There is a shortage of high-performance video cards on the market that can be used for mining cryptocurrencies. Those models that are available for purchase rose in price by an average of $100 or higher.

The abnormal rise in prices for cryptocurrencies once again stimulated interest in mining and caused an exuberant demand for GPU. High-end next-generation graphics cards from Nvidia (RTX 3080, 3070, 3060 Ti and 3090) and AMD (RX 6800 and 6800 XT) are almost completely gone and “incredibly hard to find, selling out instantly whenever they appear, due to an incredible level of demand that makes these GPUs worth many hundreds of dollars more than MSRP,” The Verge reports. Against the background of a shortage of new graphics cards, older, less productive cards began to disappear from sale. In response to demand, graphics card maker AMD announced that it plans to launch sales of the RX 6800, 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT cards via its own website in Q1 2021 at fixed prices ($579, $649 and $999, respectively).

Nvidia warns that shipments of its GPUs "will likely remain lean through Q1" of the fiscal year, which ends at the end of April 2021. At the same time, Nvidia did not rule out the resumption of production of GPU designed for mining cryptocurrencies. The company does not yet consider miners essential for business. “If crypto demand begins or if we see a meaningful amount,” said CFO Colette Kress at a recent investor conference, “we can also use that opportunity to restart the CMP product line to address ongoing mining demand.” CMP product line is GPUs for crypto mining without video ports that miners don't need because they don't display graphics on the monitor.

The emerged shortage of GPU on the market will be felt at least until the middle of the year, market participants suggested.

According to Maxim Sapunov, head of the "Computer hardware" direction of the Russian AliExpress, in the IV quarter, sales of video cards on AliExpress Russia grew 4.5 times compared to the third quarter.