Shenzhen Crypto Mining Hardware Retail Hotspot Becomes a Ghost Town

An iconic shopping outlet for Chinese crypto miners has fallen under an eerie shroud of silence as the nations mining industry screeches to an abrupt halt.

The Beijing-led crackdown on mining has seen many of the nations key crypto mining provinces stamp out industrial mining, with further sanctions placed on crypto-related banking.

All this has led to a sharp decline in hardware sales across the nation. World Finance Chain (via Jinse) reported that prices of certain pieces of mining hardware had fallen by up to 50%. The media outlet reported that graphics cards have become “severely unsaleable,” to the extent that “no one cares, even if prices are cut.”

While it was hard to even find graphics cards a few months ago, there now appears to be a surplus of GPUs, particularly with many looking to sell their hardware on the second-hand market.

The report‘s author reported from the SEG Plaza in Shenzhen, the city’s fifth-tallest skyscraper, located at the heart of the busy Huaqiangbei electronics district.

The fifth and sixth floors of the plaza have traditionally been devoted to crypto mining hardware retail, and until very recently, were a veritable hive of activity. Just a few months ago, the plazas mining retailers could only offer buyers empty boxes to look at, complaining that there simply were not enough GPUs available to meet demand – particularly as the global semiconductor crisis continues to bite.

Now, the media outlet explained, the two floors have become something of a ghost town, despite the fact that plenty of stock is now sitting on their shelves.

Some stall owners originally from other parts of the country have closed down their outlets for good and “returned to their hometowns.”

In addition to plummeting GPU prices, mining-grade servers have fallen in price, also by around half. And the same goes for memory-related products.

A few months ago, an enterprise-class 16T hard drive would have set a buyer back around USD 8,200, and such devices were “often out of stock and had to be ordered in advance.” Today, the price of that same 16T unit has fallen to just under USD 3,100.

The outlet added the price drops were “inseparable” from Chinas “tightening of mining policies” and “increased strengthening of regulation in the mining sector.”

It concluded that the end of the mining industry in China was now a “foregone conclusion.”