Ethereum miners have spent €15 billion on GPUs over the last year and a half, and that amount is higher when other things like CPUs, PSUs, and chassis are considered.
The report originally comes from analysts at Bitpro Consulting, reported on by Bloomberg and spotted by our friends at Tom's Hardware. It seems that Ethereum miners depleted about 10% of the total supply of GPUs during the cryptocurrency bubble of the last two years.
This mining boom and resulting GPU hoarding coincided with demand from gamers, which helped drive the sharp price increase. On average, a GPU cost €1,056 per unit in 2021, a third of that price in 2019. GPU sales totaled around €51,800 billion for all of 2021, according to data from JPR.
And while Ethereum mining had been profitable at one point, peaking in mid-2021, its value has plunged 70% this year, which bodes ill for those at the end of the game.
Analysis: The Effects of Ethereum Mining and Beyond
While even at its highs, Ethereum was getting much slower and more expensive thanks to it hitting its transaction limit on an almost daily basis.
But now, with its value declining, many crypto investors have found themselves unable to recoup losses by spending so much money on GPUs and other coins. One such story, as reported in the Bloomberg article, has a man who invested €30,000 in crypto mining hardware in mid-2021, but he has only made around €5,000 from crypto so far.
This doesn't even take into account the environmental impact of all this mining, as the level of carbon emissions has always been a major issue with cryptocurrencies. And it could be argued that between the waste of GPUs purchased for mining and the environmental damage, the value of Ethereum alone, falling so sharply, has done it all for naught.