What was the miner crisis?

[Colt_0pz]

I remember back 2 years ago or so that there was a shortage of computer hardware because some were buying them all up for bitcoin mining (and other currencies). What specifically happened and how did it end?

[Mira Yurizaki]

It was mostly video cards that people were buying. The reason they bought them was to mine various cryptocurrencies and the way to get more cryptocurrency is to perform a math function to find some magic value. It just so happens video cards are really good at crunching this math function so you can test literally dozens of millions of values per second. It ended when the market for crypto crashed for some reason.

 

Note that this doesn't mean the problem of video cards being hard to find didn't go away. Thanks to online retailers opening the doors to third party sellers, plenty of people are buying up cards just to turn them around on the market for a small profit.

[rx590overclocker]

2 minutes ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

It was mostly video cards that people were buying. The reason they bought them was to mine various cryptocurrencies and the way to get more cryptocurrency is to perform a math function to find some magic value. It just so happens video cards are really good at crunching this math function so you can test literally dozens of millions of values per second. It ended when the market for crypto crashed for some reason.

 

Note that this doesn't mean the problem of video cards being hard to find didn't go away. Thanks to online retailers opening the doors to third party sellers, plenty of people are buying up cards just to turn them around on the market for a small profit.

That is really interesting.  You know that u can game on a mining card even if it has no outputs?

[rx590overclocker]

Just now, rx590overclocker said:

That is really interesting.  You know that u can game on a mining card even if it has no outputs?

 

[WkdPaul]

54 minutes ago, Colt_0pz said:

What specifically happened and how did it end?

The price of BTC skyrocketed because of speculation and it ended with a crash of the value of Bitcoins.

 

I'm not familiar with the details of the raise and fall, all I know is that that boom in value helped me pay for my current rig!

[SkilledRebuilds]

People with YEARS old AMD GPUs were selling them USED at NEW retail launch prices again, or worse.

My R9 290 sold for $450 AUD when it was worth $250-300AUD at the time. (Realistically)

 

New GPUs were double!

Old GPUs skyrocketed if they were good enough for mining.

Lots of excess bitcoin excitement bubbled cash buying up all the GPUs left right and centre.

 

Many videos exist showing big stores with no GPUs on shelves  

[mr moose]

I read the title and started formulating a mental essay on the thatcher government and unions in the 80's.   

 

I see there is no need.

[SpikeSpiegel]

Yes around 2017 there was a huge GPU/RAM shortage.  Because of miners buying all the Nvidia 1070TI/1080TI's also price of DDR4 RAM was out of control.  There was a civil class action lawsuit if you bought RAM during that time.

[Colt_0pz]

1 hour ago, wkdpaul said:

The price of BTC skyrocketed because of speculation and it ended with a crash of the value of Bitcoins.

 

I'm not familiar with the details of the raise and fall, all I know is that that boom in value helped me pay for my current rig!

I remember BTC being around $18K then tanking shortly afterward. Why did so many people go for video card mining if ASIC miners are more efficient anyways?

[Tilaron]

Basically the government mining agency wanted to reduce subsidies, and was closing pits at a steady rate. There were strikes, power outages as a result, but sadly Thatcher and her cronies won out in the end, and mining communities quickly became some of the poorest places in the country and are still suffering as a result of all the pit closures over the last 40 years.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Colt_0pz said:

I remember BTC being around $18K then tanking shortly afterward. Why did so many people go for video card mining if ASIC miners are more efficient anyways?

It was about cost per dollar and availability of asic miners.  Basically they could not be had.