuan to meet the demand for hard drives, "directly buying out our supply."
There is no supplier who doesn’t want to make money. Yang Wei smiled bitterly and said, “It’s hard for anyone to withstand the power of capital.”
One netizen even shouted on Weibo, "There is a graphics card in front and a hard drive behind. Please spare the miners. The price of a hard drive that cost 800 has soared to 1300 overnight. Please leave some room for ordinary people!" Mining is so crazy. Want to know how miners mine? In February this year, Shenyu BTCer, a well-known domestic mining blogger, exposed his home Ethereum mining farm built with a laptop.
In the small room, laptops were placed on shelves or lined up on the floor. Mountains of packaging boxes and running chargers were squeezed together, which was shocking.
Afterwards, Shenyu BTCer also showed the laptop mining farm in action through a video, and called on fans to "start the laptop home mining farm!"
You should know that not only is the price of Bitcoin soaring in the currency circle, the price of Ethereum has also fluctuated from around 10,200 yuan to about 15,000 yuan at present.
According to Shenyu BTCer, excluding electricity costs, the daily income of a single machine can reach 30-40 yuan. "I used to work in a sweatshop 996 to support my house, but now I work in a sweatshop 24/7. I can lie down every day and sell coins at the end of the month to pay off my mortgage. I feel great."
In fact, the Ethereum home mine that Shenyu BTCer showed off is just a microcosm of many online mines. According to research data from the University of Cambridge, the annual power consumption of global Bitcoin mining is about 121.36 terawatt hours, which is equivalent to meeting the energy needs of Cambridge University for 744 years.
Since electricity costs account for the largest share of mining costs, regions with sufficient power resources and cheap electricity costs are often the first choice for mining sites. The "LBU Mining Machine Mall", a trading platform that mainly serves mining groups, shows that mining machine supply and demand information is mostly issued from Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia.
Because the computing power of the entire network has been greatly developed in recent years and the energy consumption of mining has increased sharply, the government departments of the above-mentioned preferred places are also increasing their control efforts.
In March this year, the Inner Mongolia Development and Reform Commission issued a document stating that in order to accelerate the elimination of backward and excess production capacity, it clearly stated that "virtual currency mining projects will be cleaned up comprehensively" and required all of them to withdraw by the end of April.
The public power has forced some mines to shut down, but in the face of absolute interests, some mines have started "guerrilla warfare" and moved to some areas with sufficient water and electricity in Sichuan, Yunnan and Guangdong. In addition, the illegal trading of mining cards has also ignited signs.
According to a report from Hong Kong Customs, among a batch of smuggled goods with a total value of over HK$31 million seized in a recent smuggling crackdown, mining graphics cards worth approximately HK$2 million were discovered for the first time. In addition to being regulated, the market's backlash will also hit miners hard as the global cryptocurrency market plummets.
In particular, at noon on April 18, Bitcoin suffered the largest single-day liquidation in history, with a drop of more than $8,000. The 24-hour liquidation amount reached $9.795 billion. Data showed that more than 1 million people became victims of the liquidation. Other virtual currencies also fell, with mainstream currencies such as Ethereum and Binance Coin falling by 11% and 13% respectively.
Having experienced the mining boom at the end of 2018, I was still confused when the cryptocurrency market crashed.
It was the weekend, and at noon, while relaxing outdoors with friends, I accidentally saw a message on my mobile phone that "the crypto market is in a bloodbath."
In Yang Wei's view, the backlash in the cryptocurrency industry has quietly arrived. As far as he knows, "the mining owners have made it clear that even if the current price drops by 50%, they will not lose money. Only retail investors will lose money."
Indeed, Zhengwu is one of the retail investors. The losses of his previous contracts have exceeded 100%, and his overall assets have shrunk by more than 20%, resulting in heavy losses.
That day, Zhengwu didn't eat lunch outside, and hurried home. He kept a close eye on the market the whole afternoon, fearing that the price of the currency would drop again. "I'm not worried about the spot. As long as I don't sell at a loss, the price of the currency will go back up sooner or later." Zhengwu said that if it fell another 5%, all his principal would be lost.
Since April 18, the price of Bitcoin has not been able to rise back to the $60,000 mark. When interviewed by reporters, I saw that Bitcoin had rebounded from the bottom price to $57,000. Influenced by this, all major mainstream currencies also rebounded. "Fortunately, there was no second stampede, and people in the circle have relaxed a lot."
