Nvidia CEO: Cryptocurrency is "here to stay"
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are helping to drive revenue growth for GPU makers like Nvidia, and despite market volatility, it's a revenue stream that isn't going anywhere, Nvidia's CEO said Thursday.
"Cryptocurrency and blockchain are here to stay," Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said on a conference call after the company published its second quarter financial results. "The market need for it is going to grow, and over time it'll grow quite large."
The company posted strong Q2 results that beat market expectations, with revenues growing 56 percent year-over-year. Nvidia's PC OEM revenue -- which includes GPUs designed for mainstream desktops, notebooks, and cryptocurrency mining -- brought in $251 million in revenue, up 54 percent year-over-year and 61 percent sequentially. CFO Colette Kress noted in her quarterly commentary that the recent rise in crypto coin prices helped boost demand in OEM GPU sales.
The digital currency market has gone through some major ups and downs this year, prompting many to conclude the emergent market is in a bubble. Nevertheless, Huang said Thursday, "This is a market that is not likely to go away any time soon."
Furthermore, he added, "The GPU is really quite ideal for it." Nvidia's strategy, he continued, is to offer crypto currency miners "a coin-mining SKU, optimized for mining."
The company is tracking the market closely, Huang said. "We know its every single move, we know its dynamics."
And while there's likely to be more bumps along the way, "The larger of a GPU company you are, the greater ability to absorb the volatility," he said. "Because we have such large volumes, we have the ability to rock and roll with this market as it goes."