Crypto chip sales plummet

[jaysabi]

Nvidia released absolutely dismal sales related to crypto chip sales today after market close. This is another sign to me that the bear market is not reversing any time soon. Bitcoin is in a sustained decline, and I view the culprit as the stupidity and hype that sent it to $19,000 in the first place. It was unsustainable and it has now very much poisoned mentality as crypto continues to fail to prove a suitable replacement to digital fiat and traditional centralized payment processors.

Specifics on Nvidia's release:

Last quarter, they posted $289m in crypto-related chip sales, which is really a small percentage of their overall revenue. Despite that, they projected sales of only $100m this quarter, which at the time they made the prediction sent their shares down (despite it representing such a small portion of revenue). Today, they reported only $18m in crypto-related chip sales. Shares are now getting whacked in after-hours trading, which frankly makes no sense because they beat expectations on over all revenue and profit. Just shows that the idiotic crypto mentality has creeped into traditional investing.

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[Hydrogen]

I remember reading a news story claiming bitcoin's 12 month hash rate was up by "155%" last month:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4670899

Is it possible bitmain or another ASIC manufacturer is ramping up production and flooding markets, leading to nvidia experiencing a significant decline?

Shares are now getting whacked in after-hours trading, which frankly messes no sense because they beat expectations on over all revenue and profit. Just shows that the idiotic crypto mentality has creeped into traditional investing.

So much happening in a short span of time these days. Would I be accurate if my guesses were #1 fears over turkey toxic asset contamination #2 looming fears over the US / china trade war, or #3 american lawmakers may have severely weakened Trump's plans for economic sanctions against china. Which could mean the US economy might weaken, rather than china's economy weakening.

[eternalgloom]

I don't really see how you can make price predictions with that sort of info...
We're talking about one specific company here, while there are tons of other players on the market.

Is it possible bitmain or another ASIC manufacturer is ramping up production and flooding markets, leading to nvidia experiencing a significant decline?

This would be my first thought as well and if you look at Bitmain's profits from 2017, it seems pretty clear that they're dominating the market

http://fortune.com/2018/02/24/bitcoin-mining-bitmain-profits/

Besides, I think OP is kinda coming to the wrong conclusions here. Sales would go up after the price of Bitcoin rises, Bitcoin's value doesn't go up because of increased miner sales.

[stompix]

Nvidia is not selling chips for mining bitcoin.
Those are all used for GPU mining, and GPU mining profits are crashing down.

The demand is gone, on a site listing similar to eBay but just for our country, I've counted last week more than 100 ads selling between 6 and 100 GPU rigs with all that you need to start mining.
With a 1080TI making ROI in 25 months, I doubt anyone is still interested in them.

Back in December, you couldn't buy a damn video card, everything decent was only available for pre-order, now every model is in stock on all websites.

[audaciousbeing]

Any other happening other than this would be suspicious to say the least as this negative effect is expected to rub off on any business that have some stake in the crypto currency market. Any business that post any outrageous returns needs to be further investigated. Generally that is the feel. The market is down and investment in crypto related activities is expected to drop because ROI within a short period is no longer guaranteed.

I view the culprit as the stupidity and hype that sent it to $19,000 in the first place. It was unsustainable and it has now very much poisoned mentality as crypto continues to fail to prove a suitable replacement to digital fiat and traditional centralized payment processors.

Its not enough to put the entire blame on this. What really happen was the factors that aid such hype was no longer present but people still kept their expectation that high. There was no significant inflow of fresh funds into the market, fork coins alternatives have been turned to joke, KYCs was pursued aggressively, advertisement platforms to get the words out became unapproachable etc.

[HSRP]

This is their big ambition. They launch products too expensive to market and demand fast sales. That's very hard for them, since most investors or users. Want cheap and modern even where they want to be donated. That is not wrong, they should review to stabilize the market again.

[chaoscoinz]

Nvidia abnoicned absolutely dismal sales related to crypto chip sales today after market close. This is another sign to me that the bear market is not reversing any time soon. Bitcoin is in a sustained decline, and I view the culprit as the stupidity and hype that sent it to $19,000 in the first place. It was unsustainable and it has now very much poisoned mentality as crypto continues to fail to prove a suitable replacement to digital fiat and traditional centralized payment processors.

