The soaring popularity of cryptocurrencies is having an increasing number of unprecedented side-effects. Headlines have already been made about developing issues such as ICO scams, environmental concerns and governmental regulation which, a couple of years ago, few would have foreseen. And it seems that another one is developing; Bitcoin (available on Coinbase) (BTC) and Ethereum (available on Coinbase) (ETH) miners are heavily driving up the price of computer hardware, as graphics card demand soars.

For perspective, the recommended retail price of Nvidia’s (NASDAQ:NVDA) GTX 1070 graphics card is $380 USD. But if you want one from Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) right now, you’re forking out more than $700, according to reports. This is 80% above their recommended retail price. And it’s not just this one. Whole ranges of mid-to-high-end graphics cards from manufacturers such as Nvidia and AMD are increasing in price. Nvidia’s GTX 1060 card could be bought for around $200 in April last year, say Digital Trends. Yet this has more than doubled now. But what’s going on?