The rumor is growing al over the share market that Softbank, the 4th largest shareholder of Nvidia is soon going to sell its Nvidia shares. The price of each share of Nvidia fell by more than 48% from October this year. Previously, Nvidia shares experienced a boom due to the rise of the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies at the end of 2017 and Nvidia came into the cryptocurrency market by starting to manufacture cryptocurrency mining chips. As the price of cryptocurrencies started a downfall this year the price of Nvidia shares also started to fall as the demand for crypto mining chips started to fall.
From November, the prices of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have fallen to their yearly lows with bitcoin crashing to $3200 earlier today. As the price fell down enormously, bitcoin miners all around the world are backing out of mining business and moving towards other industries and therefore the demand for mining chips has almost fallen to nil. From October this year, the shares of Nvidia have fallen more than 48% which may be due to the decreasing demand for Nvidia crypto mining chips.
Softbank and Nvidia
Softbank had purchased Nvidia shares in May 2017 and transferred them to its Vision Fund becoming Nvidia’s 4th largest shareholder. Starting from August this year, Nvidia started to focus more on its initial market of gaming graphics chips leaving behind crypto mining chips (GPU) which were already in a decreasing demand. In August Collette Kress, the CFO of Nvidia shared his views saying the company had earlier expected cryptocurrency to be significant for this year but now the company is forecasting no contributions going forward. Although Nvidia still remains the largest gaming graphics card manufacturer, the rumor that Softbank is soon going to sell its Nvidia shares is all over the market and it is being said that Softbank wants to defend itself from further losses.
Bitcoin Price and Nvidia Share Price
Bitcoin is currently trading at $3283, at the time of writing according to CoinGecko. Although it may seem that the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies does not directly relate to the price of Nvidia shares, somehow they seem to be correlated. Due to the decreasing price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the mining business which was at a boom last year has gone down enormously this year with more and more miners backing out of business. It was in the news lately that mining equipment was being sold at Kilo System in China (at the cost of waste material) in China, a country which has the most number of bitcoin mining companies worldwide. As the miners are backing out of the mining business, so is the demand for mining equipment decreasing which include the Nvidia mining chips. Therefore, the decreasing price of bitcoin seems to be the main reason for the decreasing price of Nivida shares.
