The value of cryptocurrencies has skyrocketed recently. Nvidia, which previously got burned for not taking appropriate action when cryptocurrencies surged in 2018, is being forced to do the right thing again this time.

The company just announced last quarter's earnings, which totaled $5 billion. That's a 61% increase from last year's $3.11 billion.

Colette Kress, the company's CFO, revealed during a recent earnings call (via Seeking Alpha) that analysts estimate that between $100 million and $300 million of that revenue came from cryptocurrency mining sales alone. Kress noted that the company is currently unable to "accurately track or quantify" the end use of the cards

because it first sells them to AIB partners before distribution. [Last week we announced a new line of NVIDIA CMP or crypto mining processors, which will begin shipping in March; the CMP has no display output and has other optimizations that improve power efficiency for crypto mining. He continued, "In the first quarter, we expect CMP to contribute approximately 15 million units. These products will be sold to industrial miners. To increase transparency, we plan to quantify the contribution each quarter. [This, along with putting a mining limiter on the RTX 3060, should help get gaming cards into the hands of gamers, as opposed to finding them mining Ethereum in dusty warehouses or Internet cafes in Vietnam.

And it's not just gamers who will benefit, as Nvidia will be able to see exactly how much revenue they are getting from miners, making it easier to monitor (and capitalize on).

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, said, "I think proof-of-work is going to be around for a while. That's exactly why we developed CMP."

In other words, Jensen acknowledges that people will continue to build huge mining rigs whether we like it or not, and that it is better (and more profitable) to separate the miners from the gamers than to leave it unchecked.

The wording used by Kress regarding limiters also suggests further restrictions: "starting with 3060 ......" I am not sure, but this suggests that other cards will also have hash rate limiters.

In other words, this may be the beginning of a trend that will prevent future gaming cards from being used for mining altogether.