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NVIDIA Slapped With Class Action Lawsuit Tied To Cryptocurrency Implosion (hothardware.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the magic-internet-money-lawsuits dept.

Long-time Slashdot reader foxalopex writes: It looks like Nvidia is going to be hit with a class action for investors who lost big when their stock price crashed more than 50% due to an overstock of GPU cards that were produced for the crypto-currency craze back in 2018. The suit claims investors were told Nvidia had control of the situation until it crashed worse than even Nvidia had anticipated.
"The Company's public statements were false and materially misleading," argues the complaint from a Los Angeles law firm, seeking investors who purchased shares in NVIDIA between August 10, 2017 and November 15, 2018.

It was on November 15 that NVIDIA issued a statement that "excess channel inventory post the crypto-currency boom...will be corrected." Citing new products for machine learning, film rendering, and cloud computing, they added that "Our market position and growth opportunities are stronger than ever."

112 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Well, there's a bit of truth... by ddtmm · · Score: 2

    I will agree with the last part. If the stock price crashes 50%, then "Our market position and growth opportunities are stronger than ever" makes sense. Time to buy...

    1. Re:Well, there's a bit of truth... by v1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Investors that have blind faith in company forecasts are getting what they deserve. They are legally obligated to report past and current, but they will always dream of an amazing future. Do your homework before buying stock.

      "But they LIED to us when they said they expected things would improve!!" No, optimism is not lying. Thank you for your money, now go home.

      --
      I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
    2. Re:Well, there's a bit of truth... by es330td · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Thank you for your money, now go home.

      NVIDIA didn't even get the money. These shares were purchased on the secondary market.

    3. Re:Well, there's a bit of truth... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      No, optimism is not lying.

      They didn't just express "optimism". They stated as fact that the overstock "will be corrected", when in fact they had no plan to fix the problem.

      When you are a public company, you can't just go out and make false or misleading official statements.

      They didn't have to make a statement about the overstock, but when they did make a statement, then they had a fiduciary duty to be scrupulously honest with their investors, and they didn't do that. They should have followed my grandmother's advice: "If you have nothing good to say, then STFU."

    4. Re:Well, there's a bit of truth... by phantomfive · · Score: 1
      Such communications from companies are always prefaced by appropriate legal disclaimers. In NVidia's case, they disclaim like this:

      "Certain statements....are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to be materially different than expectations. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and speak only as of the date hereof"

      Unless they said something that was actually false at the time they said it, then this case is unlikely to have success.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    5. Re:Well, there's a bit of truth... by v1 · · Score: 1

      They didn't just express "optimism". They stated as fact that the overstock "will be corrected", when in fact they had no plan to fix the problem.

      And it's a good thing for them they didn't have a plan! What they provided shareholders and potential investors with was a forecast... a statement of what they anticipated would occur in the future, as a result of factors they obviously did not have full control over. I can say I hope to win the lottery in tomorrow's drawing, and that's not a lie. And you'd be a fool to take it as a statement of fact or truth. If on the other hand they stated they guaranteed the correction would occur, then you'd have something to complain about. They didn't say they'd make it happen, their words were carefully chosen. "will be corrected". By who? When? And then at the bottom is their standard disclaimer, basically reiterating that anything in the release that wasn't a statement of past history or current condition is merely a forecast and is not a certainty or promise. (they usually also add that you shouldn't make ANY financial decisions based solely on the report)

      If they described a plan, (or at least stated they were taking steps to help insure the correction occurs) then maybe you can start to get some traction, and get them for failing to execute their plan effectively, or incompetence in designing the plan. But I didn't see a plan. They played it smart and didn't give you enough rope to hang them with.

      Like they say about fools and their money...

      --
      I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
    6. Re: Well, there's a bit of truth... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      Show me where they said they knew for sure it would correct. Or where they said "we know for a fact".

      There is no material difference between "We will do X" and "We know for sure we will do X" or "We know for a fact that we will do X".

      They are all false statements if you are not going to do X.

    7. Re:Well, there's a bit of truth... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      Such communications from companies are always prefaced by appropriate legal disclaimers.

      There is plenty of legal precedent that disclaimers provide very limited protection for false or misleading statements from public companies.

      Unless they said something that was actually false at the time they said it ...

      They said the overstock "will be" corrected. They didn't say "maybe", or "we hope", or "if our prayers are answered". They said "will be" when they had no plan to accomplish that, and knew, or should have known, that it was unlikely to happen.

    8. Re:Well, there's a bit of truth... by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      It's a long shot, glwt.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    9. Re: Well, there's a bit of truth... by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      You don't even know that nvidia's GPUs were garbage for bitcoin, and no one sane mined bitcoin with them.

      Crypto boom's GPU market was in ethereum.

    10. Re: Well, there's a bit of truth... by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      Which is irrelevant for this story, as GPUs being talked about didn't exist that far in the past.

  2. This pisses me off by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    They'll probably settle it and waste money that could go to making better and cheaper cards. Nvidia was crystal clear that the crypto boom was temporary. With the changes to arbitration rules making it difficult or impossible to get class action status for annual consumer harm I expect to see more of these, sigh...

