[Courtesy of NVIDIA]
South Korean PC lovers are desperately looking for ways to buy high-end US graphics cards but they are nowhere in both online and offline markets as "miners" hoarded them to collect digital coins.
The chaos came amid a digital currency hype which hit South Korea a few months ago. Public interest has surged in digital coins such as Bitcoin and Ethereum used as an alternative online currency. US graphics cards such as NVIDIA's GTX series and AMD's RX series have been the target of hoarding.
"I went to buy a GTX 1060 graphics card at an electronics shopping mall but it was sold out," said "AnotherStar", an online IT community user, followed by similar testimonies.
"There are rumors that organized hoarding is seen at online and offline stores," Jung Kyu-min, a 36-year-old freelance computer parts vendor, told Aju news. "I have tens of requests from my customers looking for the chipsets, but they are very hard to find."
Since June last year, Bitcoin prices have soared about 300 percent. While many investors bought and sold coins through online transaction services, some enthusiasts sought to collect them independently by setting up PCs packed with the graphics cards.
The digital currency can be generated by high-performance computers running specialized software that solves extremely complicated math problems. In return, owners get digital coins but the process requires powerful processors which can be found in CPUs or graphics cards.
The shortage of high-end graphics cards is a global problem. Because normal gamers and PC enthusiasts were hit by the shortage, leading chipmakers NVIDIA and AMD are known to be developing graphics card specialized for mining.
Park Sae-jin = swatchsjp@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
