Overlay Ethereum-USD and Nvidia charts for the past 5 years and what does that tell you? My take is both Nvidia's stock price and Ethereum-USD price were products of helicopter money. Sure some gamers bought cards, but not on the scale to which miners acquired them.
Analysis of mining hash rate post-merge bears this out[0]. With some estimates being $5 to $20 Billion(USD) in newer GPU's that are no longer "profitable."[1] The 'chip' shortage meant Nvidia could not satisfy demand for their products. I posit no amount of chips would have satisfied demand. They, along with many other companies, made record profits during the pandemic. There was just soooo much 'extra' money flowing around with stimulus, overly generous unemployment, PPP, and more.
I can't tell you how many people were YOLO'ing every cent of their stimulus into Crypto and WSB stonks. It was an enormous cohort of people based on the explosion of Robinhood and Coinbase use mentioned in WSB subreddit. Mooning and Diamond hands FTW, eh?
Mining crypto with gainz from a roulette spin with Robinhood options? Yeah, while we are at it, lets buy 4 mining rigs because mining Ethereum is very, very profitable during this time. The thinking that one can literally turn electricity to heat while making money (even while one sleeps no less) and trade options while one is awake. It may look crazy right now, but the subreddits were non-stop talk like this.
There are mining rigs all over my Facebook marketplace and local craigslist now. Crypto winter is here (for who knows how long) and Nvidia is not going to make those types of returns for the extreme foreseeable future. Reality check 101.
[0]https://twitter.com/WuBlockchain/status/1552837630278385664 [1]https://www.theblock.co/post/168380/whats-left-for-ethereum-...