, China’s GPU prices have fallen to new lows
The Ethereum network’s move towards a Proof-of-Stake (PoS consensus mechanism drives institutional investors adoption, the prices of graphics processing units (GPUs), which are often used to mine cryptocurrencies such as Ether ( ETH ), have fallen in China.
According to a report from the South China Morning Post, the highly-sought-after Nvidia GeForce CPUs have dropped in price significantly following the historic Ethereum Merge of Sept. 15. Peng, a Chinese merchant gave an example of the RTX3080’s drop in price from $1118 (or 8,000 yuan) to 5,000 yuan in three months.
Peng says that GPU shopping sprees were common during the peak of Bitcoin ( BTC ) mining in China. The merchant stated that at the moment no one is buying new computers or new GPUs.
Liu, another merchant, also pointed out that the prices of low-end RTX3080 cards manufactured by MSI dropped by approximately 2,000 yuan compared with two months ago. Liu believes this could be due to the hype surrounding Ethereum Merge.
Lower demand is not only affecting in-store retailers. The prices of GPUs have been dropping on online shopping platforms Taobao, JD and other sites. These cards have seen a slow decline in their prices over the past three months, when they were listed on Taobao and JD.
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The Ethereum Merge saw the blockchain move from an energy-intensive proof of work (PoW), to a PoS layer called Beacon Chain. This means that miners who used to process transactions or produce blocks have been replaced by participants in the ecosystem, who would stake Ethereum to become validators for the network.
ETHPoW was a PoW fork that went live just as the Merge began. It launched but, despite its efforts to maintain the PoW consensus, it ran into technical problems, which resulted in the price for its ETHW token being lowered by 65%.
