According to retail data, there has been strong interest in the crypto mining equipment market in Russia from buyers of both new, as well as used devices. As a matter of fact, the demand for application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) machines has exponentially multiplied this year, whereas the supply of video cards has been short, thereby leading to rising prices. There has been a surge in demand from crypto mining machines and online retailers report that this is applicable to secondhand and brand-new machines alike. There is a 14 times increase year-on-year in the searches conducted on Avito.ru, the Russian classified ads site, for searches for machines developing for mining Bitcoin (BTC), or for ASICs.
As far as supply is concerned, it saw an increase of 13 times. The average price of a mining unit was around 117,900 rubles, which is the equivalent of $1600. Whatsminer mining rigs are the most sought after equipment, which are manufactured by Microbt, based in China. It saw its demand increase by nearly 23 times. Likewise, the number of searches for Antimers have also increased by almost 11 times this year, as opposed to last year. These machines are built by Bitmain, a company based in Beijing.
The results for the first three quarters of 2021 for the Ozon.ru ecommerce platform in Russia indicate that there has also been an increase in sale of crypto mining products. In terms of value, the increase in sales is almost 14 times, while the number of units sold have increased by 13 times on an annual basis. Most of the orders of the crypto mining equipment have come from the capital of Russia i.e. Moscow, Saint Petersburg, which is the second-largest city in Russia, the Republic of Tatarstan, Krasnodar Krai and Sverdlovsk. What’s surprising is that these regions are not even offering the lowest prices for electricity in the country.
There has been a global deficit of microchips, due to which graphics processing units (GPUs) have been in very short supply. These are used for mining Ethereum (ETH), along with other altcoins, and it has pushed up the prices of these devices. There was a 15.8% decline in the sales of GPUs in the first 10 months, even though the market’s value had grown by nearly 129.6%. According to a report, both retailers and suppliers had been forced to raise prices of the GPUs due to a shortage in supply, but people appeared to be willing to buy at any price.
As long as crypto farms continue to generate good income, the video card market will continue to face supply issues. It is unlikely that the deficit would disappear, even by the end of 2023. However, there will be a short delay in deliveries, as it is expected to go from 48-50 weeks to 10-14 weeks. Since the Chinese government has begun clamping down on crypto mining activity in the country, Russia has become a major destination of crypto mining operators because of high energy reserves and a friendlier jurisdiction.
