Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 series laptop shortages likely as Ethereum hunters in China turn to mobile mining

It was predicted that cryptocurrency miners might go mobile thanks to Nvidia’s powerful GeForce RTX 30 series Laptop GPUs, and now there is physical evidence of this happening. A Weibo blogger has shared some images of mining rigs that are configured from gaming laptops fitted with one of the new RTX 30 series chips. Dozens of laptops can be seen piled high with the sole purpose of making some crypto profits, with Ethereum being one of the likely candidates for mass mobile mining attempts.

We reported about this potential (via VideoCardz) not too long ago, when research into the RTX 3060 Laptop GPUs revealed that there was enough processing power available for such a mining operation. A content creator in China has already demonstrated how easy it was to mine Ethereum on an RTX 3060-powered laptop by casually earning enough money in a coffee shop to pay for their beverage and not incur any power bills. One of the images clearly shows a number of devices from the Chinese OEM Hasee, which has RTX 3060 gaming laptops for sale from 6,499 to 7,899 yuan (US$1,005 to US$1,221).

Ethereum is on a major rise at the moment: The altcoin had an apparent value of around US$600 at the beginning of December and has lately been floating around the US$1,600-US$1,700 mark. The sight of dozens of gaming laptops hooked up together to utilize their GeForce RTX 30 series parts for crypto mining will undoubtedly anger gamers, especially those who have already suffered through desktop graphics card droughts and price hikes for the same reason. While some OEMs, such as HP and Dell, have sought to move laptop production away from China, mobile mining will have an effect on the overall availability (and price) of RTX 30 series-based laptops further along down the line.

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