The police of the American Stock Exchange imposed a fine of 5.5 million dollars on Nvidia. The SEC criticizes the company for not having sufficiently informed its shareholders of the origin of its income in 2018, in the midst of the boom in cryptocurrency mining.
During the first boom in cryptocurrencies and their mining, Nvidia posted record sales of graphics cards due to the misuse of these cards. Nvidia GPUs were indeed very popular with cryptocurrency miners and still are, as evidenced by their low availability since the release of the GeForceRTX 30.
Nvidia, however, did not see fit in 2018 to warn its shareholders that the majority of GPUs sold in 2017 were intended for this use. On the contrary, the company continued to proclaim loud and clear that its GPUs were intended for the PC market, in particular for gaming use. Unfortunately, the cryptocurrency market being particularly volatile, a collapse occurred during the year 2018. Nvidia was forced to revise downwards its optimistic forecast for this year, its shareholders having felt aggrieved.
After almost four years of investigation, the SEC – the policeman of the American stock market – believes that Nvidia should have mentioned that a large part of its GPUs were intended for cryptocurrency mining and not for the much more stable PC gaming market. and predictable. The SEC and Nvidia reached an agreement ending the lawsuits, with a fine of $5.5 million. A trifle for the company run by Jensen Huang, Nvidia having posted a profit of 9.75 billion dollars in its last fiscal year.