I guess it doesn’t even matter because the $5.5 million fine is so laughably small for the rewards they reaped that I’m sure they are still laughing.
Public companies need to be ahead of risks for investors. If they weren't mentioning crypto mining in earnings reports then that doesn't look good at all.
Gamers, and industry insiders, knew this. The general public (i.e. most investors) didn't. Most non-desktop gamers couldn't give two figs about the intricacies of the videocard market, they just invest in growing companies/stocks.
Or, to put it another way, NVidia Stocks go brrr, buy. Nvidia stock no longer go brrr, complain.
Nvidia needs to provide accurate information on revenues no matter if it obvious or not.
AMD doesn't even report sales of semiconductors for gaming consoles under gaming because it's misleading.
I agree that it seems dumb for the average investor not to know this, but this is just how this sort of thing works.
They don't want to make that same mistake.
If it was so obvious, why did Nvidia never say it? This is a quote from a transcript, and seems representative of how they put it:
> ... I would say the large majority of the cryptocurrency demand [is for those] specialized products. There are still small miners that buy GeForces here and there, and that probably also increased the demand of GeForces.
While it may be true that everyone knew they were lying or being misleading, that isn't a very good defense.
you answered this yourself.