Ethereum miners have spent $15 billion on graphics cards in the past 18 months

Ethereum miners have spent $15 billion on graphics cards in the past 18 months

Ethereum miners have spent $15 billion on graphics cards in the past 18 months.

Ethereum miners alone have reportedly spent around $15 billion on graphics cards over the past 18 months.

That figure doesn’t include the GPUs gamers use for gaming and mining, and they’re also trying to recoup some of the cost of their high-priced graphics cards.

The reported figures also do not include the cost of CPUs, motherboards, PSUs and other components required for mining rigs.

The data comes from Bitpro Consulting, a company that specializes in buying and refurbishing cryptocurrency mining hardware.

At the end of 2020, the prices of many cryptocurrencies rose sharply, causing millions of people to flock to retail and online stores to buy graphics cards to mine Ethereum in order to make a quick buck.

At the same time, AMD and NVIDIA have launched their new generation of GPUs, which feature huge performance improvements over their predecessors, leaving many gamers wanting to upgrade.

The story that followed is familiar: demand far outstripped supply, sending prices skyrocketing, and the rampant hardware scalpers compounded the problem.

The average premium attached to graphics cards jumped from just over $400 in 2019 to nearly $800 last year, according to Jon Peddie Research.

Early entrants into the mining industry reap huge profits from their investments.

However, the value of ethereum has fallen by more than 80% since its peak last year, making it difficult for many to recover the cost.

Bloomberg reports that a man has made only $5,000 worth of cryptocurrency so far from his $30,000 investment in hardware.

GPU miners will no longer be able to mine cryptocurrencies in this environmentally unfriendly way after ethereum switches to a proof-of-stake model, a move developers claim will happen in August, although it could be delayed again.