https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/20/nvidia-debuts-new-high-end-rtx-4090-gpu-after-previous-generation-gobbled-up-by-crypto-miners/

Nvidia has announced its new generation of graphics cards, the RTX 4-series, including the $1599 flagship RTX 4090 and slightly more affordable 4080. The upgrade comes at an interesting time for PC users, who have been starved out of the GPU market by crypto miners for years, and now have their choice of their long-awaited older cards or the shiny (and expensive) new ones.

The 4-series is (as you’d expect) a significant upgrade over the 3-series, which dominated the crypto mining scene and a few other computation-hungry applications and as a result was bought in bulk by bots and other shady operations whenever they were available. This had the effect of reducing availability to practically nil and inflating the price of the powerful cards.