Asian Internet cafes are converting to crypto mining farms

VideoCardz reports there's a new trend in Asia. Due to coronavirus restrictions, a lot of Internet cafes are no longer operating as usual. Under normal circumstances, these places are filled with gamers but now business owners need to resort to adapt to the new situation. Apparently, at least some Internet cafe owners are switching their operation to cryptocurrency mining to chase higher profit.

The photos below show an internet cafe that a computer store owns, you can see mining rigs with a ton of GeForce RTX 3080 video cards. With Ethereum prices reaching new highs on an almost daily basis, there's a big mining frenzy going on right now.

Miners are reportedly making bulk deals with certain add-in board partners and distributors, and some are even buying up GeForce RTX 30 series laptops in bulk to circumvent the shortage of desktop video cards. Graphics cards were already in short supply for quite some time now and it seems the current crypto situation will not only aggravate but also prolong the shortages. A video card is worth more to a miner than a gamer, so this results in absurd pricing like over 50% premiums for the yet-to-be-released GeForce RTX 3060.

When COVID attacked my country again and this was the idea of big ??CafeNet's crazy minds

Hint: There are 3080 graphics cards with very nice RGB (first image)@VideoCardz @death_1125 @TechDeals_16 @9550pro @harukaze5719 @hms1193 @kopite7kimi @3DCenter_org @JokerReview pic.twitter.com/vgh16hRNDF

— I_Leak_VN (@I_Leak_VN) February 15, 2021