Nvidia Is Giving Up On the Cryptocurrency Mining Market (latimes.com)

"Nvidia's nine-month crypto gold rush is over," reports the Los Angeles Times. An anonymous reader quotes their report: "Our core platforms exceeded our expectations, even as crypto largely disappeared," founder and Chief Executive Jensen Huang said Thursday on a conference call. "We're projecting no cryptomining going forward...." Nvidia said it had expected about $100 million in sales of chips bought by currency miners in the fiscal second quarter. Instead, the total was $18 million in the period, and that revenue is likely to disappear entirely in future quarters, the company said.

Investors are expressing their concern at the sudden collapse of what had looked like a billion-dollar business. Three months ago, Nvidia said it generated $289 million in sales from cryptocurrency miners, but warned that demand was declining rapidly and might fall by as much as two-thirds. Even that prediction was too optimistic.

Comments

The true cost of mining

[xack]

Not only has millions of tonnes of greenhouses gases been produced due to mining, it has also produced millions of graphics cards that are now useless due to being fried alive by mining, which will now be in a third world waste dump now as they are too hard to recycle. meanwhile bona fide users of graphics cards have had their supplies disrupted, had their prices more than doubled and have had to wait an extra year for new hardare to come out because nvidia was too busy making mining cards to do r&d. Anyone who made “money” from mining should have it seized under environmental protection laws.

Re:The true cost of mining

[SuricouRaven]

Finite currencies have their own problems. They are subject to deflation, and wild price swings. There is a reason all major governments moved away from a gold standard.

Re:The true cost of mining

[gman003]

GPU production did not substantially increase. Both AMD and Nvidia looked at cryptocoins, realized they were almost certainly a bubble that could pop at any time, and accordingly made no long-term investments to increase production. They pretty much maxed out their contracts with chip foundries (neither make their own chips - Nvidia uses TSMC and Samsung, AMD uses GlobalFoundries and TSMC), but they could never keep up with such an absurd demand spike with existing infrastructure.

Further, the GPUs are hardly useless now. They're already starting to appear on the secondhand market, and be snatched up by gamers. I myself am contemplating getting a second card, if they get cheap enough. The really useless mining hardware are the ASICs - which are pretty tailor-made for the purpose of mining, although I suspect the Bitcoin ASICs might be able to be repurposed to brute-force SHA-256 passwords.

And finally, the headline is a bit inaccurate. Nvidia isn't "giving up". They're just letting shareholders know not to expect another quarter of massive sales volume, because they expect the remaining crypto miners to mostly buy ASICs, not general-purpose cards. (And the glut of used cards is probably going to hurt at least their low-end sales for a year or two - given a choice between this year's $200 card, and last year's $800 card, used, for $200, lots of people will pick the latter.)

Re:The true cost of mining

[careysub]

Which is why hyperinflation from "printing" too much money has been a persistent problem with all fiat currencies around the world, hitting every nation repeatedly, including of course the United States. We desperately need blockchain to finally rein in the incessant hyperinflation!

Oh wait... this hasn't happened. Only a few failed (or near-failed) states have actually experienced anything like this. Never mind.

Re:The true cost of mining

[ZorinLynx]

>Further, the GPUs are hardly useless now. They're already starting to appear on the secondhand market, and be snatched up by gamers.

A lot of the GPUs *are* useless to gamers because they don't have video circuitry on them or video outputs. So they're pretty much only good for GPU computing. I suppose they could be sold to the scientific computing market, but I suspect demand for GPUs there isn't as high as gamings, so it's likely folks won't get too much money back.

I wish the GPU card manufacturers hadn't started making these cards without the video circuitry and ports. This is the cheapest part of the card, and at least if they had proper video outputs the cards would be useful second hand to gamers and folks who want to drive really high resolution displays. What a waste.

Re:The true cost of mining

[gman003]

Right, I forgot about those.

They might still be useful in SLI/Crossfire configurations. Only one GPU needs video outputs for that to work. Do mining-specific cards still have the SLI edge connector?

Re:The true cost of mining

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Not only has millions of tonnes of greenhouses gases been produced due to mining

There are dozens of other human activities which produce nothing but greenhouse gases.

it has also produced millions of graphics cards that are now useless due to being fried alive by mining

Unlike gamers who make their GPUs go through 0-100% use cycles, with temperatures ranging from 18 to 100C, most miners, on the the other hand, reduce voltage by default (this greatly increases efficiency) and keep their GPUs constantly loaded, under constant moderate temperatures (below 70C) which does not affect the GPU core lifespan in any significant way. Also mining rigs are usually open and well-ventilated, unlike gamers' PCs which are filled with dust and operate under extreme temperatures.

which will now be in a third world waste dump now as they are too hard to recycle

Or they might be resold.

meanwhile bona fide users of graphics cards have had their supplies disrupted, had their prices more than doubled and have had to wait an extra year for new hardare to come out because nvidia was too busy making mining cards to do r&d.

NVIDIA has never stopped R&D and they did not allocate any significant additional resources to producing cards meant for miners.

Anyone who made âoemoneyâ from mining should have it seized under environmental protection laws.

People waste money and resources on far more negative things.

Is this some kind of parody?

[SuperKendall]

Not only has millions of tonnes of greenhouses gases been produced due to mining

If you want to troll you have to use some figure that sounds like someone somewhere might actually believe it. According to you the atmosphere is 100% CO2 at this point. I'm still breathing pretty well.

it has also produced millions of graphics cards that are now useless due to being fried alive by mining

This also seems rather absurd; I have a friend with a dedicated mining rig and something like 16 cards - why would miners "Fry them alive"?? The longer the cards last the more money they make so the miners treat the GPU's like tender infants and take great pains to cool them properly. There is no reason those cards will not last 10x longer than a GPU in the average PC sold to someone in a dusty house.

Understanding Bitcoin

[PopeRatzo]

Some Twitter wag gave the best explanation of Bitcoin I've ever seen:

"Imagine if keeping your car idling 24/7 produced solved Sudokus you could trade for heroin."

Re:Understanding Bitcoin

[PopeRatzo]

Maybe if your car can only drive on one road, in one direction, then it would be an apt analogy.

Did you even read the analogy? The car is idling. It's not driving anywhere. It's up on blocks. Stationary.

Fuck, do I have to explain everything to the Anonymous Coward? As much as he's on here, you'd think he'd have developed some reading skills by now.

Re: Is it dead yet?

[phantomfive]

The problem with these logistical tracking in the block chain ideas is (among other things) how do you ensure that the physical item matches the coin? How do I ensure that when the coin is given to me, the physical item also is given (and if you have a technique that works, why not just use that instead of the block chain)? Furthermore, what happens if the key for the item's entry in the chain is lost, does that mean the item must also be destroyed? Upon further investigation, adding block chain just adds a layer of complexity with little benefit. Block chain is not going to prevent UPS from losing my packages.