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:This pisses me off by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Nvidia was crystal clear that the crypto boom was temporary.

      NVIDIA was crystal clear that they knew it was temporary and had measures in place to ensure a continuity of sales and not oversupply the channel.
      Except they didn't.

      They'll probably settle it and waste money that could go to making better and cheaper cards.

      As opposed to wasting money oversupplying the channel for something they *knew* was temporary?

    2. Re:This pisses me off by Mashiki · · Score: 2

      NVIDIA was crystal clear that they knew it was temporary and had measures in place to ensure a continuity of sales and not oversupply the channel.
      Except they didn't.

      Exactly this. It's not hard to find the news articles on exchange sites, or hell even forex oriented news sites with nvidia pumping that they had 'contingency' plans if the market fell out, and all that. Now they have assloads of cards that are already depreciated and are getting worse, and they haven't managed to catch up to the latest tick-tock cycle leading to their fabbing being way-way-way behind along with a manufacturing shortage of available PCB space. Their solution to self-created card shortages? Raise prices.

      Good times to be AMD I guess.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    3. Re:This pisses me off by mark-t · · Score: 1, Informative

      Now they have assloads of cards that are already depreciated ....

      Okay.... I have had up to.... *HERE* wth this. Sorry, I don't mean to take this out on you specifically, but I'm afraid your comment is the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back for me. I know this entire comment is OT, and I'll probably be modded as such to hell and back, but I feel like I really need to say this.

      "Depreciated" is a verb. It is the simple past tense and past participle form of the infinitive "to depreciate". This word is not an adjective, which is how it is being used here. The adjective form for the verb depends on whether one is talking about whether something is either *tending* to depreciate or if it merely *able* to depreciate. For the former, the adjective to use is depreciative, while for the latter, one would use the term depreciable. If one is truly intending to use the verb form by combining it with a present tense verb of "to be", then the word to correctly use is "depreciating".

      Additionally, a lot of times I notice people using the word "depreciated" as an adjective when they often mean "deprecated". "Deprecated" is a word which is both a past tense verb *and* an adjective that can be applied to describe nouns, but the word "deprecate" and "depreciate", despite their similar spellings, do *NOT* mean anything close to the same thing. Deprecate refers to the express disapproval of something (which typically may have been formerly viewed as acceptable), while depreciate refers to the loss of monetary value of something. In general, the two words cannot be used interchangeably.

      #rant

      --
      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    4. Re:This pisses me off by cm5oom · · Score: 3, Funny

      Your post helped me to understand why more and more people are starting to ignore some of the more arcane grammar rules. It's because they don't actually clarify things they are simply rules for the sake of rules. Thanks for that at least. This is a serious post, not trolling.

    5. Re:This pisses me off by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      NVIDIA was crystal clear that they knew it was temporary and had measures in place to ensure a continuity of sales and not oversupply the channel.
      Except they didn't.

      Those are some fine goalposts you're moving, there. It was the correct business decision for nvidia to take advantage of the crypto mining demand. They publicly stated that it would be a temporary boom. Now that sales are easing back down to where they were, investors are complaining. That's stupid. They should be happy that nvidia made money while it could. If they didn't, it just would have been AMD, a little later.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    6. Re:This pisses me off by cm5oom · · Score: 1

      He wouldn't need to go on a rant if it was common knowledge so yeah I think arcane is the right word.

    7. Re:This pisses me off by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      Nobody but people who spent 7 years in english lit., and has a degree in it uses the words in those forms. That's how it's been in the automotive industry for 40 years and it's spilled into the mainstream, welcome to how languages change. You find depreciated used in both forms for an object that is declining invalue having been sold, and existing stock that exists and will not sell in every trade magazine, automotive book, and in the general lexicon of buyers and sellers in everything from coins to houses and empty plots of land.

      Give you a bet. In 100 years, their, there, and they're will be archaic uses.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    8. Re:This pisses me off by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      I'm not moving the goalposts, you're just playing the wrong sport. This is a discussion about the lawsuit. The lawsuit is about NVIDIA's fraudulent statements. The GP took *half* of NVIDIA's public statements (the bit that wasn't fraudulent) and used that as a reason why he's not happy with the lawsuit. I'm pointing out the fact: yes NVIDIA did state that it was temporary, but NVIDIA also said they had contingencies that made them immune to the end of the boom.

      They didn't.

      They got sued for their fraudulent claim.

      They didn't get sued for taking advantage of crypto mining, they didn't get sued because the boom was temporary, they are getting sued for making a claim that was false to investors. No goalposts have been moved in the making of this argument, they are still in the same place as they are in TFA and TFLawsuit.

    9. Re:This pisses me off by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      [Citation Required] In many ways:

      - Deprecate does not list an adjective form in any dictionary.
      - Deprecate is expressly listed as as "lowering value" in the Cambridge dictionary in its second form
      - Deprecate is defined in the Oxford dictionary in the context of "computing" (sense 1.1) to mean "to be considered outdated and best avoided, even though you can still use it, usually because it has been replaced with a newer feature"
      - Deprecate is defined in the Oxford dictionary as a synonym to depreciate (sense 2).

