Nvidia is trying to let its chips be used for cryptographic mining The battle against high-power silicon between the worlds of video games and cryptocurrencies erupted on Tuesday as chip maker Nvidia intervened to prevent its most popular graphics cards from being used in cryptographic mining. The move was designed to alleviate the severe shortage facing video gamers and highlights the rising demand for cryptocurrency fans as prices rose this year. Nvidia said so deliberately limiting the capabilities of the most popular video game cards to be useful in making calculations needed to validate transactions on the etereum network. Known as mining, it solves a complex problem in exchange for parts of tokens – ether prices (tokens used in the network) are becoming more and more attractive as they rise.