Specifics on Nvidia's release:

Last quarter, they posted $289m in crypto-related alchip sales, which is really a small percentage of their overall revenue. Despite that, they projected sales of only $100m this quarter, which at the time they made the prediction sent their shares down (despite it representing such a small portion of revenue). Today, they reported only $18m in crypto-related chip sales. Shares are now getting whacked in after-hours trading, which frankly messes no sense because they beat expectations on over all revenue and profit. Just shows that the idiotic crypto mentality has creeped into traditional investing.

 I think you nailed it! This period feels like one of self correction. I personally think that the $19,000 mark was highly inflated. This was before the worlds governments started issuing heavy regulatory policies regarding crypto. The SEC had put their engine into high gear this year also.
  The more the regulators issue their statements, the more I think the price will self correct, especially with the potential of an ETF approval before the end of the year.

[hugeblack]

Bitcoin cannot be mined using Nvidia GPU, so bitcoin has no connection to this.
I think it is because of Ether where it will turn into POS coin + many of the coins and tokens have become less value, hence not useful from mining "Compared to last year's profit."

The decline in cryptocurrencies is due to dumping in altcoins as there are more than 1800 shitcoins and most of it in vain, therefore there must be a difference in value "correction." check BTC Dominance
I do not think recent political events have a little effect.

[goshay97]

I have been looking at mining rigs recently.  Itching to get in but I continue to wait it out.  Hoping for some really cheap prices so I can hopefully recoup my investment as soon as possible as mining for profit is very sketchy. 

[btc_angela]

Obviously, the interested has started to go down that's why the price of Nvidia crypto chip is down as well. Remember last year it was reported that they are running out of stocks and they can't cope up with the demand. And even gamers who uses Nvidia is blaming crypto's especially altcoin miners. But now the coins has flipped, perhaps there are more supplies as anticipated by Nvidia unfortunately no one is buying resulting to the price going down.

[trecore4]

I dont see any significance of these manufacturer on deciding the price movement of the crypto in the future to come. I mean we can talk about the increased or decreased network difficulty due to reduced production capacity of the nvidia plus there could be shortage of the GPU's and stuff like that. It doesnt matter how much revenue these people generate because it has got to do nothing with the current market situation.

Plus it would be wrong to compare the NVIDIA producer with ASIC one because they both are different categories of machineless one mines the bitcoin and the other altcoins!

Help me correct if im lost!

[pumbum]

I noticed that many miners sell their equipment, for sure it is not suitable for them, since they decided to sell this equipment

[jaysabi]

I don't really see how you can make price predictions with that sort of info...
We're talking about one specific company here, while there are tons of other players on the market.

Is it possible bitmain or another ASIC manufacturer is ramping up production and flooding markets, leading to nvidia experiencing a significant decline?

This would be my first thought as well and if you look at Bitmain's profits from 2017, it seems pretty clear that they're dominating the market

http://fortune.com/2018/02/24/bitcoin-mining-bitmain-profits/

Besides, I think OP is kinda coming to the wrong conclusions here. Sales would go up after the price of Bitcoin rises, Bitcoin's value doesn't go up because of increased miner sales.

To reply to both of you, chip sales are a leading indicator of sentiment. So follow my logic here: if chip sales are weak, it's because miners aren't investing in new equipment, which is likely because they don't think it will pay for itself. This means they don't see the price increasing. Miners, more than anyone else, are likely to have a better feel for the future price because their viability is at stake. When miners expect the price to continue rising, they can run losses in the near term to buy more equipment because they expect the higher price to eventually make up for it. So the inverse is the conclusion here. The fact that nvidia, which is a public company well-versed in issuing public guidance under SEC rules, was so blindsided by the weakness for crypto chips in the latest quarter is an indication of how fast the market is slowing down, which indicates how bleak miners view future price prospects to be.

The difference between nvidia and other crypto chipmakers is nvidia is a public company. They issue forward looking guidance and it was to meet certain requirements. Rose private chipmakers have no such obligation and are reporting numbers lookin backwards, so Bitmain's profits in 2017 are a lower quality data point compared to nvidia and also wildly outdated at this point.

That's why I think nvidia's guidance portends to poor sentiment by miners, which in turn portends to a poor price outlook going forward.

