Retailers: Falling popularity of mining in Russia has dropped prices for computer components

The fall of the cryptocurrency market has significantly reduced the popularity of Russian “home mining”, which led to a significant drop in the prices of video cards and other similar products.

The Kommersant publication, citing the largest retailers, reports that, on average, video cards in November fell by 40% -60% from last year’s prices. RAM chips have become cheaper, although here prices have fallen by only 15%. Some reduction in prices was also recorded for motherboards, but hard drives and other drives have risen in price by an average of 13%.

Analysts of the publication believe that what is happening is connected with the transition of Ethereum to the Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm. After that, it became impossible to mine ETH, namely the ether was the most popular cryptocurrency for “home mining”.

“The fall in global demand for computers, as well as the actual cessation of mining on video cards, led to a significant decrease in demand for components,” says Aleksey Rusakov, head of the PC Components procurement group of the Citilink trading network.

According to distributor 3Logic Group, the demand for video cards in the country fell by 20%. This led to overstocking of warehouses and shops.

“But the decline would have been tougher if gamers hadn’t corrected it: they started buying video cards at affordable prices,” says Maxim Rodionov, head of the 3Logic purchasing department.

At the end of last year, Kommersant reported a 14-fold increase in demand for mining equipment in Russia.