Hello, and welcome to the latest edition of Overbit Weekly Round Up. In our first story of the day, we look at how Nvidia, a crypto mining chip maker, saw its sales plummet. Even though the price of digital currency has risen in 2021, Nvidia has not capitalised on the opportunity to provide digital "shovels'' for miners.
Nvidia GPUs, a type of processor, can be used to efficiently mine Ethereum by solving complex arithmetic problems. In March, the company launched CMP versions of its chips aimed solely at Bitcoin professionals.
Nvidia announced on Wednesday that CMP sales fell 60% sequentially in the most recent quarter and that product line sales will be "very negligible" in the fourth quarter. With the addition of $155 million in CMP sales from the May quarter, the chipmaker now claims $526 million in revenue over the product's lifetime — less than 3% of the company's $19.27 billion in revenue during that period.
A drop in cryptocurrency prices harmed Nvidia's stock and revenue in 2018, as used graphics cards flooded the used equipment market, lowering prices, but 2021 is different. Nvidia's current generation GPUs for gamers have been challenging to obtain at retailers this year due to their rapid sales, and the company warned on Wednesday that the holiday quarter saw "overwhelming demand."
When Nvidia released CMP cards in the spring, they were explicitly positioned as a mechanism to keep GPU supply available for games rather than industrial miners. "We hope that the CMPs will satisfy the miners and remain in the professional mines," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in May, adding that the product line "protects" supplies for gamers.
Nvidia also changed the software on its gaming-focused GPUs to make them less suitable for cryptocurrency mining. On Wednesday, the company announced that the Lite Hash Rate software is enabled on nearly all of the GeForce graphics cards it sells for desktops in an "effort to direct GeForce to gamers."
Despite this, the company claims that it cannot be sure that the increase in graphics card sales is unrelated to the cryptocurrency sector. ′′Our GPUs can mine cryptocurrency, but we do not know how much this affects our overall GPU demand," Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said on a conference call with analysts on Wednesday.
Closing out this week's edition of Overbit Weekly Round Up, we look at the most recent market price movement, where Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies fell from near-record highs on Tuesday, with Bitcoin falling to around $60,000 in late morning Singapore trade, according to CoinDesk data.
However, Bitcoin has since recovered some of its losses and is now trading at $61,402. The reason for the price change, however, was unknown. However, some speculate it was because during a news conference on Tuesday, China's official planner, the National Development and Reform Commission, declared that the country will continue to clean up virtual currency mining, a crackdown that has resulted in a mass movement of miners.
As the market continues to evolve due to mining regulations and changes, we thank you for taking the time to read the Overbit Weekly Round Up - have a wonderful weekend!