Nvidia, producer of graphics cards since prehistoric times, has just been fined $5.5 million by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for failing to divulge to investors how much of its 2017-18 revenue came about from crypto-miners.
This 5.5 million dollars is a settlement made with the SEC regarding “Inadequate Disclosures about Impact of Cryptomining.” This specific case dates back to 2017, a time when the planet-ending antics of crypto-diggers made it so very hard for everyone else to buy a new graphics card, before the exact same people and a global chip shortage made it even worse.
In 2018 filings, Nvidia reported $9.714 billion in revenue, of which half was credited to “Gaming,” but without properly indicating the role crypto played in these figures. Said numbers were dramatically up in fiscal year 2017, by as much as 52% in one quarter.
The SEC’s report states, “during consecutive quarters in Nvidia’s fiscal year 2018, the company failed to disclose that crypto-mining was a significant element of its material revenue growth from the sale of its graphics processing units (GPUs) designed and marketed from gaming.”
Which is to say, when its profits started climbing that year, Nvidia didn’t properly tell its investors why. When Nvidia recognized the huge mining market, it produced its line of “Cryptocurrency Mining Processor” (CMP) GPUs specifically aimed at crypto bros, but according to the SEC, their own workers knew that…
