For several months now the Chinese government has made it difficult for its citizens to mine and trade in crypto. Up until now, this was done in a fairly piecemeal manner, varying in its enforcement from region to region. Now, however, the PBOC (Peoples’ Bank of China) has announced it will be illegal for Chinese residents (not just citizens) to purchase cryptocurrency domestically or from overseas. Taking things to either further extreme: Chinese residents have been prohibited from even being associated with the marketing of cryptocurrencies or giving tech support to crypto businesses.
For those uninitiated into crypto lingo, FUD means Fear Uncertainty & Doubt as they are associated with the market’s confidence in a cryptocurrency. We’re already seeing the first hit to Bitcoin prices as discussed above and other coins will also get hit through this latest setback, given how central China is to crypto mining.
Crypto miners have been a big source of demand for graphics cards, in particular Nvidia GPUs, causing the price of graphics cards to skyrocket, and contributing heavily to the global graphics card shortage. After the Chinese crypto clampdowns earlier in the summer, we saw a raft of second-hand Chinese Nvidia GPUs selling on the Chinese market, as crypto miners accepted the inevitable and sold their mining rigs.
There was also a noticeable drop in graphics card prices and an improvement in availability globally There is no doubt that this latest ban will have a similar effect on GPU prices – if demand is lower and supply remains the same, then graphics card prices will drop, though by how much and for how long is anybody’s guess.
