cryptocurrency boom creates insane global graphics card shortage

“Cryptocurrency can’t crash soon enough,” one gamer fumes.

The market for high-end graphics cards used to work like the market for almost any other piece of computer gear. You'd go to your local electronics store, pick one up off the shelf, and pay an amount right around the manufacturer's suggested retail price.

But the rise of cryptocurrency mining has created an unprecedented global shortage of graphics cards. If you go to your local retailer, you're likely to find bare shelves where the beefier cards used to be. Instead of trading at a discount, used cards routinely sell for well above MSRP on sites like eBay and Craigslist.

And it's driving PC gamers—who used to be the primary market for these cards—crazy.

"Cryptocurrency can't crash soon enough," one gamer wrote on the PCGaming subreddit a few days ago. Gamers thinking about building a new gaming machine are being forced to put those plans on hold until the market settles down. Others, who bought high-end graphics cards a few months ago, are wondering if they should sell at a big profit.

Jared Walton of PC Gamer sums up the situation: "It's a terrible time to buy a graphics card."

The graphics card shortage is happening because high-end graphics cards are the best way to mine Ethereum and other non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies. With the price of these cryptocurrencies rising to unprecedented heights in recent weeks, a powerful graphics card can generate several dollars per day in cryptocurrency. And so a growing community of hobbyist miners has been snapping every graphics card it can get, creating shortages and high prices for everyone else.

“It’s not available in any store”

On Wednesday, I visited my local Best Buy to see the graphics card shortage for myself. A locked cabinet in the gaming section was supposed to hold a wide range of graphics card. But the more expensive ones—cards like the AMD Radeon RX 580 and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 that were best suited for cryptocurrency mining—were sold out. All that was available were a handful of low-end graphics cards not suitable for Ethereum mining.

I asked a sales representative to check to see if I could get an RX 580 at another Best Buy store. No luck.

"It's not available in any store," she told me. "It's not online."