[News] NVIDIA Bracing for a Cryptocurrency Demand Drop

[StyM]

https://www.techpowerup.com/242320/n...cy-demand-drop

In what could bring cheers to PC gamers, and tears to miners, NVIDIA is reportedly wary of a possible drop in cryptocurrencies through 2018. This directly affects the company, since GPUs are used in mining various cryptocurrencies, which triggered inflation in prices of graphics cards from Q2-2017 to Q1-2018. Over the past couple of weeks, prices of popular high-end GPUs such as the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti have cooled, although not back to their original levels. NVIDIA's manufacturing division, which sub-contracts silicon fabrication to TSMC, is calculating the impact a cryptocurrency slump could have on its supply-chain, and are being conservative with their orders to the foundry. A drop in demand could leave the company with vast amounts of unsold inventories based on an old-generation architecture (Pascal, in the wake of Volta/Ampere), which could result in multi-billion-dollar inventory write-offs. According to a Digitimes report, NVIDIA has placed restrictions on its add-in card (AIC) partners on marketing cryptocurrency mining abilities of their graphics cards, and selling directly to large miners.

In addition to a slump in demand for cryptocurrencies, 2018 could see introduction of purpose-built crypto-mining ASICs that are tailored for popular cryptocurrencies. Purpose-built ASICs tend to be extremely economical for medium-thru-large scale miners, in comparison to GPUs. The third horseman is policy. While several governments around the world have developed an appreciation for blockchain technology for its resilience to tampering, fraud, and data-theft (which could be implemented in government records, bank records); governments are, understandably, anti-cryptocurrency, as it undermines sovereign legal tender issued by central banks. Several governments through 2017-18 have announced measures to crack down on cryptocurrency mining and use as tender. This has led to a further drop in public interest in cryptocurrencies, as large ICO investors are weary of losing money in a highly volatile market. Close to half the ICOs have failed.

[Sparky]

Please let this crypto nonsense stop so we can get graphics cards are normal prices again.

I do wish I had gotten on that train a while ago just to make bucks with my hardware, but at this point it is not worth screwing around with. I just want to be able to retire my 7950 at some point without spending my life savings.

[BenchZowner]

Everybody's blaming the cryptocurrencies while the fault lies on nVIDIA & AMD themselves and Samsung for their... self-induced "shortage" on GDDR & HBM2 memory.
Pretty sure the investors of AMD & nVIDIA are in tears for the high GPU prices thinking about the poor consumers... yeah right

[EternityZX9]

Please let this crypto nonsense stop so we can get graphics cards are normal prices again.

I do wish I had gotten on that train a while ago just to make bucks with my hardware, but at this point it is not worth screwing around with. I just want to be able to retire my 7950 at some point without spending my life savings.

*hugs* his EVGA 1080Ti bought last April

Everybody's blaming the cryptocurrencies while the fault lies on nVIDIA & AMD themselves and Samsung for their... self-induced "shortage" on GDDR & HBM2 memory.
Pretty sure the investors of AMD & nVIDIA are in tears for the high GPU prices thinking about the poor consumers... yeah right

This.