The emergence of Bitcoin and crypto provided an alternative to traditional finance, and many rushed in to utilize the decentralized novelty. But while many enthusiasts see crypto as the future of money, others are yet to recognize its importance. One such person is Nvidia’s Chief Technology Officer Michael Kagan.
The Nvidia CTO sat down for an interview with the Guardian to share his opinion, which was that crypto adds nothing useful to the world. In his view, artificial intelligence (AI) is more beneficial as it makes things easier for humanity. This comes despite Nvidia benefitting from the increase in bitcoin mining in 2017 and the bullish market in 2018 before quitting the sector.
Chatbots Development Is Better Than Mining
The Nvidia chief said he prefers artificial intelligence to mining and he believes people should channel the processing power in crypto mining to developing chatbots that add more value to society. Further, he praised AI for being beneficial as it allows individuals to create customized programs to meet their diverse needs.
Further, Michael Kagan compared crypto and AI. In his words, the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT enables everyone to create and command their machine as necessary. Also, ChatGPT allows its users to choose what they want and what they change. However, he compared crypto to high-frequency trading that will not do anything meaningful for humanity.
Notably, the tech chief acknowledged that his company Mellanox benefited greatly from crypto before Nvidia acquired it. Kagan disclosed that banks and Wall Street traders bought their products to fasten transactions, driving the company’s sales. But even at that, Kagan doesn’t see any long-term benefit from the digital assets when it comes to changing people’s lives as AI is doing.
A Brief On Nvidia Crypto Mining Chips
Michael Kagan’s opinion may be shocking to crypto enthusiasts, given that Nvidia processors were in high demand in the digital asset mining sector. Notably, the tech company stopped engaging in the industry in 2019. The company saw a decline in profits from selling chips to bitcoin miners.
The demand for mining hardware skyrocketed in 2017 as people trooped into the sector. But after the bull run in 2018, the scale of mining activities and equipment sales reversed slowly, causing losses to many mining hardware manufacturers.
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Nvidia was amongst the companies struck by the trend reversal. Reports showed that it manufactured over a million GPUs and couldn’t sell them due to the falling prices and the shutdown of many mining farms. As such, the company’s financial reports for the Q4 of 2018 showed a drop of 21% in revenue.
Featured image from Pixabay and chart from Tradingview.com