The Chinese government has recently been flexing some of its power by cracking down on the lucrative industry of cryptomining throughout the country. As initially reported by HKEPC, the effects of that have become abundantly clear in the used GPU market, which is now becoming filled with second-hand NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards that are being sold at prices lower than MSRP. These include one listing that’s offering a collection of 100 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 GPUs for around $400 each, while others are selling GeForce RTX 3060 and GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GPUs in batches of 200 with each card priced at around $292 and $369, respectively. While no enthusiast should ever waste their time attempting to procure cards from overseas vendors that have gone through relentless, heavy mining usage, the listings do serve as a potentially positive sign that the GPU market is primed for pivoting back to some level of normalcy.
The Chinese government has recently taken several measures to suppress virtual currency mining. Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Sichuan and many other places where mining farms gather have been rectified. Many inland miners cannot bear the pressure, except for mine owners who quickly moved mining to the United States, Kazakhstan, etc. Outside the land, many miners with “no electricity to dig” have begun to sell mining machines.