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"The soaring demand for mining hardware may disrupt global semiconductor supply chains."

May? Have you seen graphic card prices lately? Even really old cards are selling for multiples of what they were a year or so ago.

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Using graphic cards to mine bitcoin became unprofitable about 10 years ago. The graphic card shortage can be linked to other cryptocurrencies.

Primarily Ethereum, which will hopefully be migrating away from proof of work (mining) in late 2021 / early 2022, so hopefully there will be an abundance of cheap second hand options (which will admittedly have lead hard lives), but also dramatically reduce the demand for new cards.

Graphics cards used for mining are generally maintained better than ones used for gaming because they are often undervolted and kept at 100% instead of cycling on/off.

> In some cases, steady GPU mining can be safer than gaming. When mining with a GPU, the load is evenly distributed over time; therefore, there are no thermal spikes and sudden drops that could damage the GPU.

https://www.nicehash.com/blog/post/can-mining-damage-my-gpu-...

Keep in mind that NiceHash is a GPU mining pool

The Ethereum merge is now scheduled for "Q1/Q2", so I think even "early 2022" is extremely optimistic and 2021 is right out.

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