Share this article
'Foolish' to Invest in High-End GPUs for Crypto Mining, Says Research Firm Head
Jon Peddie Research cited two reasons it believes high-end GPUs aren't worth the investment for ether miners.
Updated May 9, 2023, 3:16 a.m. Published Mar 8, 2021, 9:42 a.m.
Purchases of graphics processing units (GPUs) by cryptocurrency miners helped an explosion of sales during the fourth quarter of 2020, according to graphics and multimedia research firm Jon Peddie Research (JPR).
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
In a press release on Wednesday, JPR said GPU shipments rose by 20.5% in Q4 compared with the previous quarter and 12.4% year over year.
The increase in sales, largely due to a coronavirus-led shift to working from home offices and increase in indoor-related activities such as video gaming, was also boosted by cryptocurrency mining, the firm said.
"The pandemic has distorted all models and predictions, as has the gold-rush in Ethereum," said JPR.
See also: Crypto Mining Farm Spotted Using Nvidia RTX 30 Gaming Laptops: Report
JPR President and founder Jon Peddie said that while there has been speculation crypto mining would potentially spark a renewal of demand for GPUs, the power consumption of high-end cards "greatly diminishes the payoff."
Further, "Ethereum, the best-suited coin for GPUs, will fork into version 2.0 very soon, making GPUs obsolete," said Peddie. "A person would be very foolish to invest in a high-end, power-consuming [GPU] for crypto mining today.”
GPU suppliers like Nvidia have struggled to keep up with soaring demand for units that power everything from multimedia rendering to keeping up with the latest game titles and, though they don't like it, mining ether.
See also: Nvidia Redesigns Graphics Cards to Limit Their Use in Ethereum Mining
The demand from the crypto industry has been accused of making the latest graphics cards scarce for the everyday retail consumer. Nvidia recently responded by changing software drivers for high-end cards to make mining less effective. The firm will instead offer a dedicated mining unit.
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
Pineapple Financial Starts Migrating its $10B Mortgage Portfolio Onchain via Injective
The Canadian fintech has already put data tied to about $412 million in funded mortgages onchain, and aims to migrate more than 29,000 loans over time.
What to know:
- Pineapple Financial said it launched a mortgage tokenization platform on the Injective blockchain and has started migrating its loan records onchain.
- The company has a longer-term goal of moving its historical portfolio of more than 29,000 funded mortgages, totaling about $10 billion (C$13.7 billion), onto the blockchain.
- Each tokenized mortgage record includes more than 500 data points and will underpin a permissioned data marketplace and a planned product offering onchain mortgage-backed yields, the company said.
Top Stories
