Dude... no kidding. I was looking to build a clone of my mini-ITX workstation from 2-3 months ago! 32 GB of ram went from $230 - 350. 500GB 960 SSD went from $200 - 300 560 Strix went from $160 - 350 ($950 on amazon LOL). What the absolute fuck. Was there some natural disaster in Asia?
APUs to the rescue? The AMD 2400G is still very entry level but it will perform about the same as an i3 with a GT1030 for $169. Coming Feb 12th.
Just get a value pack of cards like this one. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6V66RP2838 What a deal!
I have started questing the ethics behind digital currencies. I've read that mining now consumes the same amount of energy everyday as Denmark. Russia is also investing in it to get around sanctions. But if someone really needs a card their best bet is to watch nVidia's website. They still sell them at MSRP when they come in stock.
Yeah that's the thing. You are almost certainly helping criminal organizations and hostile foreign governments move money around. Cryptocurrencies are valuable for all the wrong reasons.
Regulation is bound to be coming to the crytocurrency market, the governments will say it is to clamp down on criminals but really it will be all that untaped tax revenue that they want. I think the EU are pretty close to imposing rules on it, it could still all come crashing down.
Russia announce they will be releasing their own crypto currency called the bitruple. I'm not sure how it could be regulated. On the bright side they wont me mining it. They will just pull it out of the air.