      So yes in this case they can be used interchangeably. So I give your post 6/10 you passed on part marks :-)

    10. Re:This pisses me off by supremebob · · Score: 1

      The problem that statement is that Nvidia doesn't seem to be interested in providing faster and cheaper cards. They really only seem to be interested in manufacturing the higher end cards with better profit margins, and seemingly letting the rest of their product line stagnate.

      Hell... for most of last year, it seems that they were purposefully keeping supplies of their higher end (1060/1070/1080) cards low so they could get higher than MSRP prices for them. It was actually working out for them pretty well until the price of Ethereum crashed and the demand for mining cards disappeared faster than they could plan for. Now you can get those used cards on eBay half of MSRP in some cases.

    11. Re:This pisses me off by mark-t · · Score: 1

      1) deprecated

      2) That is a malformation that comes from the expression "self-deprecate", which originally was "self-depreciate". In virtually any other context beyond talking about a person's self esteem, sense of worth, or the like, it does not mean that. Also, note that I said "in general" they are not interchangeable.

      3) True... but if you are saying that something is best avoided, are you not then also providing an express disapproval of it?

      4) Again, only in very specific contexts. In general, they are not synonyms.

      --
      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    12. Re:This pisses me off by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      yes NVIDIA did state that it was temporary, but NVIDIA also said they had contingencies that made them immune to the end of the boom.

      And they do. You're acting like they claimed the boom would go on forever, which is a failure of comprehension at best. They claimed that the end of the boom wouldn't hurt them. And aside from short investors manipulating the market, it hasn't. They didn't spend money adding a bunch of production to serve the boom, because they knew it was temporary. All they had to do to have contingencies to make them immune to failure as a result of the end of the boom, which was the actual claim, was to not put on more production.

      You're moving goalposts everywhere and declaring victory. Bullshit.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    13. Re:This pisses me off by mark-t · · Score: 1

      I wasn't suggesting that "depreciated" was not a word.... I am saying that it is not an adjective, and as such cannot be combined with a linking verb (eg: "is") to describe a property of the subject. The above usage is about as correct as saying something like "yesterday it was rained" [sic], and for the exact same reasons. "Depreciated" should either stand alone as a verb or be used as a past participle to be combined with a conjugation of "to have". However, one of the biggest problems with it is that often it is not clear whether the speaker is actually meaning to use the word depreciate, or if they actually meant deprecate. Was the speaker in this case remarking about how the cards that they have may be considered unnecessary or even undesirable today, or was the speaker remarking about how the cards' actual value has diminished? Both may be seen as true, so the speaker's intent is actually entirely ambiguous. Even if both were meant to be conveyed, it is not grammatically correct to use a single predicate to express both concepts simultaneously.

      --
      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    14. Re: This pisses me off by mark-t · · Score: 1

      Past participle forms cannot always be used as adjectives.. this is particularly true for intransitive verbs but there are some intransitive verbs that can be used transitively for which you cannot use the past participle as an adjective either.

      To combine the past participle of "to deprecate" with a subject, one must utilize some conjugation of "to have", not "to be".

      --
      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    15. Re:This pisses me off by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      And they do.

      And they didn't.

      You're acting like they claimed the boom would go on forever

      Nope. Not acting anything of the like. Notice how AMD isn't being sued?

      which is a failure of comprehension at best

      That's an ironic given how at no point I've ever said the boom should go on forever.

      They claimed that the end of the boom wouldn't hurt them.

      Except it did severely damaging their supply chain.

      They didn't spend money adding a bunch of production to serve the boom, because they knew it was temporary.

      Except they did, and they added production and oversupplied due to the boom despite knowing it was temporary.

      You're moving goalposts everywhere and declaring victory. Bullshit.

      A lot of people here call you a troll, but the reality is that you just have very poor English comprehension. I cannot state this enough. Every single thing you have said has been wrong at every stage of the way.

      You really need to work on this.

    16. Re:This pisses me off by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      1) deprecated

      Past tense verb according to all dictionaries and none list them as an adjective. You are literally going against the rule book while calling out the OP for the same using (admittedly incorrectly) depreciated which as you rightly pointed out is also not an adjective.

      Bottom line, the use is archaic, but it's not wrong, and at least 1 (2 if you count Google as a valid source) dictionary lists it as a synonym in the general case too.

    17. Re:This pisses me off by mark-t · · Score: 1
      From here:

      In English, many past and present participles of verbs can be used as adjectives.

      Several of the examples on the page mentioned given illustrate this usage.

      Depreciated, while a past participle, is not an example of such a verb. To say that "X is depreciated" is about as gramatically correct as saying as saying "X is slept" instead of "X is sleepy" or "Y is died" instead of "Y is dead".

      --
      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    18. Re:This pisses me off by DRJlaw · · Score: 1

      "Depreciated" is a verb.

      It's a past participle being used as an adjective, as allowed by proper grammar, and you're not only wrong, but a twit.

    19. Re:This pisses me off by DRJlaw · · Score: 1

      Depreciated, while a past participle, is not an example of such a verb.