[jaysabi]

Nvidia is not selling chips for mining bitcoin.
Those are all used for GPU mining, and GPU mining profits are crashing down.

The demand is gone, on a site listing similar to eBay but just for our country, I've counted last week more than 100 ads selling between 6 and 100 GPU rigs with all that you need to start mining.
With a 1080TI making ROI in 25 months, I doubt anyone is still interested in them.

Back in December, you couldn't buy a damn video card, everything decent was only available for pre-order, now every model is in stock on all websites.

Good point on the GPU mining, but I would counter that Bitcoin is a proxy for the entire crypto market. Alts are not going to thrive while BTC languishes, as alts often trade in the same direction because of their pairing with BTC. So weak alt interest can be highly correlated with weak BTC interest. While the weak guidance by nvidia doesn't DIRECTLY indicate poor Bitcoin interest, it seems highly likely that alt interest is down because BTC interest is down.

[jeronimosuykens]

This may be because of the low cost of maintaining it. It leads to inadequate operating funds. So this product will be slow and limited. And I think of finding another source of energy to use for this mining tool. It may be based on wind or water currents, etc. It is also considered a cost-effective solution.

[Hydrogen]

To reply to both of you, chip sales are a leading indicator of sentiment. So follow my logic here: if chip sales are weak, it's because miners aren't investing in new equipment, which is likely because they don't think it will pay for itself. This means they don't see the price increasing. Miners, more than anyone else, are likely to have a better feel for the future price because their viability is at stake. When miners expect the price to continue rising, they can run losses in the near term to buy more equipment because they expect the higher price to eventually make up for it. So the inverse is the conclusion here. The fact that nvidia, which is a public company well-versed in issuing public guidance under SEC rules, was so blindsided by the weakness for crypto chips in the latest quarter is an indication of how fast the market is slowing down, which indicates how bleak miners view future price prospects to be.

The difference between nvidia and other crypto chipmakers is nvidia is a public company. They issue forward looking guidance and it was to meet certain requirements. Rose private chipmakers have no such obligation and are reporting numbers lookin backwards, so Bitmain's profits in 2017 are a lower quality data point compared to nvidia and also wildly outdated at this point.

That's why I think nvidia's guidance portends to poor sentiment by miners, which in turn portends to a poor price outlook going forward.

Bolded:

There's a statistic posted here which claims bitcoin's total hash rate increased by "155%" from january 2018 to the present.

Despite Bitcoin’s 2018 price slump, the dominant cryptocurrency’s hash rate continues to surge at an astonishing pace. Although the value of Bitcoin has decreased by 53% since January 1st, 2018, the hash rate has increased 155% in the same time period.

The continued growth in hash power demonstrates a strong, continued belief in Bitcoin by miners worldwide and may foreshadow a hidden bullish trend.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4670899

That could indicate that miners are buying additional mining hardware in anticipation of bitcoin's price rising.

There could be one main issue present in the GPU versus ASIC paradigm that explains nvidia's declining demand report. "Nanometer scale in semiconductor manufacturing process." For a time, GPUs manufactured by companies like nvidia had an advantage over ASICS in that they were manufactured on a smaller nanometer scale. Smaller nm silicon process generally indicates lower power consumption and a greater number of transistors per area, which can translate to greater overall functionality. GPUs having this advantage translated to them being competitive against ASIC designs which were more optimized towards cryptographic functions.

I think over time, ASICS have evolved and improved enough in terms of nm process to where GPUs are no longer as competititve. And so we see nvidia's GPU demand for mining purposes declining significantly. While the overall hash power of bitcoin's miners increased by 155%.

That's the closest I can come to explaining it.

If you want numbers, nvidia's current GPU's are fabricated @ 12 nanometers.

While bitmain's ASICS are fabricated @ 16 nm.

I think the gap between GPUs and ASICs used to be much larger, which gave GPUs a better competitive edge.

[rickadone]

I agree with the gent that said nvidia is not the only source of gpu mining and this doesn't really change all that much on gpu mining space for the long run but to be honest I think it just shows how deep we are in this prices, even miners who generally mine for future profits (because the prices are usually low when they mine and they wait a bit before they sell) and just cash out their costs and keep the rest to sell at a later date when bitcoin goes up, they obviously are not seeing a bigger future for the short term hence the drop at the sales.

