This is what it's like trying to buy an RTX 3080. NVIDIA's launch of 30-series graphics cards has been plagued by scalpers using bots to flip the cards at prices more than double the msrp. This video contains my thoughts on the launch, and the evolving secondary market around the 30-series graphics cards.
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0:00 - Introduction
0:27 - Orders open
3:07 - 3080 shortage until 2021
4:07 - What NVIDIA got right
7:00 - Scalpers
8:39 - Bots
10:22 - A World Without Bots
12:07 - Scalpers serve a function
12:57 - A World Without Scalpers
13:42 - Consumer and NVIDIA Responses
15:58 - Government Intervention
16:26 - What Could Work
17:46 - Like and Subscribe
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#nvidia3080 #rtx3080 #bots
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In modern times, secondary markets have started operating in timescales that would have been unthinkable in the past. Bots and scripts make it so that purchases can be initialized and checkouts completed in under a second. Inventories can entirely sell out in just a few seconds.

So bots are programs that scalpers use to buy as many of a limited product as possible. These programs got their footing in the sort of hypebeast clothing arena, Supreme drops, Yeezys, anything that had a limited release was perfect fodder for bots. A bot can complete an entire checkout faster than you or I can add an item to our cart.

And bots are buying almost everything on the internet - for a long time they’ve been very popular with concert tickets and tech releases, and now they’re becoming even more streamlined. Where people used to have to cobble together their own bots for launches, services like Bounce Alerts will let you use their bots for $75 a month. At that point, you could start your own eBay store for Supreme motorcycle helmets and 3080s, and recoup your $75 bucks pretty quickly.

And while my initial reaction to all this bot frenzy and reselling drama was very laissez-faire, I mean literally I was like, "well, they’re allowed to do it, so the free market will figure it out,” now I’m realizing that because bots operate on a timescale that humans can’t, the bots are actually making a sort of mandatory secondary market. When bots are the only entities that can buy cards, then every card will get marked up. And then I thought that through even a step farther and realized, wait, bots are actually violating the free market! And I love the free market!

Here’s my thought process: In a world without bots, maybe the 3080 would have been sold out for months as well, but in that case, the cards would likely be selling to more end-users, rather than just this artificially-created secondary market. Everyone would be on equal footing, rather than the bots just having the run of Nvidia’s inventory. In this hypothetical scenario of a world without bots, the 3080 would probably be selling much closer to retail pricing, because end-users would be buying it at retail, rather than on secondary markets like eBay. So right there, we know bots are artificially driving up the prices of these cards.

And to double down on this, not only are the bots scooping up every card and making us buy them at a markup in this unnecessary secondary market, they’re artifiicially increasing the demand. Like, if there are a hundred thousand people waiting to buy the card on launch day, and there are 50,000 bots, those are 50,000 terminator-level robots that we all have to beat in order to get a card. They don’t even want the card, they’re just robots sent to get the card as fast as possible! So Nvidia has a much cloudier impression of the true demand for the card. A third of the demand is artificial? Half? Who knows! One person could run a hundred bots! So not only are the bots making us participate in the artificially mandated secondary market, they’re skewing the very foundation of the supply and demand curve of the 3080, and What did I say about messing with the free market, guys? Don’t mess with it!

And now that I’ve gone on my anti-bot diatribe, here’s my pro-scalper thinkpiece.

Scalpers … serve a purpose?
Now wait wait wait, before everyone is calling for my head in the comments, from a super dry and logical perspective, scalpers serve an economic function. Right now, the RTX 3080’s market price is higher than retail, that’s just a fact. Demand is so much higher than supply that the card is worth well more than Nvidia has set the msrp at. So each sold listing on eBay is a closer representation to the actual price that the market values the card at. Which is like $1,400 to $1,500 …. twice the price of retail.

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