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In the first quarter of 2021, analysts estimate that crypto miners purchased around 700,000 mid-to-high-end graphics cards.
Analysts at Jon Peddie Research say the crypto-mining industry was responsible for purchasing 25% of all GPUs in the first months of 2021. They estimate that translates to “700,000 high graphics cards. range and mid-range ”valued at approximately $ 500. millions in market value.
Crypto mining uses the processing power of graphics cards to create a new bitcoin, a digital cryptocurrency that has significantly increased in value over the years.
The research model provided by JPR assumes that PC sales are down slightly, but there has been a huge increase in sales of individual graphics cards. They believe their model detects dedicated mining farms because these crypto miners only buy graphics cards, as opposed to fully built PCs.
Bitcoin. Credit: Francesco Carta photographer
Researchers note that they cannot assess the impact of current large-scale crypto-miners because graphics card prices “are so volatile and increase almost every minute as bots fight or trade with other bots and humans. “.
JPR also points to a divergence between the two major graphics card makers AMD and Nvidia. While Nvdia has taken steps to reduce the efficiency of crypto mining on its own cards, such as introducing firmware that reduces the ability of GPUs to create bitcoin, AMD has not taken such a step.
As PC Gamer notes, the price of Ethereum bitcoin remains high, meaning crypto miners will always have good reasons to buy GPUs in bulk.
Meanwhile, pirated games and software, including Adobe Photoshop, have helped spread a strain of malware that has infected 3.2 million PCs and stolen more than 1.2 terabytes of personal data.
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