      Incorrect. Depreciated also describes a present state. To say that "x is [fully] depreciated" is not only gramatically correct, it is the predominant usage.

      Now take your prescriptive gammarian ass to France, because English grammar is not dictated by a regulator.

    20. Re:This pisses me off by DRJlaw · · Score: 1

      Your own source disagrees with you:

      "Examples of 'depreciated'
      In English, many past and present participles of verbs can be used as adjectives. Some of these examples may show the adjective use."

      "These estimates do not include capital charges since the applicable scanners currently in use are fully depreciated.
      From Cambridge English Corpus"

    21. Re:This pisses me off by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      In English, many past and present participles of verbs can be used as adjectives.

      So we've gone full circle to your original post. I deduct a further 2 points from your original post as you disproved your own complaint about the adjective use of "depreciated".

    22. Re:This pisses me off by mark-t · · Score: 1

      I also said that "depreciated" is *NOT* an example of such a verb. The ultimate reason for this has to do with how the verb behaves when it is used intransitively.

      --
      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    23. Re:This pisses me off by mark-t · · Score: 1

      Well, I did a little more research... turns out I was wrong... sort of. I was right in that the original post was not grammatically correct, but I was not exactrly right about the reason. "Depreciated" can indeed be an adjective... however, it cannot be used as an adjective followed by a conjugation of "to be".

      The applicable general rule governing the conversion of a past participle to an adjective is that it cannot be done on intransitive verbs. Where you come across exceptions to this is when a verb can be used intransitively and transitively (such as depreciate).

      In such cases, the past participle form converted directly to an adjective must directly modify the applicable noun, and cannot be associated with it by a linking verb such as "to be". Otherwise, the past participle form needs to be combined with a conjugation of "to have" (and is not an adjective at all). It would be valid to refer to the "depreciated cards", for instance. It is not, however, valid to say that the "cards are depreciated".

      And hey. I just learned something.

      --
      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
  3. Repurpose mining hardware.,. by 3seas · · Score: 1

    to solve encryptions i.e. wikileaks insurance files.

  4. "back in 2018" by jgaynor · · Score: 5, Funny

    IT WAS SIX DAYS AGO

    1. Re:"back in 2018" by ls671 · · Score: 1

      IT WAS SIX DAYS AGO

      Wrong, it wasn't even 5 days ago. More like 4 days + 15 hours ago in the US. Hint: There is no January 0.

      --
      Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
    2. Re:"back in 2018" by tsqr · · Score: 2

      IT WAS SIX DAYS AGO

      Wrong, it wasn't even 5 days ago. More like 4 days + 15 hours ago in the US. Hint: There is no January 0.

      Six days ago it was most definitely 2018. So maybe not wrong at all. If he'd said, "2018 ended six days ago," he'd have been wrong.

  5. This should be illegal by reanjr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Either vote in a new board or sell your stock. Suing your partners to make up for your own ignorant investments makes you the most worthless kind of human being.

    1. Re:This should be illegal by BeerCat · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Time was when the small print was "the value of your investment can go down as well as up"

      Looks as though these folk never read that part, and now want to blame someone else

      --
      "She's furniture with a pulse"
    2. Re:This should be illegal by Luthair · · Score: 1

      Its almost impossible to change the board, new members go through a nomination committee constructed from.... members of the board.

    3. Re:This should be illegal by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      Obviously most people on Slashdot never invest in companies. If you say something like "we expect we will be affected minimally by the cryptocurrency implosion" or "taking a company private at $420. Funding secured" and it isn't true and you know it, you are opening yourself up for litigation. You cannot just make statements to investors and mislead them. Chances are NVidia knew they were going to get hammered, but didn't want investors to sell the stock until they could get out of their positions.

    4. Re:This should be illegal by gaiageek · · Score: 1

      This. Misleading your investors is a no-no.

      --
      www.gaiageek.com
    5. Re:This should be illegal by mindwhip · · Score: 1

      IANAL however my understanding is that if they say "we expect" something and actually do expect that with available information then it isn't a false statement even if what they expected didn't happen due to factors outside their control. They possibly knew there was a chance of overstock but had accounted for that and made mitigations for it with the new AI uses etc, however what they couldn't possibly control, know or predict was the shareholders, for no real reason, to suddenly dump sell shares on the back of it which is actually they only reason shareholders lost so much value. For there to be any chance of this lawsuit to get off the ground they need to be able to prove that Nvidia had actual concrete knowledge that the statement was false.

      --
      [The Universe] has gone offline.
    6. Re:This should be illegal by sjames · · Score: 1

      There is a material difference between terms like "secured" and "expect". The former is a term based on something that has already happened or not happened. Either the handshake and signing has happened or it has not. The latter conveys a belied, hopefully backed by some facts, about the future. But it is only a belief.

      Expectations can be thwarted by things like the market crashing harder or sooner than expected.

      Look at the fine print on press releases. They generally have a disclaimer abut forward looking statements.

