Michael Kagan, CTO at Nvidia, the maker of the chipset, think Cryptocurrencies are “useless” to society.
On March 26, Kagan, whose firm sold billions worth of equipment to cryptocurrency miners where Nvidia graphics cards played a key role, said artificial intelligence (AI) solutions like ChatGPT were instead more tools.
ChatGPT is popular with analysts who say the world is in the early phase of AI disruption. Around 10,000 Nvidia chipsets trained the first version of the AI tool.
Meanwhile, Nvidia chipsets were widely used by proof-of-work miners who rely on the equipment for a chance to mine cryptocurrency. Before Ethereum switched to a proof-of-stake algorithm, Nvidia graphics cards were widely used. These cards are still used to mine Ethash-dependent networks that power Ethereum Classic, for example.
At one point, due to the high demand for chipsets, Nvidia limited the ability of users to fully explore their graphics cards solely for crypto mining. They reasoned that their graphics cards were also used to power other sectors of the economy, especially gaming or design, where advanced graphics cards are needed to render and ensure smooth operations.
Kagan acknowledged that it was necessary to limit usage because “Nvidia is the best” since all “cryptographic stuff needed parallel processing.” Although the miners bought a lot of graphics cards, they eventually collapsed because Kagan says it “doesn’t bring anything useful to society”, but the AI does.
“All these cryptographic things, they needed parallel processing, and [Nvidia] it’s the best, so people just programmed it to use it for this purpose. They bought a lot of things and eventually it collapsed because it did not contribute anything useful to society. The AI does it.”
Compare cryptocurrencies to high frequency trading. Nonetheless, he continues to attack cryptocurrencies, adding that while the trade has generated business with traders looking to save nanoseconds, cryptocurrencies will do nothing for humanity.
“I never believed that [crypto] it is something that will do something good for humanity. People do crazy things, but they buy your stuff and you sell them stuff. But you don’t redirect the company to endorse whatever.”
Kagan’s comments follow a White House report claiming that cryptocurrencies present challenges to the average American user and have no intrinsic value.
