Billion-dollar crypto lawsuit against Nvidia dismissed over lack of evidence

midian182

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Recap: Remember the cryptocurrency lawsuit launched against Nvidia? The company was accused of reporting $1 billion in crypto revenue as gaming revenue, an alleged act of "misleading" financial reporting designed to fool investors. Earlier this month, team green won the case.

The suit dates back to 2017, though the amended complaint was filed in 2020. It essentially claimed that throughout 2017 and 2018, 60 to 70 percent of Nvidia's sales in China were reported as gaming revenue when it really came from miners. It's claimed that the company under-reported these cryptocurrency-mining revenues by around $1.13 billion.

Crypto saw its first surge in 2017, with Bitcoin reaching a then-record $20,000 in December. Demand from miners led to a graphics card shortage and hugely inflated prices, something we're currently familiar with.

"In early 2017, Nvidia faced an unusual problem: its flagship product was flying off the shelves. Under normal circumstances, such a trend would be cheered," the suit read.

"But the enormous sales growth owed not to an increase in demand from gamers (Nvidia's traditional consumer), but rather to bands of online prospectors who were buying up the processors by the thousands and deploying them in massive datacenters to solve complex mathematical problems in pursuit of digital tokens."

The suit claimed Nvidia knew the bubble was about to burst on that crypto craze, so it decided to conceal much of the cryptomining sales. It's alleged that the company insisted its dedicated mining cards were being sold to miners, and the booming gaming graphics card sales were coming from gamers. In reality, both miners and some gaming fans were buying up gaming GPUs.

Investors claim that by reporting mining revenue as gaming sales, it appeared that Nvidia's GeForce products were doing well and wouldn't be affected by a crypto crash.

As reported by PC Gamer, the case ended earlier this month when U.S. District Court Judge Haywood Gilliam of the Northern District of California dismissed it, as per Nvidia's request, due to lack of evidence. The company didn't warn investors of an expected decline in sales when Bitcoin crashed until the first quarter of 2018, though it seems they were the only ones who never saw this coming; an 8% fall in Nvidia's share price in August 2017, more than a year before the crypto crash, was blamed on fears of the bubble bursting.

When crypto prices did fall off a cliff, Nvidia's shares fell 19 percent in November 2018, losing almost half their value a month later.

As most people know, Nvidia's RTX 3060 has an Ethereum mining limiter, and it's believed that future cards such as the RTX 3080 Ti will also come with this feature. It's the company's attempt to get more cards into gamers' hands, though the chip shortages and scalpers are causing just as many problems.

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Excellent work Nvidia.

Keep doing what you do best and making us shareholders and gamers happy.

We stand by you over this crypto-nonsense.
 
F*#$%! all the Bitcoin Miners, you are all the reasons why other people can't get any gpu. and why scalpers taking advantage over this situation.. Greedy Miners
 
When common sense and moral values become a thing of fairy tales, insanity will be the new sanity, and thus the majority of people will be like that too.
 
In better news. The limiter has been cracked on the 3060. Keep doing what you are doing! It's not working lol. Whoever thinks cypto is going to die is going to be in for a shock.

No it hasn't.

In related news, who else read the word 'feature' in the article and chuckled a little.
 
No it hasn't.

In related news, who else read the word 'feature' in the article and chuckled a little.
It hasn't been cracked... Nvidia removed the limit themselves on the latest beta driver....

Smart. Good Job. You just justified every back alley drug dealer.
Society, alas, and the stubborn governments, have done that.

You can't successfully legislate against human nature. You can forbid everything you want... but if people want it, someone will be out there selling it... hello prostitution, gambling, alcohol, tobacco and drugs...
 
Society, alas, and the stubborn governments, have done that.

You can't successfully legislate against human nature. You can forbid everything you want... but if people want it, someone will be out there selling it... hello prostitution, gambling, alcohol, tobacco and drugs...
Very true. Just explaining some things away so easily as "taking advantage of the market and profit" can lead to bigger problems and even more simplistic "reasons". Almost everyone that gets to skate on the little stuff is always willing to escalate.
 
How so exactly? The RTX 3000 series is phenomenal, but there's a world wide chip shortage driving up the prices, the miners are a much smaller variable than the chip shortage.
I'm not talking about the chip shortage. Nvidia released the CMP "Crypto" Cards. GPU's that could have been GeForce cards. GPU's that don't have any re-sale value, GPU's that are useless to gamers.

I'll just leave this here as he makes some very good points:
 
Very true. Just explaining some things away so easily as "taking advantage of the market and profit" can lead to bigger problems and even more simplistic "reasons". Almost everyone that gets to skate on the little stuff is always willing to escalate.
It seems someone should explain irony and cynicism for you. ;)
 
You keep missing my point, so it's pointless.
PS. On top of that, you keep thinking companies should work for you, and care about you. They never did, and never will.
 
You keep missing my point, so it's pointless.
PS. On top of that, you keep thinking companies should work for you, and care about you. They never did, and never will.
The bad ones get all the press. I'm an Architect with 27+3 staff in 2 cities and we have always taken the customer as a top priority. If you and I were having a beer I could name 10 big companies just off the top of my head that is very customer-centric. I have come to know Dan Bane, CEO of Trader Joes while doing a project in Pasadena and they are 100% focused on their customers. Claiming no company cares about their customers is just lazy, to be honest.
 
It's true. You are not architect to make people happy, you are what you are to make money. You employed more people to make more money. Hypocrite.

PS. I am not going to drag this. Good luck to you, sincerely, you are probably good at what you do, but get real.
 
It's true. You are not architect to make people happy, you are what you are to make money. You employed more people to make more money. Hypocrite.

PS. I am not going to drag this. Good luck to you, sincerely, you are probably good at what you do, but get real.
Take care brother. Believe what you see not always what you hear.
 
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