SEC Fines Nvidia $5.5M for Hiding Impact of Mining on Revenue

Nvidia charges a fine of 5.5 million dollars

nvidiathe famous American company specializing in graphics hardware developmentwas fined $5.5 million from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the United States.

According to the SEC order, Nvidia violated Sections 17(a)(2) and (3) of the Securities Act of 1933, as well as related provisions of the 1934 Act.

Specifically, in 2018, the Nvidia company declared a significant revenue growth in relation to its activity in the gaming market. However, according to the SEC, it then had information proving that much of this revenue was affected by cryptocurrency mining.

As such, Nvidia should have explicitly stated that this sizeable increase in revenue was partly the result of volatile activitythis so that investors can study the company’s past performance in order to judge future ones.

According Kristina Litmanhead of the SEC’s cryptocurrency unit, manufacturers must be irreproachable in his statementsand this in fact for the sake of transparency towards investors:

“All manufacturers, including those taking advantage of opportunities involving emerging technologies, must ensure that their statements are timely, complete and accurate. »

Nvidia did not deny the facts. and agreed to this $5.5 million deal citing ” Inappropriate disclosures about the impact of cryptocurrencies on the company’s gaming business “.

👉 To understand everything about Proof of Work or Proof of Work (PoS)

Nvidia graphics card shortage

Gaming regulars know that gaming-oriented graphics cards have experienced a very important shortage that lasted for some time. A period in which they were able to reach exorbitant prices, and the noise in the corridors already announced that this was mainly due to mining.

According to a report from thebarron’s financial weeklyNvidia’s financial outperformance in 2020 was due to miners: in the third quarter of that year alone, Nvidia would have been sold for $175 million worth of graphics cards running on the Ampere architecture to cryptocurrency miners.

To address miners’ attraction to their graphics cards, in particular the RTX 3000 series, Nvidia had to release restricted cards for mining, limiting the hashrate of the latter. This new process, called “lite hashrate” (LHR), thus halving this rateincreasing it to 25MH/s.

These changes were implemented in such a way that they did not change anything in terms of performance for players, in order to only affects cryptocurrency miners. Either way, Ethereum’s future move to consensus proof-of-stake (PoS) via its long-awaited (and still recently postponed) upgrade, The Merge, should be a game changer.

👉 To go further: Ethereum (ETH) migration to Proof-Of-Stake postponed to Q3 2022

Sources: US SEC, Barron’s