No one mines BTC on GPU, and Etherum is up 100% from two weeks ago.

Ok, I understand that NVidia does not want to mine themselves, but why on Earth won't they just raise the prices to the level miners are willing to pay?

"We want to sell to gamers, not miners" is the stupidest excuse ever. Isn't capitalism all about selling to the highest bidder? Why do they even care about who buys their product?

EDIT: Also, think about this: gamers that are considering upgrading their hardware get additional incentive - Etherum mining makes buying this new, shiny GPU basically free. Typically, after 9-12 months the initial investment is paid off. Without the possibility of mining many gamers will delay the decision about buying a new GPU, hurting NVidia sales further.

Gamers are the reason why Nvidia exists, it's a hard thing to let go of.

It would be like FB shutting down the blue app and pivoting to Tinder.

Hah, this comparison very much feels right.

They do, the mining specific cards are more expensive / hash rate. It's just market segmentation.

>Isn't capitalism all about selling to the highest bidder?

Capitalism can be about that, but there's a lot more to it than simply charging the highest price possible on every transaction. For example, loss leader products and free trials are common across industries. I don't have any insight into Nvidia's thinking specifically, but they might believe that cultivating the gaming market by not pricing gamers out of their product in the short term has much more longterm value than going all in on of the most volatile industires in the world.