GPU shortages are not new, as many graphics cards like the top-end NVIDIA cards often immediately sell out. However, due to the extremely fast increasing cryptocurrency prices, demand for PC components has skyrocketed with the rise of cryptocurrency mining. As a result, graphics cards are going to disappear even faster and this could be a disaster for anyone looking to buy a graphics card for gaming. And it’s not only graphics cards, good processors (CPUs) are also very hard to buy at the moment as they can also be used to make a profit mining crypto. Most of the (financial) gains are made with GPUs, however. To make this even worse, prices of many components have more than doubled and there is no sign of this slowing down (Esteves, 2018; Walton, 2021).
Because of the problems I mentioned above, gamers now have to fight both bots and miners when they want to buy components for their PC. You could thus say that crypto and the technologies related to it are giving normal PC-gamers a hard time enjoying the things they like to do: play video games. My own experience with this problem, as someone who likes to play video games in his free time, is that you either have to pay a very high price or have to get extremely lucky. I have bought my current GPU 3 years ago for about €350 and at the moment it is going for about €700. Usually, I would be tempted to sell and make a profit. The problem, however, is that it will probably be near impossible to buy an upgrade, leaving me with no GPU at all (Esteves, 2018; Walton, 2021).
It is expected that crypto prices and effort needed to mine them will become balanced again. When that will happen and what price will come out of it is hard to guess, but for gamers the future is not looking very bright. Overall, it is difficult to find a solution to this problem. NVDIA could, for example, introduce buying limits of X products per person, but I assume this would be extremely complex and costly to implement for them and in the end NVIDIA’s main goal is to make money (Walton, 2021).
Walton, J. (2021, January 4). GPU Shortages Will Worsen Thanks to Coin Miners. Retrieved 6 October 2021, from https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-shortages-worsen-cryptocurrency-coin-miners-ethereum
Technology of the Week – The Housing Industry
5
October
2017
5/5 (3) The video below describes how online platforms revolutionized the housing industry and the way in which house owners, house buyers, and tenants connect with each other in the Dutch housing market:
Group 45: Rosanne Baars, 406184 ; Roy Ouwerkerk, 459406 ; Yuxin Sun, 406080 ; Pieter Vreke, 372189
1. History
The first real estate brokers in the Netherlands arose in 1284. They acted as the connecting party between trading partners. They earned money from commissions. In the home-rental industry, homeowners initially connected with tenants via physical notes in public spaces. In the 19th century housing corporations and social housing emerged. Consequently, private homeowners struggled to find tenants and started using the intervention of brokers, who received a fee for every contract signed (Van den Elzen, 2013).
2. Current Situation
Decades later, the rise of two-sided online brokerage platforms completely changed the way in which homeowners and tenants communicate. The emergence of these platforms weakened the role of offline brokers, which has several benefits:
For online brokerage platforms, the physical infrastructure and assets that offline brokers use is no longer needed.
Building and scaling networks became cheaper.
Homeowners have access to a larger customer base.
Tenants have access to a larger number of houses and it is easier for them to compare, due to more transparency.
Transaction costs decreased, since most of the physical communication is replaced by online communication.
These eventually led to a decrease in effort and time needed for the rental process. However, for the process of buying/selling a house, offline brokers still coexisted along with online platforms, because buying a house has a large impact on people’s lives, which increases one’s willingness to pay (Bloomberg, 2013).
3. Platform Properties
Current housing platforms have several properties:
A triangular structure, composed of four parties: Demand side users: Tenants or buyers Supply side users: Homeowners Platform providers: Online platforms/communities Platform sponsors: Technology providers Platform providers and platform sponsors are mostly employees the same company (Eisenmann, Parker, & van Alstyne, 2009)
Strong cross-side network effects. A large number of house-owners offering houses on a website attracts tenants, and vice versa.
Subsidies for either the demand or supply side of the platform, while charging the other side. In this way, more users are attracted and network effects increase. The reason why the same part of the platform is not charged consistently, is that different platforms target different niches with different willingness to pay.
Interoperability; many platforms redirect demand side users to related platforms.
Targeting of niches, who have needs for different features.
Low homing costs. Subscription fees are reasonably priced and currently reducing.
