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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.
