Nvidia restricts the use of its gaming chips for cryptocurrency mining

The restriction is aimed to prevent the shortage of Nvidia's GPU units for its gamer community.

Nvidia has announced that it is limiting the capabilities of its latest RTX 30 series graphics cards such that they can’t be used for cryptocurrency mining. The move comes amid the shortage of graphic card units for the company’s major consumer base of gamers. The US-based graphics chip maker has announced that its GeForce RTX 3080, RTX 3070, and RTX 3060 Ti graphics cards will have reduced cryptocurrency mining capabilities. Prior to this, Nvidia imposed a similar restriction on its budget offering RTX 3060. Nvidia stated that the move is deliberate and will cut back on the cards’ ability to perform calculations for validating transactions on the Ethereum network. The decision highlights how cryptocurrency miners have turned to gaming chipsets for carrying out mining operations.