LOWER PRICES COOL CRYPTO ENTHUSIASM
According to a recent Morgan Stanley report, the decline in cryptocurrency prices has negatively impacted the semiconductor market. With crypto prices falling, miners can end up operating at a loss. Morgan Stanley previously stated that Bitcoin mining is not profitable at prices below $8,600.
The meteoric rise of the market drove demand for DRAM (dynamic random-access memory) chips, with manufacturers receiving orders from companies they hitherto didn’t do business with before, notably crypto miners. However, since the start of 2018, the crypto market has lost about 50 percent of its value.
In Japan, the slump in DRAM sales seems to be more profound. Speaking to local media, shop owners at the Akihabara electronics district in Tokyo decry the decline in their sales figures. One store clerk even said:
Until February, we would receive ten calls a day asking if we had such and such video cards in stock. These days, we’re doing well if we get one such call a week.
The initial spike in the prices of memory chips between 2016 and 2017 was a bit of a misnomer. Usually, memory chip prices decline over time. The increase in demand from crypto miners caused an unusual market condition in the industry. As a result, manufacturers nursed hopes that a new consumer niche had emerged. However, barring any resurgence in cryptocurrency prices, those hopes appear premature.