Crypto influencer shares video of hundreds of GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Editions in a mining farm, despite a worsening global GPU shortage

Amid a graphics card supply crisis that's seen US$500 graphics cards like the GeForce RTX 3070 selling for US$1500 and above, a crypto miner recently showed off a farm with hundreds of GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition cards. The catch? All of these cards were sourced directly from NVIDIA, off-market under a special agreement, even as gamers struggle to find these cards at anything remotely approaching their MSRP.

@jaxson_davidson shared a brief video on Twitter, showcasing roughly 1/4 of his mining farm - a section comprised entirely of GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition cards. The miner stated that he didn't buy these cards at retail. Rather, he negotiated a special deal with NVIDIA to purchase hundreds of them direct, off-market. 

According to NVIDIA's list page, GeForce RTX 3070 cards are meant to "rip through the most demanding games....with enhanced Ray Tracing Cores and Tensor Cores." While online retailers are selling these cards to gamers at US$1500 on up, Davidson seems to have negotiated a deal with NVIDIA to divert large amounts of stock, straight to his farm. The video seems particularly egregious on account of the fact that NVIDIA relaunched the GeForce RTX 2060 at the same original price as the GeForce RTX 3070, on account of availability issues. 

Earlier reports indicated that OEMs like Sapphire were selling mining cards off-market to farms, but this would mark the first time that we've seen a GPU manufacturer directly implicated. 

While the global silicon shortage has driven electronics prices up across the board, massive demand from cryptocurrency miners seem to have aggravated consumer GPU pricing. If miners like @jaxson_davidson continue to buy up the remaining stock of NVIDIA Ampere cards, and if NVIDIA itself does nothing to stop this, GPU prices could remain severely inflated, even after the structural causes of the GPU supply shortage are addressed.

Check out the GeForce RTX 3070 here on Amazon, for three times the list pricing.