Nvidia kicks crypto to the curb: 'doesn’t bring anything useful for society. AI does'
Nvidia has both been the benefactor and victim of cryptocurrencies' boom/bust cycle. When crypto was soaring in value, so was Nvidia's share price. When crypto crashed, often Nvidia's share price dropped with it. The company makes a product that was, for a long while, crucial to the operation of most of the world's largest cryptocurrencies outside of bitcoin, and that's been both a blessing and a curse.
Nvidia and crypto is a love/hate relationship. When the going was good, Nvidia would happily create entire product lines for the sole purpose of running algorithms to 'mine' cryptocurrency, known as CMP or Cryptocurrency Mining Processor(opens in new tab). However, when crypto crashed, which it has a tendency to do, Nvidia would often be lumped with excess inventory(opens in new tab) of graphics cards and finding new ways to sell them.
Clearly Nvidia is in the hate stage of its relationship right now, as per recent comments to The Guardian(opens in new tab) by Nvidia's CTO on the value of cryptocurrency to society.
«All this crypto stuff, it needed parallel processing, and [Nvidia] is the best, so people just programmed it to use for this purpose. They bought a lot of stuff, and then eventually it collapsed, because it doesn’t bring anything useful for society. AI does,» Nvidia CTO Michael Kagan said.
It's no surprise that Nvidia is keen to position itself as the pre-eminent AI company, but I hadn't expected the company to outright slam cryptocurrency in the process. Kagan's comments touch on a debate that's been raging for a while, however, and that's whether cryptocurrency is a worthy alternative to fiat money or moreso a tool for generating profit. So far, we've seen a lot of examples of the latter, and not so many
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