As investors get on board with Ethereum’s move to a proof-of-stake system, the prices of graphics processing units (GPUs) for computers have lowered. China is one of the countries with the most major GPU discounts in the world, such as the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080, going from 8000 Yuan ($1124) to just 5000 Yuan ($703) in three months.
A South China Morning Post report says that after the Ethereum Merge on September 15, Nvidia GeForce GPU prices, which were once expensive, are now at better prices, with some 30 series costing lesser than previous discount.
Peng, the Chinese merchant that reported the new prices of GPUs, says that when Bitcoin mining in China was at its all-time high, companies kept purchasing cards from AMD and NVIDIA. Yet, Peng noted that nobody is buying new computers or any of their hardware these days.
Crypto Mining Influenced Past GPU Prices
During the Bitcoin wave of 2017 to 2021, GPU prices spiked because of new buyers in high demand. GPUs always have limited supplies. Graphics cards were hoarded in the wake of many people wanting a piece of Bitcoin and other minable
This became a significant problem for gamers who wanted to buy sound cards like the 20 and 30 series. Miners bought these only for the sake of mining, most gamers were forced to nod to scalped prices
A merchant named Liu pointed out that the prices of graphics cards lowered mainly because of the Ethereum Merge in September of this year. The mass adoption from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake allowed crypto investors to stop using high-powered PCs to mine Ethereum.
Now, mining power is determined by the number of validator stakes coins. The more a participant stakes, the higher the chance they can add new blocks. Every PoS protocol depends on how it selects its validators, usually using random numbers.
However, this also solves the random picker from the old PoW system because it will only verify the high-staking users. Even with just an app, an investor can participate in a staking pool at any time, letting them mine passively without consuming large quantities of electricity.
Fortunately, this new mining process allows PC gamers to buy GPUs at lower prices. Yet, even with lesser crypto enthusiasts using the PC, there is also lower demand for graphics cards.
Layers of New Protocols
After the Merge, the Ethereum blockchain migration from PoW to PoS established a layer called Beacon Chain. This new layer lets participants who stake ETH become validators and process transactions, unlike the old miners who relied on ASIC and GPU-powered computers. As long as the participant has the quantity of ETH, they can earn more.
At the same time, ETHPoW, a PoW fork, was created when the Merge started. Although, even when it tried to keep the PoW consensus, it had problems when it began, which drove the price of its ETHW token down to as low as 65%.
