GPU Prices May Plunge

This is a new development in Etherium mining that could change the entire industry. Asians have come up with an asic designed specifically for Etherium, and no other type of bitcoin, but it is 10x more power efficient. Until now, there has been little compelling reason not to rely on graphics cards for bitcoin mining, but the ability to use asic chips designed for the industry means entire warehouses full of graphics cards will be converting over to asic chips. Its a cut-throat business, and at ten times the energy savings the bigger companies can't afford to not convert, and could even start selling off their graphics cards in droves. IBM specializes in asic chips and, theoretically, they can even be designed to be a thousand times more efficient than conventional computer chips.

This is exactly the backlash hit that AMD and Nvidia have been worried about, and we can only see how big a blow it is over time, but by August when Nvidia releases its new mining graphics cards we should have a better idea. With any luck, by next year the market may have stabilized and returned to something more like MSRP prices.