NVIDIA GPU Prices Soar and Inventory Tanks Thanks to Cryptocurrency Mining

Gamers are having a hard item finding a GPU for their gaming rigs as prices are soaring due to demand from cryptocurrency miners. Reuters is reporting that the NVIDIA GeForce 1070 GPU was selling for $349 a year ago and is now being sold on Amazon for up to $900 by resellers due to the demand for the graphics card and the low inventory.

NVIDIA stock climbed 6% in early trading last week after 14 different Wall Street brokerages raised price targets on the NVIDIA stock because of their confidence in the sector. Normally gamers use the video cards for playing video games, but hardware has been popular with the cryptocurrency mining set, eating up inventory and driving prices up.

NVIDIA’s CFO said recently in a conference call that inventory levels for gaming GPUs were at a historic low level due to cryptocurrency miners. We do think that cryptocurrency has been a very significant factor in both revenue and pricing, creating a shortage environment that is boosting pricing, Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore said.

NVIDIA is expected to see its competitive advantage grow even more when it launches its Volta chip architecture in gaming chips later in the year. Another new GPU codenamed Turing is expected to launch next month. The company has seen its gaming revenue grow 29% to $1.74 billion in Q4 making up more than half the company’s revenue.