But on the day of publication, April 23, Bitcoin fell 10.32% to $49,012.4, the first time it has fallen below $50,000 since March.
Regarding the sharp drop in Bitcoin prices, OKEx Research Institute believes that the plunge is a normal phenomenon in the market. Apart from the negative impact of regulation, it regards the plunge as an important retracement in the process of price evolution along the main trend direction.
However, regarding the future trend of Bitcoin, OKEx Research Institute believes that it will still rise. Who will pay the bill?
Despite the turbulence in the cryptocurrency market, noon found that miners are no longer as cautious as they were at the end of 2018 when "the cryptocurrency price fell below the shutdown price".
Going back to the time when mining machines were sold by the pound, Zhengwu told reporters, "Mining machines lose money as soon as they are turned on, and many people either stop mining or sell off their mining machines." In contrast, miners are much more stable now. In his opinion, "coin prices are still high, and (miners) still have high profits from mining."
Having missed the good opportunity to stock up on mining machines at the end of 2018, he has now purchased some Bitcoin mining machines. Although the scale is far less than that of professional miners who can be described as "crazy", after experiencing the "disaster" of the coin price plummeting, Noon regards investing in mining machines as a safer way than speculating in the secondary market.
It is not difficult to understand why the demand for core computer components such as graphics cards and hard drives has skyrocketed and is even in short supply.
Huang Yan, the game director of Lingkong, browsed and purchased RTX 3090 graphics cards on JD.com and Taobao and found that the price basically had to be increased by 2,000 to 5,000 yuan, and they were not in stock. "The price increase of hardware will definitely increase the budget of game producers." But in Huang Yan's view, most domestic game development companies are 2D mobile game producers, and they still use 10 series graphics cards. The demand for some high-performance graphics cards is limited, and even if there is a large premium, it is not serious enough to impact the entire game industry.
Compared to game development companies, the situation of computer installation shop owners who make a living from DIY computer services is not so stable. "Who else wants graphics card prices to drop more than us?" Yang Wei revealed that the DIY market has been shrinking year by year, and the shortage of cards has caused many computer installation service shops to become "middlemen who buy and sell resale goods." His monthly computer assembly volume has dropped from 40,000 units to less than 20,000 units, and his business volume has been halved.
"Now that virtual currency is being hyped up so much, it's hard to stop graphics cards from flowing to miners." Yang Wei is pessimistic about the situation of the installed computer market in the second half of this year. Even if a "mining disaster" occurs, miners will sell a large number of graphics cards before the collapse. Once the price drops, it will attract consumers who are on the sidelines, but the damage to the DIY market will still be great.
Zhang Jian saw that graphics card manufacturers like NVIDIA have already taken some action. By restricting future applications for mining at the bottom level of the product, this move will help the graphics card market return to rationality.
In fact, whether the miners need graphics cards, hard drives, etc. to mine, or Xiao Yang and Zhang Jian simply want to buy a favorite graphics card and assemble a reasonably priced computer, in Noon's view, these are legitimate demands.
"What's wrong is not the fact that miners need graphics cards to mine, but that the miners' demand has disrupted the existing supply and demand balance of graphics cards." Zhengwu explained that the "demand contradiction" between "civilians" and miners is a comprehensive market game temporarily caused by normal changes in supply and demand, which is difficult for either party to dominate.
At present, the conflict on the demand side is being further amplified by the "lack of production capacity" of graphics card manufacturers such as Nvidia and AMD. Of course, in order to maintain market order, the reporter saw that Nvidia and AMD on the supply side are also seeking solutions. Among them, Nvidia has specially launched the CMP series graphics card processors dedicated to mining the cryptocurrency Ethereum. In terms of product design, it no longer does graphics processing and has no display output, and can be directly used for large-scale mining.
It is not just the pressure of mining. Foxconn CEO Liu Yangwei’s answer a few days ago made the market not optimistic. He gave the delivery cycle of some key raw materials for PC hardware as long as 52 weeks. In addition, it is expected that the shortage of graphics cards will be solved after the second quarter of 2022. However, the reporter noticed that before Liu Yangwei gave this time point, he used the word "maybe", which shows that there are still too many uncertainties in the supply and demand market of graphics cards in the future.
Note: At the request of the interviewer, Xiao Yang, Yang Wei, and Zhengwu are all pseudonyms. (Economic Observer) |
