Morning Minute: Crypto Plummets as Jensen Huang Exits Nvidia
Bitcoin fell all the way to $68,000 overnight and hit a new three-month low. But are there reasons for hope?
Two weeks ago, The New York Times reported that Nvidia’s CEO had a close relationship with an executive at a Singapore chip buyer under US export-control investigation. Things escalated quickly from there.
On Sunday, Jensen Huang told employees he had been unfaithful to his wife of 40 years, and Nvidia’s board opened an investigation into whether he had been targeted by a foreign intelligence operation. On Wednesday, The Times reported a second relationship, this one with an executive who reports directly to him. Three Republican committee chairs were preparing a subpoena.
Thursday morning he resigned as president, CEO and board member, effective immediately. The company gave no reason.
CFO Colette Kress takes over as interim CEO while keeping the CFO job. She has been Nvidia’s finance chief since 2013, through the entire AI buildout, and spent 13 years at Microsoft before that. The board also named Harvey Jones, formerly of Synopsys, as its first-ever chair, and started a search that will consider internal and external candidates with no timeline attached.
The stock fell as much as 14% before recovering to close down about 4%. Nvidia has now shed more than a trillion dollars in market value this month.
Bitcoin fell roughly 4% to a twelve-week low near $68,000, down from above $76,000 earlier in the week. ETH lost about 3% and is now below $2,000. Solana, BNB and XRP all fell between 3% and 5%. The broad market index was off about 4% on the day and 7% on the week.
It’s a bleak picture. But there are some local reasons for hope.
Second, Binance reported Thursday afternoon that it has completed coverage of the assets affected by its $6.34 billion hack and published an expanded Proof of Reserves snapshot covering all 44 cryptocurrencies impacted. Many believe that the Binance post-hack aftermath has been weighing on crypto prices, and now perhaps this coverage will help alleviate some pain.
And then Nvidia reports fiscal Q3 results on Tuesday. Any positive news about Jensen succession planning, the Q3 results and/or future growth will likely stop the bleeding on one of the biggest assets across markets (also helping crypto most likely).
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