As Bitcoin soared above US$19,000 and hit record heights in December, the cryptocurrency has attracted investors and flocks of miners, causing the sell-out of mining hardware at the electronic supplies market in Huaqiangbei of Shenzhen.

Matthew, founder of Pegasus Computer, has recently received a surge in orders of graphics processing units, which can be used for cryptocurrency mining. While most orders were not for the latest GPU, he expects them to sell like hot cakes if the price of Bitcoin continues to rise.

U.S. tech giants NVIDIA and AMD have both launched new GPUs and certain models have been sold out. Chinese media reported a spike in demand for the new models, which deliver excellent performance and are good value for money, attributing it to the renewed interest in bitcoin mining.

According to a shop owner at Huaqiangbei, the world’s second biggest cryptocurrency Ethereum requires better hardware for mining after a major upgrade in December, which added to the demand for NVIDIA’s latest RTX 30. The price of its token ETH rose by 300% compared to early this year.

Another business owner noted that 4G mining machines for ETH were no longer compatible and each machine required six to eight GPUs in order to upgrade it to 8G. He expected an increase in supply of second-handed 4G GPUs soon.

In the light of the growing demand, RTX 3080 GPU is sold at a price as high as 7,000 yuan (US$1,071), a thousand more than its official price of 5,499 yuan. Meanwhile, most popular GPUs remain out of stock.

Matthew noted that while many Hongkongers began crypto-mining when it trended in 2017, most have since withdrawn from the industry as the cost in Hong Kong is far higher than that in China. “Miners tend to choose GPUs based on economic efficiency, but stock availability remains the most important factor,” he said.

The company has received a surge in queries and orders. Miners will be willing to invest in more expensive software and hardware if the price of bitcoin continues to rise, Matthew expected.

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