4. Future Expectations
Housing platforms are expected to change in the following way:
The number of housing platforms is expected to keep increasing due to existence of niches and low homing costs niches exist and homing costs are low. At the same time, population growth, internationalization and increasing transparency may lead to an increase in housing rental as opposed to buying property (Independent, 2016).
Platform’s profit margins may increase, since increasing demand and decreasing supply for housing rental might lead to increased willingness to pay of demand side users (De Volkskrant, 2014). However, increasing competition among platforms might drive margins down. These two effects can eventually cancel each other out.
Smart-home devices will increase efficiency for both landlords and tenants (Independent, 2016). This will make property management easier, since it might eliminate physical communication and provides more information.
Increasing use of big data analytics. For example, Housing Anywhere is experimenting with this. (Statsbot, 2017).
Convergence of the house rental and real estate industries, because house buyers might get more comfortable with online approaches (Harvard Business Review, 2016).
Companies from adjacent markets may envelop incumbents.
References
Bloomberg. (2013, March 8). Why Redfin, Zillow, and Trulia Haven’t Killed Off Real Estate Brokers. Retrieved from Bloomberg.com: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-03-07/why-redfin-zillow-and-trulia-havent-killed-off-real-estate-brokers
De Volkskrant. (2014, November 2014). De kloof met de Randstad is niet meer te dichten. Retrieved from De Volkskrant: https://www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/de-kloof-met-de-randstad-is-niet-meer-te-dichten~a3780161
Eisenmann, T., Parker, G., & van Alstyne, M.W. (2009). Opening Platforms: How, When and Why? Platforms, Markets and Innovation, Gawer, A. (ed.), Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 131-162.
Harvard Business Review. (2016, November 17). Real (estate) disruption: how technology may change the housing market. Retrieved from Harvard Business Review: https://rctom.hbs.org/submission/real-estate-disruption-how-technology-may-change-the-housing-market/
Independent. (2016, August 10). How technology could revolutionise the future of renting. Retrieved from Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/money/how-technology-could-revolutionise-the-future-of-renting-smart-meter-landlord-bills-a7182306.html)
Rabobank. (2017). Rental housing: Rising prices in a high-potential market. Retrieved from Rabobank: https://www.rabobank.nl/bedrijven/cijfers-en-trends/vastgoed/real-estate-report-2017/sub-markets/rental-housing
Statsbot. (2017). Housing Anywhere discovered the best way to share data across a team and help them stay on track with key metrics. Retrieved from Statsbot: https://statsbot.co/customers/housinganywhere
Van den Elzen, W. (2013). The future of the Dutch housing corporations.
Is the growth of Airbnb sustainable?
4
October
2016
No ratings yet.The rise of the sharing economy was introduced by several e-commerce, not so much anymore start-, ups. The peer-to-peer markets have replaced the traditional markets. The peer-to-peer markets introduce a business model formally unknown to the traditional markets. The markets no longer maintain their own resources to among other things decrease the costs of operating, but this also increases the risk that the growth of the company cannot be sustained. The intermediaries in the peer-to-peer market have an increasing stake in both sides of the supply and demand side of the market. An example is Airbnb influencing the revenue made by hotels. The impact it has on the hotel market is yet not identifiable. The causal impact of this phenomenon on the market revenue created by hotels is unidentifiable because of the non-uniformly distributed impact it has on the consumers. (Zervas et al., 2016)
The rising of Airbnb The company has outgrown the united states into a global company. The growth of the company into the European market and Asian market is facilitated by government guidelines. The European Commission is supporting the growth of a sharing economy as an opportunity for entrepreneurs and the overall economy (Taylor, 2016). The stated goal by Airbnb of 10 billion dollars of revenue by 2020 compared to the current revenue of 900 million dollars in 2015 also supports the opportunistic expected growth (Taylor, 2016; Kokalitcheva, 2015).
But is the growth sustainable Several problems arise with the growth of such sharing economies. The rating of Uber drivers is often described as biased, with opinions influenced by among other things by racism (Harman, 2014). And, it seems that a similar effect is occurring within Airbnb. Research shows that members are able to among other things, charge more than other up to 12% because of their physical appearance. When members have increasing concerns about discrimination caused by the members despite the current policies by Airbnb against racism. It then might be justified to wonder such a sharing economy is economically sustainable. (Harman, 2014).
So at the end could the growing business model to exclude their own stock be sustainable or to secure the growth should sharing economies maintain their own stock for operations?
