Crypto mining Memes

Ah, Maslow's hierarchy of needs has been updated for the modern developer! Forget food and shelter—we've all collectively decided that affordable GPUs are the foundation of human existence. When your RTX 4090 costs more than your monthly rent, self-actualization becomes irrelevant. How can anyone achieve psychological stability when they're selling kidneys on the black market just to run machine learning models or play Cyberpunk at max settings? The crypto miners and AI boom have spoken—true enlightenment begins with affordable silicon. Everything else is just a luxury.

Guy wakes up from a decade-long coma excited about his "powerful" 8GB graphics card, completely unaware that GPU prices have gone full circle. In 2013, an 8GB card was high-end. Then came the crypto mining apocalypse, scalpers, and chip shortages that made buying any GPU require a second mortgage. Now he's about to discover his ancient dream card costs more than it did when he went under. The circle of GPU life continues.

The GPU shortage has driven us to new lows. Someone thought they scored an RTX 2080 graphics card for under $10, but ended up with... toothpaste. The "Power Shield" is protecting your teeth, not your frame rates. At least your breath will render in 4K while you're sobbing over crypto miners buying actual GPUs at 300% markup. The only ray tracing this provides is the trail of mint as you spit it into the sink.

Remember when you could buy a graphics card without taking out a second mortgage? The "expectation" shows a humble GT440 from 9 years ago - probably cost you a reasonable $100 and could run Minecraft without setting your desk on fire. Fast forward to "reality" and we've got a monstrous GTX 1080Ti that costs more than some used cars and requires its own nuclear power plant. The best part? Both cards are equally impossible to find in stock. The crypto miners got the new ones, and your weird cousin who "builds gaming PCs" hoarded all the old ones.

That special moment when you find the perfect GPU for your build, only to discover it costs more than your car payment, rent, and firstborn child combined. The crypto miners and scalpers have turned hardware shopping into a financial horror movie. Just smile through the pain as you contemplate selling a kidney on the black market for that sweet, sweet RTX performance.

Ah, the GPU market's nightmare fuel. A creepy clown lurking in a sewer drain promising GPUs at MSRP (Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price) is the perfect metaphor for the current state of graphics card shopping. In the years since crypto mining and chip shortages, finding a GPU at its intended price has been so rare that it might as well be a murderous entity luring desperate gamers into the sewers. Most developers would indeed crawl through drainage systems for a reasonably priced RTX card at this point.