Scalpers will never go away when it comes to a product in which demand far outstrips supply.

Foundries take years to bring up to speed though - and require a whole materials supply chain expansion. Price is the easiest thing to change.

Complaints about scalpers remind me a lot of complaints about overpaid athletes/corporations/executives/etc.  There are several people with deep pockets (perhaps in this case miners) that are willing to continue to pay very high prices making them unattainable for common people.  The only solution is to not fuel them with cash.  Until enough people are willing to "vote with their wallets" and resist the siren's call of the newest GPU that a scalper is selling, this will continue.  I think it is just exacerbated now because miner's can pay high prices and still turn a profit it seems, so they will take the hit.  Not a great time to try to build my first PC.  

EVGA is doing a good job with their exclusivity to elite members

I tried buying a 3080 FE on notebookbilliger. I was put in a waiting room only for it to end and show me a sold out page. Apparently scalpers had the URL before everyone else. I added notify on the evga rtx 3080 cards. Probably my best bet, hope it pays off

if no one buys from scalpers, there will be no scalpers. Supply and demand, no demand, no supliers.

It's really a bad time to want an upgrade for your graphics card :(

I bought a psu a new computer case all in September 2020 only to be let down by the current gpu climate... It's hard being a gamer

Not buying from scalper will not work as supply and demand will dictate and there seems to be an abundance of demand.  Need an intervention to stop it from companies selling them.

I think a lot of scalpers are going to be in for a wake up call. I feel that the price I the 2080Ti was out of the reach of most gamers when they was the current model. Now you have scalpers who think it’s reasonable to buy a $1,399 item and try to sell it for $2,000 or more. I am not sure that market is as big as they think it is. Also I don’t think many of them realize if you post a card and have no feedback of you as a seller few people would be willing to even risk the retail price of these cards on a chance of a working card.

Basically, the price is a result of the sum of two oposite forces (second's Newton Law): demand and supply. With lower supplies, price goes up. With higher demands, price goes up. Just mix the two and you have the prices skyrocketing!

Are there programs that trip up or slow down bots? I know there's captcha but is there anything else?

I don't think anyone can fault you for using a bot of your own. Especially if you code it yourself, that's effort on your part. It's kind of like being practiced at checking out fast online imo. Sure it gives you an unfair advantage, but what do people expect you to do?

One way companies can beat scalpers (not to our benefit at all, mind you) is to initially sell the cards for 3x msrp.  Once all the suckers who are willing to pay that buy up the stock, reduce it to 2x msrp. Then finally 1x msrp. You take the suckers away from the scalpers yourself. Of course, that doesn't help the rest of us at all

I will pay it if the scalped price is reasonable.