    7. Re:This should be illegal by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      Not directly, anyway.

    8. Re:This should be illegal by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Looks as though these folk never read that part, and now want to blame someone else

      Folks read that part just fine. But when the company comes out and said our stock won't go down for reason X because we did Y, and it turns out Y was bogus and the stock crashed due to reason X that is called a "fraudulent claim to investors" and is grounds for a lawsuit.

      You may notice that AMD isn't being sued despite having the same drop.

    9. Re: This should be illegal by reanjr · · Score: 1

      It's all guess work. CEOs don't have some magic power to separate out sales with 100% precision. The fact Nvidia was wrong doesn't make them frauds.

    10. Re: This should be illegal by reanjr · · Score: 1

      Please link to the fraudulent statement so I can point out where your reading comprehension failed.

    11. Re: This should be illegal by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Please link to the fraudulent statement so I can point out where your reading comprehension failed.

      Jeesh some people need to be spoon fed. Why not follow the links in TFA through to the actual legal filing?

      "Specifically, defendants: (1) assured investors that NVIDIA followed the market closely and could adjust to rapid changes in the cryptocurrency markets; (2) touted that NVIDIA and its executives are “masters at managing our channel, and we understand the channel very well.”; and (3) assured investors that surging demand for graphics processing units (“GPUs”) among cryptocurrency miners would not have a negative impact on NVIDIA because of strong demand for GPUs by NVIDIA’s core customer base of computer gamers. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages."

      Want to do your own legal analysis http://investor.nvidia.com/ Go your hardest.

    12. Re: This should be illegal by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      It's all guess work. CEOs don't have some magic power to separate out sales with 100% precision.

      No, it's all legal distinction. You're right CEOs don't have magic power and therefore they should not make the claims they did. Shit happens, they'll learn to be more careful in their quarterly earnings reports next time.

      The fact Nvidia was wrong doesn't make them frauds.

      That depends entirely on precisely how they said that "wrong" thing. When you say you're guessing at something it pays off not to specifically mention exactly what and why something will happen. Specifically don't say your Gaming sales are strong and growing at a rate that will ensure the channel remains optimal when the crypto crash happens. Don't then go on to double down on the claim by saying you're masters at managing a channel.

      But whatever man, it's not up to you or me to decide who made a fraudulent claim. Unless you're the presiding judge on this case, but I seriously doubt that.

    13. Re: This should be illegal by reanjr · · Score: 1

      1. Nvidia follows market closely: true statement

      2. Can adjust to rapid changes: never specified how rapid; opinion-based statement that cannot be false

      3. Masters at managing channels: if you claim Nvidia is not a master in their industry, the burden of proof is on you

      4. Understand channel very well: qualitative statement, cannot be false

      5. Assured surging crypto demand would not have a negative impact: incorrect statement; oops; being wrong isn't fraud

    14. Re: This should be illegal by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Cool you decided an entire case based on a paragraph legal filing. Why bother with lawyers and judges or juries. With the power of *you* we can breath new efficiency into the world.

      Now snide comment asside:

      2. Can adjust to rapid changes: never specified how rapid; opinion-based statement that cannot be false

      Did you find the actual quote the lawsuit is referring to or are you guessing?

      3. Masters at managing channels: if you claim Nvidia is not a master in their industry, the burden of proof is on you

      Have you seen how horribly they fucked up their channel? They are stuck with a mountain of a Pascal they are unable to move. This is fundamentally what the lawsuit is about.

      4. Understand channel very well: qualitative statement, cannot be false

      True.

      5. Assured surging crypto demand would not have a negative impact: incorrect statement; oops; being wrong isn't fraud

      Fraud is entirely dependent on how you word your statements. Being wrong may or may not be fraud.

      Okay I'm done being serious, where was I? Oh that's right you should decide all fraud cases too while you're at it. By simply looking at a filing you've summed up the entire lawsuit with "oops". Great work. With you at the helm we can eliminate mountains of paperwork, briefs, filings, and decisions and finally stop deforesting the world. Hurrah.

    15. Re: This should be illegal by reanjr · · Score: 1

      I asked for info; you provided the info; then you complain the info isn't good.

      Hmmm... Sounds like someone is making shit up as they go along...

  6. So... by argStyopa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...If crypto currency has crashed and there's a glut of these top end gpus, such that their stock crashed and a class action suit is rolling....where can I get that crazy cheap GPU? I can certainly use one, and there should be rivers of them for sale cheap, no?

    --
    -Styopa
    1. Re:So... by Desler · · Score: 1

      Ebay.

    2. Re:So... by Entrope · · Score: 1

      And you don't know how they were run. If they were overclocked or run in poorly ventilated areas, they may have significantly shorter remaining lifespans than you would expect for their age.

    3. Re:So... by omnichad · · Score: 1

      They're trickling them onto the market at near full retail because they have a new generation of hardware to sell. My guess is it will fire sale after R&D is recouped on the new stuff or get buried in the desert next to ET (figuratively speaking, of course, due to prevalent e-recycling laws).

    4. Re:So... by Sir+Holo · · Score: 2

      And yet a new Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti still costs double what it cost in November, 2017. I thought excess stock led to price drops.

