He believed he’d found his treed and avian paradise when he paid $6.3 million for the property, among a tidy clutch of lakefront family homes in Kelowna’s Mission Creek district, in 2006. He’s the geologist who discovered diamonds in Canada’s North and amassed a mining fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars. In a fast-growing city full of affluent retirees and businessfolk from Alberta and the Lower Mainland seeking sun, golf and wine, Fipke is in a class of his own. His professional-grade long lenses have captured images of great blue herons, swans, cedar waxwings, nesting ospreys and more near his private boat dock. No birds are out on this chilly, bleak-sky day, but there are photos of plenty in albums stacked on his window ledge. Its falling leaves require a pool cleaner to come several times a week, but it’s worth it. There’s the towering willow that convinced him to buy this property on Capozzi Road. Within minutes of plunking down on his white leather sofa to chat, he’s up toward the window to show off his two favourite parts of lakefront living. Picture windows showcase his outdoor pool, the beach and Okanagan Lake-Fipke calls this his “front yard,” and complains about beach-walkers occasionally trespassing on the area he’s roped off as his. He invites his guest inside his 6,250-sq.-foot Kelowna, B.C., abode. He steps inside, setting down the birdseed bin, not minding that some spills on his rug and tile floor. “There’s a quail’s nest nearby,” Fipke explains. He reaches in and tosses fistfuls of birdseed off the stoop and around the rental car. Now, gamers are having the last laugh.When a visitor pulls into his long driveway, Charles Fipke steps onto his porch, large food-storage container in hand. Gamers claimed that miners were hoarding hardware designed specifically for gaming and pricing the primary users out of the market. Until earlier this year, the demand for these graphic cards was so much that their shortage fuelled a war between miners and gamers. "The market is getting in its original shape," he said. For instance, a card containing an Nvidia RTX 3080 TI chipset retails around ₹1.15-1.2 lakh in India, compared to the manufacturer's MSRP of ₹1.11 lakh, Gupta said. Prices have come close to the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) in the market. The cards are not manufactured in India and the market completely relies on imports. "Long waiting periods for these pieces of hardware have become a thing of the past," said Gupta.įrom lead times of as long as 16 weeks in 20, now suppliers in India can get them shipped within a couple of weeks of placing an order. A mining 'rig', which is essentially a bank of graphics cards put together for mining, could contain anywhere from a few to tens of cards.Īs miners pull out of the market - and even dump the cards they own in the resale market - the demand for graphics cards has reached levels seen in 2019 before the last crypto boom started, according to Deepak Gupta, the country head for graphics card maker Zotac Technology Limited. Two years ago, amid the crypto boom, several miners added newer rigs to maximise their returns. In addition to high-end hardware, it also consumes a lot of electricity. Ethereum, another popular cryptocurrency, has fallen nearly 70% since April to $1,203. Ultra-accommodative monetary policies by central banks in the developed world, which weighed down their currencies, have been one of the drivers of the demand for cryptos, which benefited from the perception of lower supply.īitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, has shrunk to a third since November 2021 from $61,000 to $20,789 now. The sell-off in major cryptocurrencies started in April as global central banks started tightening their balance sheets and raising interest rates. As prices crashed, mining of cryptocurrencies has become unviable since the process itself is very expensive. These complex algorithms require high computing power to solve and miners usually use graphics cards designed for intensive gaming for this job. "The price correction which was much awaited has started happening."Ĭryptocurrency mining requires users to solve a complex set of problems on the computers post which they unlock or mint new cryptocurrencies, like bitcoins. View Details »"Every week prices are falling," said Vibhor Agarwal, chief executive at Supertron, one of the largest distributors of computer hardware in India.
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