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Crypto miners dump their GPUs on Ebay as Ethereum drops almost 50% in value

An 18-card Ethereum mining rig pushed to its limits. (Source: Ethereum.org)
An 18-card Ethereum mining rig pushed to its limits. (Source: Ethereum.org)
It might be a hard time for miners who are now trying to mitigate losses and sell their GPUs on ebay, but this could also be a boon for all the gamers who couldn't find mid-range GPUs a few weeks ago.

2017 has been a great year for cryptomining thus far. All the major cryptocurrencies have reached their all time highest values, with Bitcoin going over $3,000, Litecoin nearing $60 and Ethereum almost making it to $400. Ethereum (ETH) very quickly became popular when its price increased from around $10 to more than $100 in the first weeks of March. So many miners jumped on the hype train and thus began the GPU shortage that is still happening to this day. Ethereum is still minable with GPUs (unlike Bitcoin and Litecoin that need ASICs), however, just like with Bitcoin and Litecoin in the past, when many miners concentrated all their mining power on a single blockchain, the mining difficulty increased so much that the profitability just wouldn’t cut it anymore.

When miners can’t generate enough income to cover their electricity bill or the income is reduced to a few bucks a day, it’s probably time to sell the hardware and invest into something else. Just like that, Ethereum miners saw their daily incomes shrinking more and more. Add to that the recent drop in price suffered by Ethereum, when, last week, the cryptocoin dipped below $200, losing almost 50% of its value in the last month.

Many miners are now selling their GPUs on ebay in order to mitigate losses. Gamers that were very frustrated with the shortage of mid-range GPUs from AMD and Nvidia a few weeks back can now rejoice and even find bargains on ebay. If you see a good deal, just make sure the GPUs didn’t run 24/7 for more than a few months, because the lifetime of graphics cards is drastically reduced when the GPUs run ceaselessly without proper cooling for more than half a year.

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > News > News Archive > Newsarchive 2017 07 > Crypto miners dump their GPUs on Ebay as Ethereum drops almost 50% in value
Bogdan Solca, 2017-07-19 (Update: 2017-07-20)