Nvidia CTO: Cryptocurrency Adds Nothing Useful to Society

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Chief Technology Officer Michael Kagan says AI is the next big thing, and that it will be useful.

Stock image of a Bitcoin disintegrating
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Having earned a boatload of money selling graphics processors to miners of crypto currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, Nvidia now says that cryptocurrencies are useless for society. Instead of wasting GPU compute power for mining, it can be used to run various artificial intelligence applications like smart chatbots.  

"All this crypto stuff, it needed parallel processing, and [Nvidia] is the best, so people just programmed it to use for this purpose," said Michael Kagan, chief technology officer of Nvidia, in an interview with The Guardian (via VideoCardz). "They bought a lot of stuff, and then eventually it collapsed, because it doesn’t bring anything useful for society. AI does,” Kagan told the Guardian." 

Microsoft's ChatGPT was trained on a supercomputer based on 10,000 Nvidia A100 compute GPUs (although some implementations may use different hardware). The Generative Pre-trained Transformer also uses Nvidia's DGX servers to run. 

But while Microsoft only used 10,000 of compute GPUs to make a product that can be used by almost everyone on the planet, it's likely that hundreds of thousands of GPUs were used to mine Bitcoins and Ethereum currencies that were useful for people courageous enough to earn on them and desperate enough to hedge their money in crypto. 

Analysts from Bitpro Consulting estimated that Ethereum miners purchased $15 billion worth of GPUs over the period between early 2021 and mid-2022. Miners bought some of the best gaming graphics cards around, and demand from these customers increased prices of gaming hardware to levels that were too high for your average buyer. 

Officially, Nvidia only sold its CMP (crypto mining processor) GPUs to professional miners, but in reality, many of the company's gaming graphics cards were sold at retail at prices higher than MSRP to cryptominers, too. In fact, Nvidia even had to pay the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) a fine of $5.5 million for failure to disclose "that cryptomining was a significant factor in year-over-year growth in the company's gaming revenue" during consecutive quarters in its 2018 fiscal year." 

"I never believed that [crypto] is something that will do something good for humanity," said Kagan. "You know, people do crazy things, but they buy your stuff, you sell them stuff. But you don’t redirect the company to support whatever it is."

Anton Shilov
Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

28 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Giroro
    "You know, people do crazy things, but they buy your stuff, you sell them stuff. But you don’t redirect the company to support whatever it is."

    So... is Nvidia's CTO trying to say he's completely unaware of the RTX 4000 series, or is he just trying to gaslight us?
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    Funny that Nvidia's senior execs would dunk on crypto after using it as a convenient excuse to inflate mainstream GPU prices by 30-40%. Though I agree that virtual monopoly money contributes little if anything useful to most of humanity, just a more convoluted pump-and-dump scheme which also provides convenient money laundering for third parties while it lasts.
    Reply
  • Endymio
    InvalidError said:
    Funny that Nvidia's senior execs would dunk on crypto after using it as a convenient excuse to inflate mainstream GPU prices by 30-40%.
    You're off base here. In a free market, no company needs an "excuse" to sell their products for whatever price they wish. Nor do higher prices always yield higher returns. Determining an optimal pricing strategy is a core tenet of business degrees. Walk into any store and examine any product: if the manufacturer has done its job properly, then a lower or higher price for the product would generate less total profits for the firm.

    During the pandemic, NVidia (and many other firms) actually worsened the shortages by refusing to increase their prices and capture the entirety of the additional profits. The prices rose anyway -- but the excess profit went to scalpers instead, rather than manufacturers who could have used it to further production. A classic study in "grey market" economics. Such markets are less efficient, but there's no getting around that law of supply and demand, no matter how hard we whine and stamp our feet.
    Reply
  • atomicWAR
    Two GPUs walk into a bar...
    Oh wait Jensen was being serious?
    Three GPUs walk into a bar. The first GPU says 'we'll take three shots of you top shelf whiskey. I assume you take etherum as payment?'

    To which the bartender says 'no sorry your cyrpto is worthless to me'.

    So the second GPU says 'hey, how about we all play a game of CS:GO for for them?'

    To which the bartender again says 'No sorry SLI threeways aren't worth it because rarely does it perform well, so your offer is basically worthless to me'.

    So the third GPU says in the sexist voice it could render 'Why don't you pour those shots and we can chat about our usefulness to you?'

