Michael Kagan, chief technology officer of Nvidia, the chipset manufacturer, Believes Cryptocurrency is “useless” to society.
On March 26, Kagan, whose company has sold billions worth of equipment to cryptocurrency miners where Nvidia graphic cards played a key role, said artificial intelligence (AI) solutions such as ChatGPT were, instead, more useful.
ChatGPT is popular with analysts who say the world is in the early stages of AI disruption. About 10,000 Nvidia chipsets have been trained on the first version of the AI tool.
Meanwhile, Nvidia chipsets have been widely used by PoW miners who rely on the equipment for a chance to mine cryptocurrencies. Before Ethereum switched to the Proof of Stake algorithm, Nvidia graphics cards were widely used. These cards are still used to mine the Ethash-based networks that power Ethereum Classic, for example.
At some point, due to the high demand for chipsets, Nvidia limited the ability of users to fully explore their graphics cards just for cryptocurrency mining. They believed that their graphics cards were also used to support other sectors of the economy, particularly in gaming or design, where advanced graphics cards are needed to deliver and ensure smooth operations.
Kagan acknowledged that limiting usage was necessary because “Nvidia is the best” since all “encrypted stuff needs parallel processing.” Although the miners buy many graphics cards, they eventually collapse because Kagan says, “It doesn’t bring anything useful to society,” but the AI does.
“All this encrypted stuff, it needed parallel processing, and[Nvidia]is the best, so people programmed it to use it for this. They bought a lot of things, and in the end it fell apart because it didn’t bring anything useful to society. Artificial intelligence does.”
Compares cryptocurrency to high-frequency trading. However, he continues to crush cryptocurrencies, adding that although trading has brought business with traders with the aim of saving nanoseconds, crypto will not do anything for humanity.
“I never believed (crypto) was something that would do something good for humanity. People do crazy things, but they buy your stuff, and you sell them stuff. But you don’t reorient the company to support what it is.”
Kagan’s comments come on the heels of a White House report that said cryptocurrencies present challenges to the average American user and have no intrinsic value.