Nvidia hid how many GPUs it was selling to cryptocurrency miners, says SEC:
Nvidia has agreed to pay $5.5 million in fines to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission to settle charges that it failed to disclose how many of its GPUs were being sold for cryptocurrency mining, the agency announced today.
These charges are unrelated to the current (slowly ebbing) crypto-driven GPU shortage. Rather, they deal with a similar but smaller crypto-driven bump in GPU sales back in 2017.
The agency's full order (PDF) goes into more detail. During its 2018 fiscal year, Nvidia reported increases in its GPU sales but did not disclose that those sales were being driven by cryptocurrency miners. The SEC alleges that Nvidia knew these sales were being driven by the relatively volatile cryptocurrency market and that Nvidia didn't disclose that information to investors, misleading them about the company's prospects for future growth.
Nvidia did disclose how cryptocurrency mining was affecting other segments of its business—the company made and sold some GPUs marketed exclusively to cryptocurrency miners. This created an impression that Nvidia was being transparent about the impact of cryptocurrency mining on its overall business, even though those CMP products didn't stop people from buying regular GeForce gaming GPUs to use for cryptocurrency mining.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday May 09 2022, @09:00PM (2 children)
What percentage of NVidia investors are savvy enough to recognize that cryptocurrency represents transient demand built out of a bubble, and are there really that many people trying to make today's stock market resemble sense? And of those how many would think that it was obviously happening just based on pure sales numbers?
Would it hurt whatever accountant's option portfolio that much to release a paragraph buried a third of the way through the quarterly reports acknowledging that? I can't see the motive.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday May 10 2022, @12:37PM
nVidia went on to pay the fine out of petty cash, and thanked the SEC for not applying a penalty of any significance. nVidia stock rose 8% on the news that they'd got away with it.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday May 10 2022, @06:39PM
Because it's the norm not to report authentic sales data if you think they can get away with it.
compiling...
(Score: 0, Troll) by Mojibake Tengu on Monday May 09 2022, @09:21PM (5 children)
GPU is a resource these days. If you have a pile of that unsold, you just start mining. You can't do that with most of other industrial products, except weapons.
Nvidia may have a very good reason not to disclose their own mining initiative and hide itself behind other miners as their business partners.
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 4, Interesting) by stretch611 on Monday May 09 2022, @10:43PM (4 children)
Sadly, we have no "WTF are you talking about" option for moderation...
There is nothing at all in the summary, or the linked article, or the PDF that suggests nVidia is doing any cryptomining at all. What the article is talking about is that nVidia did not say how much of its products were sold to the cryptomining industry.
And what the hell do weapons have in coming with crypto.
Seriously comments like the parent posetr have as much sense as AC spam.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0, Troll) by Mojibake Tengu on Tuesday May 10 2022, @01:19AM (3 children)
I do suggest NVIDIA is doing cryptomining on their own, and that's the hidden reason for their non-disclosure.
It is not normal for a business to pay a fine to regulator for nothing. There must be a reason for that. Provide another reason then we can talk.
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 10 2022, @02:06AM
Alright. All the executive officers are ugly, and their mothers dress them funny.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 10 2022, @02:25AM (1 child)
How about the official reason given by the SEC, that nVidia failed to disclose the risks to their shareholders?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 11 2022, @04:32AM
But why they did it? Are they minning themselves or would be more expensive to try to count how many they sold to cryptominers and then pay larger fine for errors in risk assessment? It's not like anyone asks for what you're buying stuff and then checks where did it go.