Why is the assumption that crypto has held back innovation? If anything normally pumping a ton of money into something causes more innovation to happen.
Innovation on other use cases for GPUs were probably held back by excessive costs.
The dot-com boom bust caused a lot of dark fibre to be built - and i think the internet has been better for it. Without that dark fibre, the expansion of the internet wouldn't have been as easy and mainstream, as fast as it did.
But more importantly, it’s not even clear that buying a miner’s GPU is a good deal because these GPUs tend to be really worn out with short working lives.
Most people will probably be better off simply buying cheaper GPUs new, or buying slightly cheaper used GPUs on eBay that were not popular for mining.
Of course, a 2nd hand GPU might be a bit useless after the abuse of mining for many years (tho i think with proper cooling, and replacement of the fans, those GPUs should've been able to be kept in good working condition for resale).
GPUs were and still are in high demand anyway.
Crypto blocked real innovation for years.
Nvidia was spending money, time and energy to cater to them one way or the other instead of other areas were GPUs are actually good for society.
Your sentence is very generic and not sure why this should be an universal law. Putting money into the right thing might cause innovation not just money
Everyone Noncrypto is a long term customer getting the middle finger from them because they used the opportunity.