Hence, I think the easiest assumption we can do is at least at the short term we may not see a great spike at the price of the altcoins we all know, not at least trhu miner pushing.

[BitHodler]

Hence, I think the easiest assumption we can do is at least at the short term we may not see a great spike at the price of the altcoins we all know, not at least trhu miner pushing.

That's a pretty safe assumption. If Bitcoin isn't in the mood to pump, which it may not be for a very long period of time if the 2014/2015 bear market is our main indicator, then altcoins will continue to bleed hard.

People praise altcoins for how fast they can increase, but they discard the fact that they also tank just as quickly. Bitcoin down 10% mostly translates into a +20% altcoin decline, which is killing it for miners needing every penny.

I have seen several people state that it might be a good time to start shorting these companies, and it actually is a good point with how Nvidia and AMD stocks started rallying when crypto mining started to take off.

[stompix]

That could indicate that miners are buying additional mining hardware in anticipation of bitcoin's price rising.

I think over time, ASICS have evolved and improved enough in terms of nm process to where GPUs are no longer as competititve. And so we see nvidia's GPU demand for mining purposes declining significantly. While the overall hash power of bitcoin's miners increased by 155%.

That's the closest I can come to explaining it.

If you want numbers, nvidia's current GPU's are fabricated @ 12 nanometers.

While bitmain's ASICS are fabricated @ 16 nm.

I think the gap between GPUs and ASICs used to be much larger, which gave GPUs a better competitive edge.

It has nothing to do with the nm in the chips, it's all about reward and availability

It's simply because back in the winter/spring you couldn't just pick up an ASIC from Walmart, plug it in and start mining. You had to wait for the order...and there was a looooooong wait....

Bitcoin difficulty doesn't always reflect the price because there wasn't simply enough ASICs to cover the spike in mining profitability. The same was experienced by the GPUs when you simply could't buy a single damn videocard.

But at this point, things start to have a few slight differences.

If you're lucky with cheap energy, you might still get an ROI on an S9J in 6 months, as it brings me about 1.86$ a day at a price of 500$, with a 1080ti which I can buy for 800$ right now I get 72 cents....

If I own a powerful GPU I can still let mine during the night, when I'm away, as long as it's profitable I don't give a damn as I would have anyhow bought it either way, mining or no mining. When it comes to ASICs you simply dont't have this kind of freelancer miners dragging up the difficulty and not caring about ROI.

And the third...
No ASIC manufacturer can't compete with Nvidia or AMD in capacity...nor it is sure it can sell those products
Nvidia can easily produce 1 million cards even if ETH goes down as it could simply sell them to gamers and delay the next series to get rid of them, if bitcoin drops to 1000 bitmain has nobody to sell 1 million miners so they simply can't mass produce them and keep them on stock.

This would become clear if both coins would go in a week to x5 in value.
The eth network will jump in value far faster than the bitcoin chain, and it will take months for the BTC hashrate to become x5 to reflect the price.

Hence, I think the easiest assumption we can do is at least at the short term we may not see a great spike at the price of the altcoins we all know, not at least trhu miner pushing.

That's a pretty safe assumption. If Bitcoin isn't in the mood to pump, which it may not be for a very long period of time if the 2014/2015 bear market is our main indicator, then altcoins will continue to bleed hard.

People praise altcoins for how fast they can increase, but they discard the fact that they also tank just as quickly. Bitcoin down 10% mostly translates into a +20% altcoin decline, which is killing it for miners needing every penny.

The situation is indeed a bit bad for altcoins. I'm amazed that they are not following BTC during this little rally, and really interesting it that some are actually going down.
If the trend follows we're going to see a lot of chains struggling against a 51% attack

[pobeditelvezde]

Unfortunately I understood a month ago that crypto market would likely continue falling in the future. Actually Nvidia confirms my supposition. It need not to be a genius person to understand that crypto market is in the strong downtrend. I would say that charts cry us about that. Nobody discourage investors to sell their altcoins and to wait the better time for new investments. I also have noticed that lots investors who have disappointed in crypto assets are seeking a refuge for their capital and it means that they also will make a withdrawal and go out from market. So, I do not wait anything positive on crypto market in the near future.