no because they can more money annually selling cards than mining, beside investors don't put in money in nvidia because it engages in crypto but because it's a video card company.
Saying they can make more money selling the cards doesn't make sense if the cards are actually profitable to use as mining equipment. Plus, investors don't care if nvidia is a video card company or they sell toilet paper, they care about their performance as an investment. If nvidia could pivot and double your investment, would you really care what they were pivoting to?
Nividia can't just suddenly decide to keep cards for themselves for mining, they have pre arranged agreements to fulfil with their partners.
Pivoting and creating a mining division also doesn't make sense - mining companies take on a lot more risk from volatile market prices and need to have a lot more cash on hand to sustain the long periods of unprofitability.
Sure, I'm not saying nvidia would just decide to stop shipping tomorrow. However, if crypto is really viable and long-term profitable, it wouldn't make a ton of sense for them to give their potential competitors (e.g. anyone else who wants to mine) capital equipment at what would amount to a loss.
They could subcontract the operation of the mining equipment to third parties so they make a profit immediately selling the mining hardware, and skim as much mining profit as possible while their subcontractors assume all the risk.
(Just using nvidia as an example, but this model would work well for anyone making hardware that's capable of mining at scale).
> if crypto [mining] is really viable and long-term profitable
This is still a big if, with the most profitable gpu mining crypto moving to proof of stake in the next few years it's unclear if gpu mining will be as viable.
and yes investor care a lot about how the company makes money, if i'm buying nvidia i've certain risk/profit profile in mind. And if that said company suddenly decides to invest all of its assets on riskier industry than that means i'm in more risk, more risk than what was my investment plan. Depending on my age and total amount of wealth my risk tolerance would be very different.