    The bartender nods, grabs a bottle from the shelf and says... 'I always need someone to chat with. Where have you been my entire life?'
    Jensens comment is like a bad joke you can't get out of your head and where you as a gamer are the punchline. SMH
    Reply
  • kal326
    Endymio said:
    During the pandemic, NVidia (and many other firms) actually worsened the shortages by refusing to increase their prices and capture the entirety of the additional profits.
    The court of public opinion doesn’t give a damn about the law of supply and demand. If the manufacturers increased prices sure they would have earned even higher of record profits, but they would have immediately painted themselves as the bad guy, full stop. The “scalper boogie man” publicly gave them an out even if some vendor partners were selling pallets of cards straight to scalpers. What they gave up in direct profits they certainly regained plenty in goodwill.

    Also the current state of 4070Ti and 4080 cards sitting in inventory shows that those prices were unsustainable for anything outside of halo products like the 4090. Then there is the issue of adjusting back down official MSRP. It’s hard to go back down with a lot of iterative products. Graphics cards, cars, etc. Things consumers expect to be a new, better, and at the same price or slightly higher year over year. There is no good way to back a price back down without making someone unhappy. Investors are probably going to be the most vocal about the change regardless of how happy it makes consumers.
    Reply
  • Giroro
    Endymio said:
    You're off base here. In a free market, no company needs an "excuse" to sell their products for whatever price they wish. Nor do higher prices always yield higher returns. Determining an optimal pricing strategy is a core tenet of business degrees. Walk into any store and examine any product: if the manufacturer has done its job properly, then a lower or higher price for the product would generate less total profits for the firm.

    During the pandemic, NVidia (and many other firms) actually worsened the shortages by refusing to increase their prices and capture the entirety of the additional profits. The prices rose anyway -- but the excess profit went to scalpers instead, rather than manufacturers who could have used it to further production. A classic study in "grey market" economics. Such markets are less efficient, but there's no getting around that law of supply and demand, no matter how hard we whine and stamp our feet.

    Yes, in a free market, companies absolutely need an excuse to raise prices... at least if they want their higher prices to yield higher returns. It doesn't have to be a good, valid, or true excuse - but customers only reject price hikes when they happen "for no reason". This is especially true when the company is selling a product that your target audience in no way needs, like for example luxury-priced consumer-grade GPUs that are being sold as expensive toys to gamers.

    The main exception to this is a when there is when the market is controlled by a tightly colluding oligopoly or a de facto monopoly. Which by definition is not a free market as no competition is allowed to exist.

    Also, Nvidia absolutely raised their prices before the pandemic, during the pandemic, and again when the crypto fad took off.
    Reply
  • randyh121
    Crypto has changed the WORLD for the better. Much like the motor vehicle when it was adopted over 100 years ago, there was initial skepticism. But that doubt is forgotten as years pass. This last cry by NVIDIA is just a final whimper from the big BANKS , as crypto goes to the moon to take over modern payment system (as it already is now!)
    Kind of sad to see really these rich monopolies cry that they are no longer in control as we cryptoers take over the worlds new trade system.
    Reply
  • DSzymborski
    randyh121 said:
    Crypto has changed the WORLD for the better. Much like the motor vehicle when it was adopted over 100 years ago, there was initial skepticism. But that doubt is forgotten as years pass. This last cry by NVIDIA is just a final whimper from the big BANKS , as crypto goes to the moon to take over modern payment system (as it already is now!)
    Kind of sad to see really these rich monopolies cry that they are no longer in control as we cryptoers take over the worlds new trade system.

    Where exactly has crypto "taken over" the modern payment system? This seems as imaginary as your definition of plagiarism or that business you own.
    Reply
  • BX4096
    randyh121 said:
    Crypto has changed the WORLD for the better.
    Trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity wasted, money laundering, and easier access to child porn and illegal materials notwithstanding, I'd like you to name one way in which it quantifiably and objectively "changed the world for the better."
    Reply
  • Endymio
    kal326 said:
    What gave up in direct profits they certainly regained plenty in goodwill.
    Of course; that's why they did it. However in this case your "court of public opinion" not only reached the wrong verdict, but one that hurt themselves directly. Due to deadweight loss and other factors, manufacturers could have raised prices by less than what scalpers did, and still reached equilibrium pricing. The result would have been no shortages AND a lower average price paid by consumers during this period. Mob mentalities are commonplace, unfortunately, but they're never productive.

    Giroro said:
    In a free market, companies absolutely need an excuse to raise prices... customers only reject price hikes when they happen "for no reason".
    Eh? I'm sorry, but purchasing decisions don't work like this. A rational consumer makes a purchase when the relative utility (value) of the item purchased is higher than that the of the money you surrender for it. Period This is true even for items "purchased" not with money, but via barter, or even a simple expenditure of time, as in the classic "boy picking berries" example of diminishing marginal utility.

    Millions of you gamers made this crystal-clear during the pandemic, as some of you set the value of increasing your frame rates in the range of $2,000 or even more, while other set it much lower, and decided to wait until prices dropped.
    Reply