    5. Re:So... by omnichad · · Score: 1

      eBay is filled with mostly used/abused mining gear. It might be burned in well enough, but I imagine a lot of thermal damage too

    6. Re:So... by omnichad · · Score: 2

      Maybe they're learning from Apple. If so, they'll sell the same model for 5 years with no price drops and when the new model comes out the old one comes off the market entirely.

    7. Re:So... by Dunbal · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Prices are always sticky to the upside.

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    8. Re:So... by Desler · · Score: 1

      I didn't say they would be one's you'd want to buy, but they will certainly be cheap.

    9. Re:So... by Fly+Swatter · · Score: 2

      I was reading up on this lately, the problem currently and in the recent year was the price of DRAM skyrocketing. Once again we can blame the DRAM manufacturers. Oh BTW, they are finally ramping up for more production of memory chips used in these GPU applications, any day now...

    10. Re:So... by mapkinase · · Score: 4, Interesting

      100 or so years ago one of the first economic crises of overproduction characterized as such hit Europe.

      Instead of selling their farm stock cheap farmers chose to destroy their products. Giving stuff away costs distribution money, destroying them costs less.

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    11. Re:So... by Highdude702 · · Score: 2

      Actually most miners, with the exception of morons with too much money to begin with... Keep the cards rather cool. A lot cooler than you would have gaming in a pc case. None of my GPU's ever went above 65c, I know a few large mining ops that had warehouses full. and they stayed at around 50-60c because of the enviornment they were in. Typical gaming load in a consumer case is going to see gpu temps of 85c+ unless you have a very very well ventilated case with tons of fans and decent room temp. Also mining only uses a small fraction of the actual GPU core, as the other parts aren't needed for the math the algorithm uses. And large operations normally don't overclock the cards at all because it tends to cause issues with nonce's.

    12. Re:So... by DeBaas · · Score: 1

      and they'll remove the headphone jack!

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    13. Re:So... by alvinrod · · Score: 2

      The issue is that the replacement cards that NVidia is offering in the 2000 series had the prices massively jacked up. Part of this is because they include some new technology to enable ray-tracing, but the real world performance of that technology hasn't been very good, so if you're just running games the same as always, the new cards don't offer much (if any) improvement. However, the performance level of where the 1080 Ti was at went up in cost, so the 1080 Ti has been dragged up with it.

      Additionally, NVidia didn't overproduce the 1080 Ti, only the 1060 (which has seen considerable price drops) so there isn't an excessive amount of stock left over. Finally, AMD doesn't have anything that's really capable of competing with the 1080 Ti, so NVidia can get away with charging whatever the market will bear since they have no real competition to keep prices in check. Hopefully AMD will announce some new cards at CES and force NVidia to bring down their prices.

    14. Re:So... by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      If by mining gear you mean GPUs that don't thermally cycle and are more than likely to have spent their life undervolted and are thus in excellent condition then yes you'd be right.

    15. Re:So... by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      100 or so years ago one of the first economic crises of overproduction characterized as such hit Europe.

      Instead of selling their farm stock cheap farmers chose to destroy their products. Giving stuff away costs distribution money, destroying them costs less.

      This is interesting but not the problem here. The thing here is that there is no oversupply of GPU cards. There is only an oversupply of GPUs in the upper end of the supply chain. The mining crash and the desire not to further drop prices on already purchased units by OEMs mean that these aren't being sold. The retail market is sitting quite happily at the RRP and there's no incentive for them to drop.

      Farming equivalence: An oversupply of wheat does not mean that there are mountains of bread laying around being sold for bargain prices.

    16. Re:So... by es330td · · Score: 1

      they may have significantly shorter remaining lifespans than you would expect for their age.

      Define "shorter." In my 29 years of messing with hardware I have yet to replace a failed graphics card. No system I have ever used has lasted long enough that either the card was upgraded or entire system was replaced first. If someone tells me the lifespan of a card is 15 years but overclocking will reduce that by 50%, what do I care if abusing it will cause that to happen?

    17. Re:So... by Kjella · · Score: 1

      Additionally, nVidia didn't overproduce the 1080 Ti

      This is pretty much the whole story, it wasn't a card popular with miners so it saw no inflated demand so nVidia doesn't have any unsold inventory. Looking at the online retailers here in Norway nobody has any in stock and the last stragglers seem to have sold out in end of November. If you want to buy new it's now 2000 series prices so if you can find a 1080 Ti that's what it'll be priced against. If you ignore all the new ray-tracing stuff it's a >10 TFLOPS card matching the RTX 2080, so no reason to sell it cheap. I was able to get one at MSRP at launch, seems it was one of the best computer "investments" I could have made. Too bad I didn't splurge on that 64GB of RAM too...

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    18. Re:So... by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

      What company makes a product that damages itself from normal use?

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    19. Re:So... by guruevi · · Score: 1

      A few months ago we bought a Tesla at 50% off. The mining/datacenter gear is pretty cheap right now, nVidia has been giving free gear to researchers for a while. Home GPU's are not the channel they are talking about.

