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It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that cryptocurrencies are soaring to new highs. The valuation increases have also brought in a wealth of individuals and companies looking to cash in by mining for cryptocurrencies like Ethereum with GPUs that gamers would have otherwise bought.
The huge cryptocurrency run culminated today with a cumulative valuation topping $2 trillion. Not surprisingly, Bitcoin and Ethereum make up the bulk of that $2 trillion figure, with the former hitting a 24-hour high of $58,243 with a total market cap of $1.10 trillion. Ethereum, on the other hand, had a 24-hour high of $2,118 with a market cap of $244.38 billion.
Rounding out the top five cryptocurrencies according to CoinDesk are XRP in the number three position with an $86 billion market cap, Stellar with a $53 billion market cap, and Tether with a $43 billion market cap. XRP and Stellar have seen their valuations rise by 40 percent and 18.6 percent, respectively, in the past 24 hours.
Cryptocurrencies have captured more mainstream in recent months, with Elon Musk announcing that Tesla had taken a $1.5 billion stake in Bitcoin. Tesla later made it possible to purchase a new Tesla EV using Bitcoin. In late March, PayPal announced that it accepts Bitcoin and Ethereum for any transaction using its “Checkout with Crypto” feature. In addition to those two big names on the cryptocurrency scene, PayPal will also support Litecoin.
NVIDIA has tried to address the growing demand for GPUs used in Ethereum mining by introducing the new CMP HX family. It has even started ramping up the production of older GeForce GTX 1650 graphics cards to meet demand at the graphics market’s low end. There were also rumors that the GeForce RTX 2060 and 2060 Super have been given a new lease on life to satisfy demand.
For its part, MSI has resorted to raising prices on GeForce and Radeon graphics cards due to tight supplies expected to last throughout 2021. It’s a similar situation over at rival ASUS. “For GPUs, right now, of course, the most pressing issue is the shortage of NVIDIA GPUs. So, there’s a decreased quarter-on-quarter in shipment. Because of this shortage, we are seeing price hikes in GPU. And that’s only natural with this shortage and supply prices will increase,” said an ASUS representative in March.