The Cryptocurrency Bubble Is Over for NVIDIA — The Motley Fool

Graphics-chip maker NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) recently posted second-quarter results that handily topped analyst expectations. Revenue and earnings per share increased 40% and 91%, respectively, from a year ago. Perhaps most impressive about those numbers, though, is that NVIDIA pulled them off with little help from the developing cryptocurrency industry.

What goes up must come down

Cryptocurrencies had an epic year in 2017, with many digital currencies gaining value by several thousand percent. The boom in price sent many techies scurrying to set up their own cryptocurrency mining operations — the transaction validation process in a cryptocurrency network. For many crypto assets, graphics processing units (GPUs) like those manufactured by NVIDIA are key to the mining process.

The mad dash to “mine” digital money was a boon for NVIDIA and other…