2 years ago
Nvidia’s Chief Technology Officer, Michael Kagan, has expressed a antagonistic view connected cryptocurrencies, stating that they bash not “bring thing utile for society,” whereas “AI does.”
Crypto isn’t ‘useful for society’
According to Kagan, AI applications specified arsenic the chatbot ChatGPT person much worth than mining crypto. Kagan’s comments are not excessively astonishing fixed that Nvidia has a past of distancing itself from the crypto community, specified arsenic limiting the quality of its graphics cards to excavation Ethereum successful 2021.
Kagan doubled down connected his anti-crypto stance, stating that helium has ne'er believed successful blockchain technology.
“I ne'er believed that [crypto] is thing that volition bash thing bully for humanity.”
Nvidia’s caller crypto past
However, Nvidia’s occurrence successful the banal marketplace implicit the past 2 years does look to person a correlation to the crypto industry. In 2021, anterior to The Merge, Nvidia released a graphics chip (CMP) that was optimized for Ethereum mining portion limiting gaming-focused graphics cards. However, the chips failed to impress arsenic income were ‘nominal’ and collapsed 77% successful the 3rd 4th of 2022.
In addition, Nvidia was fined $5.5 cardinal successful May 2022 by the SEC for failing to disclose the fig of GPUs sold for mining. The SEC alleged that Nvidia knew the cards were being utilized for mining but failed to uncover the information, which, they said, misled investors regarding the maturation of the business. Given that the bulk of Nvidia cards were utilized to excavation Ethereum, which moved to proof-of-stake astatine the extremity of 2022, it is simply a just disapproval arsenic request for cards dissipated post-Merge.
Leading up to the Ethereum Merge, which took spot connected Sept. 15, 2022, revenue for Nvidia gaming GPUs (which mostly inactive worked for crypto mining pursuing community workarounds) fell to $1.57 billion, down from $3.2 cardinal the twelvemonth prior. Thus, arsenic request for Ethereum miners fell, truthful did Nvidia’s sales. In fact, if you look astatine the Nvidia stock terms comparative to the terms of Ethereum, some reached all-time highs wrong a week of each different earlier declining significantly.
Source: TradingViewInterestingly, Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, besides said back successful 2017 that “cryptocurrency and blockchain are present to stay. The marketplace request for it is going to grow, and implicit clip it volition go rather large.”
It appears that present Ethereum has moved to proof-of-stake, and its CMP chips failed to instrumentality off; the institution has each but wholly turned its backmost connected crypto, successful enactment with Kagan’s statements. The company’s absorption is connected AI probe and gaming, with large clients similar Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle purchasing implicit 36,000 of Nvidia’s AI-focused processors.
The station Nvidia says ‘crypto adds thing utile to society’ aft billions successful mining sales appeared archetypal connected CryptoSlate.
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