​Graphics cards have fallen in price by half over the year in Russia

What’s new? Russian retailers report a significant drop in demand and prices for graphics cards. In the average price segment, their cost has fallen by 40-50% over the year. In addition to the decline in profitability of bitcoin mining, one of the main reasons for the drop in demand was the transition of the second most capitalized cryptocurrency, Ethereum, to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm, Kommersant reports.

Material on the Kommersant website

What figures did the market participants provide? According to representatives of M.Video-Eldorado and Ozon, the cost of graphics cards has fallen by an average of 40-50%. Marvel Distribution recorded a 20% drop.

According to Alexey Rusakov, head of the PC Components procurement group at Citilink, the drop in demand for graphics cards was caused by a general decline in global demand for computers, as well as the actual stop of mining on graphics cards. In addition, manufacturers still have significant inventories, which led to a price drop of 54% compared to last year. Citilink expects this trend to continue.

The transition of Ethereum to PoS led to the fact that hundreds of thousands of miners were left without work, and in Asia even began selling graphics cards by weight, at $400-500 per 1 kg, reported co-founder of Berezka DAO and Weezi Roman Kaufman.

According to Maxim Rodionov, head of purchasing department at 3Logic Group Distributor, the demand for graphics cards in Russia dropped by 20%, and the price decrease would have been harsher if it had not been corrected by gamers. PC gamers were able to buy graphics cards at reasonable prices and balance the market.

By October, prices for Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards in Russia dropped from 500 000 to 100 000 Russian rubles (RUB) in seven months. The cost of another popular model, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, dropped from 164 000 to 65 000 RUB.

In late October, Citilink began the first official sales of equipment for cryptocurrency mining in the Russian Federation. Prices for ASIC miners from Bitmain range from 328 000 to 548 000 RUB. Ivan Sharov, director of the online store for mining equipment and computer components Hardvar, noted that prices at Citilink are twice as high as at specialized stores.