I'd find this GPU hysteria funny if I didn't need a new GPU myself. However, I decided to hold off until after Christmas and to content myself for now with a $200 eBay second-hand purchase after reasoning out that:
1.Basic economics suggests that where supply can't satisfy demand, suppliers able to do so profitably (and this is definitely the case with GPU's) will increase production until it can. That could take some time, even a year or two, but it means that the high prices will inevitably end, by which time a new series of GPU's will be out.
2.That is complicated by the nature of the demand for GPU's. It's not like say toasters, where you only need one and are only likely to buy one. If miners can make a profit out of a GPU, I suppose they will buy as many as they can in terms of funding and storage, making the demand theoretically infinite.
3.This is itself complicated by some factors. Like in a gold rush, more mining eventually leads to the activity becoming unprofitable. More importantly, there can be external constraints on demand, as with Ethereum 2. Ethereum 2 is happening. It began in October 2020 and the merge is scheduled for Q1 or Q2 2022. When it does (and likely well before), the $#% will hit the fan, many second-hand GPU's will be on the market and pricing of new GPU's will be dragged down by that, as happened a few years ago.
Now comes the bit I find funny. Miners are still talking up mining. Were I a miner with existing gear, I'd be unloading it soonish (definitely by Christmas) and certainly not adding to it. Miners don't seem to see it that way, at least according to the many posts I've read on various forums. Trying to understand their true motivations, as opposed to forum claims, it seems to me that:
The shrewd miners will have done the calculations of when the party will be over, how much longer (if at all) profit can be made on new gear and when to dispose of existing and new gear. By "party over", I don't mean the E2 merger. I mean the date by which any future profit on equipment is going to be exceeded by its drop in value. In the meantime, the shrewd miners will be talking up mining, to postpone the party over date as long as possible.
Other miners will be less schrewd and will be motivated by greed or capture theory and believe that money can be made from mining indefinitely or at least long enough for them to get out in time. Most of them will be burnt bad.
If I could round off my point with a couple of anecdotes:
I am an older professional who has lived and worked through many boom and bust cycles. There have always been people who made money out of them and people who got burnt. The difference turned on maintaining perspective and timing. The baddest burnt were those who borrowed money to invest, i.e. you wouldn't want to have bought multiple GPU's on credit and be carrying that debt when values collapse.
My brother and his wife own a rural property in a former gold/sapphire rush area and the property contains a ridge line on the side of which are innumerable former gold mining shafts. Some of these are unbelievably deep for a shaft dug by one or two guys with shovels. Some of these (I have been told European) are square and (were) shored with timber. These took longer to dig, but fewer people died in them. Some (I have been told Chinese) were round and unshored and many people died in them. There is still gold and sapphire there, just not enough for it to be economic to mine (although mining companies occasionally investigate whether new technology may make limited resumption feasible). Walking through the area evokes images of the many thousands of men who must have come in hopes of making a fortune. How many did? How many found it worth it given what they had to give up to do it? A harder time than now of course, making risks more worthwhile, but I think it illustrates the sort of delusional thinking that can arise when profits are being made.
Ok.