Nvidia CTO Michael Kagan has expressed a adverse view of cryptocurrencies, saying they “do not add something helpful to society”, whereas “AI does”.
Crypto will not be “helpful for society”
Based on Kagan, AI functions such because the ChatGPT chatbot are extra beneficial than crypto mining. Kagan’s feedback aren’t too stunning on condition that Nvidia has a historical past of distancing itself from the crypto neighborhood, equivalent to limiting the flexibility of its graphics playing cards to mine Ethereum in 2021.
Kagan doubled down on his anti-crypto stance, saying he by no means believed in blockchain know-how.
“I by no means believed that (crypto) is one thing that might do one thing good for humanity.”
Nvidia’s Latest Crypto Previous
Nonetheless, Nvidia’s success within the inventory market over the previous two years appears to correlate with the crypto trade. In 2021, earlier than The Merge, Nvidia launched a graphics chip (CMP) optimized for Ethereum mining whereas limiting gaming-focused graphics playing cards. Nonetheless, the chips did not impress as gross sales had been “nominal” and crashed 77% within the third quarter of 2022.
Moreover, Nvidia was fined $5.5 million in Might 2022 by the SEC for failing to reveal the variety of GPUs offered for mining. The SEC alleged that Nvidia knew the playing cards had been getting used for mining however didn’t disclose the data, which it stated misled traders concerning the firm’s progress. For the reason that majority of Nvidia playing cards had been used to mine Ethereum, which transitioned to proof-of-stake on the finish of 2022, this can be a truthful criticism as demand for the playing cards dissipated after the merger .
Previous to the Ethereum merger, which came about on September 15, 2022, income from Nvidia gaming GPUs (which had been nonetheless principally working for crypto mining following neighborhood workarounds) fell to 1, $57 billion, in comparison with $3.2 billion the earlier yr. So, as demand for Ethereum miners declined, so did Nvidia’s gross sales. In reality, if you happen to have a look at Nvidia’s inventory worth towards Ethereum’s worth, each hit all-time highs per week aside earlier than falling considerably.
Apparently, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang additionally stated in 2017 that “cryptocurrency and blockchain are right here to remain. The market want for it’s going to develop and over time it’s going to change into fairly giant. »
Evidently now Ethereum has moved to proof-of-stake and its CMP chips have did not take off; the corporate has turned its again on crypto virtually utterly, in step with Kagan’s statements. The corporate is concentrated on AI analysis and gaming, with main clients like Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle buying greater than 36,000 AI-focused Nvidia processors.