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    20. Re:So... by sound+vision · · Score: 1

      It may have been smarter for them to avoid adding manufacturing capacity, given that the demand was due to an artificial bubble. Had they opened another factory for example, it would be sitting idle now. That is probably a negative ROI, even without knowing their financials.

      I'm sure nVidia pushed hard for it, and pushed the blame for the high prices as well. While fingers were pointing every which way, nobody in the crypto-currency echo chambers online wanted to address the elephant in the room, which is that the whole thing was a bubble. It looks like the DRAM manufacturers might be the only ones who didn't buy the hype.

    21. Re:So... by fibonacci8 · · Score: 1

      Any battery manufacturer.

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    22. Re:So... by hairyfeet · · Score: 2

      Nope, actually just the opposite. When you game with a GPU you are having a LOT of thermal cycling, card gets really hot during intense gameplay, card cools down when you aren't playing, and that wears them out.

      With the miners though you do NOT want a bunch of cycling as that sucks power so what they would often do is undervolt the card to cut down on power usage (thus maximizing profits) and would keep them at a constant load and thus at the same temp which doesn't wear them out like a lot of cycling does.

      Now that the market has gone bust you can find a ton of R9380x and RX480s for quite cheap, been grabbing the 380x cards for like $60 a pop, and the miner cards have been absolutely immaculate and not had the slightest bit of issue with them thanks to how well they babied the cards. Remember mining is all about maximizing profit and just slamming the cards full bore like you would if you were plowing through a game with the settings maxed out? Cost too much electricity to make that a smart move for generating profit from those cards.

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    23. Re:So... by mapkinase · · Score: 1

      Excellent rebuttal! :-)

      Of course I know very little about what kinda GPU are used.

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    24. Re:So... by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      Anyone making physical objects? Google "entropy".

    25. Re:So... by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Sure, better than thermal cycling. But still probably a lot of wear compared to new. You wouldn't really be able to compare until years out comparing the failure time vs buying new cards.

    26. Re:So... by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      Inventory problem is with 1060s, and AMD is competitive in that segment today.

    27. Re:So... by omnichad · · Score: 1

      And make you use a proprietary HDMI dongle for audio....oh wait, they already do that.

    28. Re:So... by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      But if you paid $60 for an R9380x or $100 for an RX480....are you REALLY gonna care? Lets say the card lasts 2 years, which considering its been undervolted and babied is really not a stretch (as I've had cards that were rode HARD that lasted nearly 5, AMD cards can take a beating) so you paid $30 a year for the 2 years of use of the R8 380x or $50 a year for the RX480...that is less than the cost of a triple a game a year...yeah really not gonna care if it doesn't last 5-7 years.

      If you buy used you are always gonna be taking a chance it might have less life, but at prices THIS cheap I'd say the risk is worth it and I'd much rather have a miner card over a gamer's card because the miners frankly took better care of their gear than the average gamer.

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  7. a butterfly will be sued for causing a typhoon by AndyKron · · Score: 1

    Nvidia is being sued for not being fortune tellers? Sure, why not? Next we'll read that a butterfly will be sued for causing a typhoon.

    1. Re:a butterfly will be sued for causing a typhoon by UperPoti · · Score: 1

      How ironic that the company selling "machine learning" hardware is unable to use it themselves to prevent a bubble.

    2. Re:a butterfly will be sued for causing a typhoon by Desler · · Score: 1

      Yes, because machine learning is the same as fortune telling.

    3. Re:a butterfly will be sued for causing a typhoon by Megol · · Score: 1

      Machine learning != oracle.

    4. Re:a butterfly will be sued for causing a typhoon by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      No, they are being sued for BEING fortune tellers. They said that the cryptocurrency implosion wouldn't affect them materially. But it did. You can't do that.

    5. Re:a butterfly will be sued for causing a typhoon by UperPoti · · Score: 1

      They are about as similar as an apple and an orange. One allows creating plans with measurable set goals derived from forecasts based on logical axioms while the other requires everything to be assumed on the word of a prophet.

    6. Re:a butterfly will be sued for causing a typhoon by StormReaver · · Score: 1

      Nvidia is being sued for not being fortune tellers?

      NVidia is being sued for blatantly lying to investors. They knew that their massive revenue increases were due to crypto miners, so it's an absolute no-brainer that the implosion of crypto-mining was going to cause a corresponding drop in revenues. However, NVidia's rosy statements to investors were straight out lies, and the executives making those statements knew they were lying.

    7. Re:a butterfly will be sued for causing a typhoon by UperPoti · · Score: 1

      Oracle would beg to differ.

    8. Re:a butterfly will be sued for causing a typhoon by fbobraga · · Score: 1

      ORACLE bought who now?!?!

    9. Re:a butterfly will be sued for causing a typhoon by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Nvidia is being sued for not being fortune tellers?

      No NVIDIA is being sued for pretending to be fortune tellers. If they had done nothing then there would be no grounds to sue but instead they said: "We can see this coming and we've put mitigation in place, it won't affect us." And then it did affect them.

      That is called making a fraudulent statement to investors.

