The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is one of NVIDIA’s most powerful graphics cards, and it’s also one of the most desired by both PC gamers and Ethereum miners. Its demand has been very high, and this has generated significant inflation that has ended up shooting up its price, so much so that until recently it was around between 1,800 and 2,000 euros.
Fortunately, the prick that cryptocurrencies are experiencing, and the increase in the difficulty of mining Ethereum, are making using graphics cards to mine less and less profitable, and that this requires investments that few are willing to make. For example, the example that I have left you right in the title is enough, and that is, to amortize a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, we would need about 3.3 years.
Only from those 3.3 years we would start making profits, and that assuming that we do not have to face a high cost of electricity, and that unforeseen events do not arise that force us to spend more money. Indeed, that is the best possible case, using NiceHash and with the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti running at its stock clock rates.
If you are wondering what is happening with the rest of the cryptocurrencies that could be mined with a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, the situation is similar. Little by little, the difficulty of mining is increasing, which reduces its profitability and means that, in the end, we get closer to a point of no return from which mining with a graphics card will only make us lose money.
Why is it important that the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is no longer as profitable to mine?
Well, it is very simple, because it is a reflection of the reality that the cryptocurrency mining sector is going through, and because it indicates that, sooner or later, mining with graphics cards will stop. I can’t say for sure, but looking at the current landscape, it may be that, when the launch of the GeForce RTX 40 and Radeon RX 7000, scheduled for later this year, we no longer have to suffer the problems derived from a high demand for both by the cryptomining sector.
However, I remind you that, even in that case, we would still have two other problems ahead of us, speculation and shortage of semiconductors. I know that some of you think that speculating is not bad because it is not about essential products, and I respect your opinion, although obviously I do not share it, since it is a practice that completely distorts the reality of the market, manipulates the balance of supply and demand and stands, in many respects, almost as a type of scam.
By running out of certain products, buying them to resell them much more expensive, you generate an artificial and unreal situation of scarcity with which you deceive the consumer, and this allows you to create the ideal scenario so that they are willing to pay double or triple the price of a certain product. On the other hand, you also harm the most humble consumers, who cannot buy that graphics card for which they have saved so much because now you want to squeeze them and make them pay double.
I am not talking about a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, but about more modest models such as the recently released GeForce RTX 3050, which it is sold out and its price has been inflated to 400-500 euros. Let’s not defend the indefensible.
Regarding the shortage of semiconductors, it is clear that we still have a long way to go, but little by little we are beginning to see the light of the tunnel, and the COVI-19 pandemic is beginning to be more controlled, so it is likely that from 2023 we already find ourselves with quite a remarkable recovery.
