Cryptocurrencies offer no value to society, said Nvidia’s chief technology officer CTO Michael Kagan in an interview with The Guardian.
Despite Nvidia’s widespread purchases of graphics processing units for mining digital assets, he regards the most promising application for them in artificial intelligence, such as ChatGPT chatbot.
Kagan described the mining restrictions implemented in 2021 on Nvidia’s top-end GPUs as a “justified decision”.
“All this crypto junk required parallel processing, and Nvidia is the best solution. So people programmed it to use it for their own purposes. They bought a lot of stuff, but in the end it all collapsed, because it brought nothing useful to society. This is what AI does,” the executive said.
He compared the crypto industry with high-frequency trading. The Mellanox startup that had served that sector was later acquired by Nvidia. According to him, Wall Street banks actively used technologies, including laying fiber-optic lines across the Hudson to gain a nanosecond edge in connecting to the exchange.
“I never believed that [cryptocurrencies] are something that would do something good for humanity. You see, people do crazy things, but they buy your products, and you sell. But that doesn’t mean the company is oriented toward backing this,” said Kagan.
In August 2022, Nvidia struggled to assess the impact of mining on revenue decline. The company introduced new chips and AI services.