    10. Re:a butterfly will be sued for causing a typhoon by suutar · · Score: 1

      you can't do that if you know you're wrong. Proving that they knew they were wrong when they said it... that's the challenging bit.

  8. Re: With 'Investors' like this. by Desler · · Score: 1

    And yet there's a Sears only a couple of miles from my house. But according to you it doesn't actually exist?

  9. Investors think profits are guaranteed by electroblood · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I work on Wall Street and all of the investors think they are entitled to profits, and that they are guaranteed growth every quarter. The public companies have played into that doing whatever it takes to get their stock to look attractive, and NVIDIA plays this game as ruthlessly as anyone. This is a situation of their own making. The market as a whole is morally bankrupt and needs to be brought under control.

  10. Oh the memories. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

    Hey, guys, remember back when there were people shouting that 2018 was "SIX DAYS AGO"? ;)

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    1. Re: Oh the memories. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      371 days ago? shore ah remembah.

  11. Wish they'd have lowered prices by Cito · · Score: 1

    Hehe. Overstocked gpus but they sure as hell never lowered price. Prices are still inflated

  12. What if was not deliberate? by mark-t · · Score: 1

    "The Company's public statements were false and materially misleading,"

    Okay, I get that... but doesn't the word "intentionally" need to be in there somewhere?

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  13. Break into an Nvidia warehouse by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    they're stockpiling them to keep the market from collapsing. But it's putting them in a tough spot since they're stuck paying to house graphics cards. It's also risky since on the low to mid range AMD has caught up on everything but power consumption (I've even heard they've fixed their driver stability problems, not sure if it's true though) and they're about to put out 7nm GPUs. So if they don't sell them at the right time they might get stuck fire selling them at a loss.

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  14. I've been trying to score a 1060 6gb by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    but the prices stink. If I do mange to find one for under $150 I get outbid and somehow find the same GPU online 24 hours later. The combination of numbnuts paying $180 for a $200 GPU and shill bidders makes ebay basically worthless.

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  15. Holy Rich Entitled Investors by rashanon · · Score: 1

    This entire line of sueing everytime a financial bubble bursts is such entitlement bullshit. If you jumped onto the Nvidea bandwagon to make a fast buck on the ridiculous increase in the value of bitcoin, well good for you. If you stuck around for the obvious implosion, touch you shit you greedy asshole. Money doesn't appear out of no where. for every transaction some one buys and someone sells, and if you sold wrong or bought wrong too bad.

    If my investment guy would have said I should have put money into bitcoin, or the companies making the parts i would have shot him, and then fired his ass. If you try to take advantage of a bubble, and called it wrong, GO FK YOURSELF YOU RICH ENTITLED PRICK. This whining is all being done by investment funds, run by idiots who didn't actually look at the technology or get any sound advice. Too bad if you lost. That's how the market works.

  16. Re:GPUs can't compete with ASICs at any BTC price by Luckyo · · Score: 1

    Story isn't talking about BTC mining.

  17. Investing is always risky by nehumanuscrede · · Score: 1

    Those who have yet to learn this probably shouldn't be investing in the first place.

    Welcome to reality where you are not guaranteed to earn anything on any investments you may have made.
    Where the slightest bullshit ( oh noez, Apple had a bad quarter ) wipes out Billions of dollars in a single day.

    In my opinion, it's the idiots investing in Nvidia right in the middle of the CryptoCurrency boom not realizing what's driving record sales who are at fault here.

  18. Re:Disagree by mark-t · · Score: 1

    Everybody reading "Xs that are already depreciated" *knows* what was meant

    Really? Was it a typo of deprecate? Or was it a misuse of the participle form of depreciate? If the latter, it should have read "... is already depreciating" for a present partciple, or "... have already depreciated" for a past participle.

    Since, as I said, depreciate and deprecate are not usually interchangeable, the meaning of what was being said varies greatly depending on what word was meant. But contextually, it is conceivable that the writer may have meant to use either term, because both may be applicable, and so it is not clear what the writer was actually saying.

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  19. Re:Disagree by mark-t · · Score: 1

    Wow... saw the mistake literally the *instant* I hit "submit"... and I'm sure the irony isn't lost here, but I meant to say "... are already depreciating", not "... is already depreciating".

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  20. Re: With 'Investors' like this. by crypticedge · · Score: 1

    For now.

    They're about to close for good.

  21. Wait, did I just get this straight? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    Investors now want to get their investment risk reimbursed by court mandate when they found out that they misinterpreted the expectations for Bitcoins?

    Fuck, we're lucky they didn't get that bright idea back when they misjudged what dot.com would be like. If this flies, you can essentially be a complete illiterate idiot and throw your money about as you please, if your investments take off, you get to cash in big ("as a compensation for the big risk you took", yeah, right), and if it turns out that you had no idea what you're doing, the courts will bail you out.

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  22. Re:Oh **** off by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    In this world? No, we're used to getting bailed out when we gambled away our money! Bail us out! Now! We're investors! We're important! Too big to fail!

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  23. Re:"recover your losses." by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    They're already so detached from reality that not getting insane revenue for investment is already a loss. In other words, compensate me for not fulfilling what I expected from you with no reason!

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