AMD, a company beloved by both gamers and cryptocurrency mining enthusiasts, has put out a statement asserting that it would not suffer immensely if demand from miners for its GPUs fell.
“Yesterday a report was published on AMD which hypothesized very high revenue for Ethereum-related GPU sales. As a reminder, on our Q4’17 earnings conference call we stated that the percentage annual revenue related to blockchain was approximately mid-single digit percentage in 2017,” the company wrote in a blog post.
Even though GPU sales to cryptocurrency miners constitute a small percentage of revenues, it still means that the company would stand to lose sales of millions of potential units.
We must also take into account that miners tend to limit their purchases to high-performance units, seeking the most bang for their buck.
In a 10-K filing submitted at the beginning of the month, AMD admitted as much:
“The cryptocurrency market is unstable and demand could change quickly. For example, China and South Korea have recently instituted restrictions on cryptocurrency trading. If we are unable to manage the risks related to a decrease in the demand for cryptocurrency mining, our GPU business could be materially adversely affected.”
This doesn’t necessarily mean that AMD’s stock will crash, but Susquehanna has already cut its share price target by almost half.
An analyst from the global trading company suggests that both AMD and Nvidia will experience hard times due to the trend of purchasing more efficient ASICs for mining cryptocurrency.
A new brand of ASIC released by Bitmain allegedly capable of mining Ethereum, making the situation more dire as miners may begin to abandon GPUs in favor of these behemoths.
However, neither ASIC nor GPU miners would be happy to hear that the Ethereum network might take the “Proof of Stake” road, which would make it impossible to mine the cryptocurrency.
On the other hand, Monero is still fighting to remain GPU-friendly, combatting the effects of centralization that more expensive ASICs bring with them.
In the end, we could see GPU-based miners move onto cryptocurrencies that are ASIC-resistant, reducing but not entirely eliminating demand for AMD’s chips in this particular market segment.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
