AMD Radeon RX series cards are hard to buy right now

We're still two months away from the launch of Radeon RX Vega, with AMD announcing at Computex 2017 that it will launch Radeon RX Vega at SIGGRAPH 2017 which takes place between July 30 and August 3.

But the bigger story for AMD right now is that their Radeon RX 400 and RX 500 series graphics cards are flying off the shelves... but why? Cryptocurrency mining, that's what. The cards are either selling out, are sold out, or they're being sold for ridiculous prices in the second hand market.

It feels like it's 2013 all over again, but between then and now ASIC hardware dedicated to cryptocurrency mining went crazy. Efficiency was king, beating consumer graphics cards... until Ethereum, a new cryptocurrency that can be mined liked a Bitcoin.

The Ethereum network was built to be resistant to ASIC hardware, meaning that normal consumer graphics cards were back in the game. At the beginning of May, Ethereum was priced at $19, and is around $220 today - which is why Radeon RX 400 and RX 500 series cards are flying off the shelves.

This has seen Ethereum miners driving up the price of older Radeon RX 400 series cards, with eBay listings for RX 480 cards hitting $400, and even $455 for the MSI Radeon RX 480 Gaming X 8GB graphics card... which is simply insane, if you were buying it for gaming. For Ethereum mining, it's a win for the person selling their older RX 480 card for more than they purchased it for, and a win for the miner as they get a superior card for Ethereum mining.

Still, $455 for the Radeon RX 480 is baffling.