Cryptominers are selling off loads of cheap GPUs via livestreams

techradar.com:

Gamers, this is our time: cryptominers are trying to recoup some money by auctioning off mountains of used (but cheap) graphics cards via livestreams, presenting a decent opportunity to grab yourself a bargain — providing you’re happy to take the risk.

The cryptocurrency market has had a rough few weeks following the collapse of most of its more profitable coins such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, but as they say, one person’s pain is another’s pleasure. PC Gamer(opens in new tab) reports that with so much value knocked off Ethereum especially, the largest currency to still be viably mined using a consumer desktop GPU, cryptominers and farms are attempting to sell off the used hardware to recover their losses.

GPU flood is here.Chinese miners and South Asian ecafes now dismantling their mining rigs and putting cards up for auction on livestreams.3060 Ti's going for $300-$350 US… pic.twitter.com/kphmIt7vZwJune 21, 2022

This is because Ethereum mining still uses proof-of-work validation, though the currency is set to move over to proof-of-stake which will make mining the currency wildly unprofitable using gaming GPUs, even if the market does recover. This is the same validation method used by Bitcoin these days, which is why miners typically focus more on application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) miners created specifically for mining rather than scrambling to snatch up any of the best gaming graphics cards on the market.

At its height, a single Bitcoin was worth almost $64,400, which means that if you purchased $1,000 of Bitcoin back on November 12, 2021, it would currently be worth around $326 today. Similarly, the price of Ethereum fell to $1,112 this week, down from $4,600 back in November.

Chinese Miners are dumping 3080 at