NVIDIA did not disclose to its investors how much money it made from selling graphics cardsto cryptocurrency miners .
NVIDIA paid $5.5 million to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as part of a fine for not disclosing how much it earned from selling its graphics cardsto cryptocurrency miners .
According to the SEC, the company did not disclose that crypto mining played a “significant” role in its growing revenue from GPU sales during fiscal 2018.
NVIDIA, according to the entity, violated both the Securities Law and the Stock Market Law when it did not disclose that its success was linked to a “volatile business”, which could mislead investors who might have thought this was the result. of the usual strategy focused on the company’s traditional businesses.
The SEC also said that NVIDIA misled investors by acknowledging that the demand for cryptocurrencies affected other aspects of its business at the time. That implied that mining was not an important part of the success of the gaming business where it was for other products, according to the regulator.
Money thanks to cryptocurrencies
Graphics cards are an important part of the ecosystem of some cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum (the second largest in the world) . Miners buy dozens of cards to create a confirming network, which processes complicated cryptographic operations to seal blockchain chains, the technology behind virtual currencies . By achieving the answers, they are rewarded with a large amount of dollars in cryptocurrencies.
NVIDIA, seeing all of its gaming graphics cards end up in the hands of miners, began capping the mining capabilities of RTX GPUs in 2021 . The company even released dedicated mining cards that year .