People made a lot of money on cryptocurrencies last year and while the technology behind the craze is revolutionary, it’s suffered from its fair share of backlash. One group that has unexpectedly turned against crypto and blockchain is PC gamers. While gamers are often on the forefront of new technology, the mining of cryptocurrencies has put a real dent in their wallets. 

Ever since cryptos like Bitcoin and Ethereum began to explode last year, people having been buying graphics cards by the boat load with the sole intention of using them to mine crypto. This spike in demand has had a major impact on supply, which in turn has had a major impact on prices.

Older graphics cards that should have gone down in price recently have instead seen their prices rise. In some instances, you could sell a graphics card you bought in 2015 for a profit in 2018. Some of the top Nvidia and AMD cards are selling at a 25% or greater premium and it’s all because of the demand created by crypto miners.

Nvidia has had enough, kind of. While they’re not actually taking a stand themselves, they’re asking retailers to put limits on people ordering their GPUs. In an interview with ComputerBase, Nvidia spokesman Boris Böhles said that “[translated from German] For Nvidia, gamers come first. All activities related to our GeForce product line are targeted at our main audience. To ensure that GeForce gamers continue to have good GeForce graphics card availability in the current situation, we recommend that our trading partners make the appropriate arrangements to meet gamers’ needs as usual.”

This isn’t a strict order from Nvidia, but these recommendations are likely to persuade at least some retailers. 

Unfortunately for gamers, this feels like a bandage for a broken bone. It doesn’t fix the problem, it just covers the scratch on the surface. Ultimately, miners are still going to buy up graphics cards as fast as they can and, as long as cryptocurrencies prove to be overwhelmingly profitable, they’ll pay whatever the market price may be.

The graphics card shortage will end only when supply can meet demand. That will only happen when either manufacturers begin to produce a greater supply or when miners see a shrinkage in their profits and decide to stop buying, for one reason or another.