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- ⚖️ Nvidia’s crypto past is catching up, and it’s becoming a $1B headache
⚖️ Nvidia’s crypto past is catching up, and it’s becoming a $1B headache
PLUS: 30% of SpaceX's IPO will go to retail investors
Cryptopolitan News
March 27, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes
⚖️ Nvidia’s crypto past is catching up, and it’s becoming a $1B headache
And sitting at the center of today’s A.I. boom is Nvidia. But this week, the talk turned back to crypto.
A U.S. federal judge has just paved the way for a $1 billion class-action lawsuit against Nvidia and CEO Jensen Huang bloody to how the company reported revenue during the 2017–2018 crypto mining boom.
It’s a reminder of something the market, at least bull cycles, likes to forget: today’s victors often grapple with yesterday’s baggage.
What the case is really about
The allegation is straightforward, but grave. Investors say Nvidia understated how much demand for its GPU came from crypto miners, portraying the same as sustained robust demand from gamers. It didn’t matter as much then.
Until it didn’t.
In 2018, when crypto markets cooled, demand plummeted, as did Nvidia’s stock.
Yeah, So Shares were down 4.9% following an August earnings revision, then plummeted another 28.5% over two days in November. At issue in the lawsuit is whether those earlier disclosures were misleading to investors and propped up the stock price artificially.
Even an email, reviewed by the court, from inside Nvidia suggests that its own executives believed the stock did just fine because of those earlier arguments.
This wasn’t a bolt from the blue Regulators had previously investigated this once.
In 2022, the SEC imposed a $5.5 million fine on Nvidia for its failure to properly disclose how much crypto mining mattered to its business. The company reached a settlement, but the larger legal question never disappeared.
Now, it has made progress in court. And though the judge emphasized that this ruling does not determine guilt, it does mean investors can seek to prosecute the case at scale.
The stakes are even higher today, though.
Then, it was all about gaming GPUs and crypto cycles. Nvidia is at the heart of AI infrastructure around the world today. Which makes the timing important.
Because this is not only a past disclosures problem: it’s a trust, transparency and market pricing at massive scale problem. And the pressure isn’t solely legal
At the same time, the U.S. is strengthening its grip on Nvidia’s most prized possession: its chips.
Just this week, three people were charged with trying to smuggle Nvidia AI chips subject to export controls into China, underscoring how key these components have become in the global tech race.
The message is clear:
Nvidia is no longer merely a company. It’s strategic infrastructure.
This story lives at the convergence of two cycles:
Crypto, where Nvidia first experienced explosive demand and AI, where it now dominates
Both have the same underlying question: How much of that growth can be sustained … and how much is cyclical?
What to watch
April 21 court conference, the next steps in the lawsuit
More monitoring on Nvidia’s disclosures
Continuing export limits on AI chips
Because with Nvidia at the forefront of the next tech cycle…
The last one isn’t entirely behind it yet.
Most people won’t fill this.
The ones who do? They end up shaping what everyone else reads.
👉 Have your say (2 mins): https://www.cryptopolitan.com/newsletter-survey/
📊 Market Watch
1️⃣ Polygon attempts to repair what’s broken
Polygon is overhauling its fee model after POL fell 60% in the last year while losing market share to Base and Arbitrum.
The new proposal (PIP-85) would redirect 50% of priority fees to stakers, resolving an issue where delegators hadn’t been earning enough given the increase in activity.
Context matters:
Base leads L2s with $4.08B TVL
Arbitrum: $1.97B
Polygon: $1.26B
Polygon continues to offer new upgrades (targeting 5,000 TPS, enterprise deals with the likes of Mastercard/Revolut), this is simply a tokenomics reset to ensure standings.
2️⃣ U.S. court just slapped down the Pentagon on AI
A federal judge barred the U.S. government from designating Anthropic a “supply chain threat,” slapping it down as illegal retaliation because of the company’s refusal of certain defense use cases.
Big deal for AI:
The ban would’ve prevented Anthropic’s Claude from being used across agencies. Judge found that the government had acted beyond free speech law
In the meantime Anthropic continues to forge ahead with an IPO:
Target raise: $60B+
Current valuation: ~$380B
Supported by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia
AI is no longer just a race in technology, it’s turning into a battleground in policy.
3️⃣ MARA sells $1.1B of Bitcoin, is not buying it anymore
MARA only sold 15,133 BTC ($1.1B) in order to pay down debt, lowering its total by 30% and saving $88M of future costs
This is a shift:
Treasury was nowhere near statistically below the Wells-Fargo threshold of ~53K BTC. There is still $2.29B of debt outstanding
The bigger signal → even large crypto holders are running balance sheets vs just stacking BTC.
As of now, Strategy seems to be the last major player still actively buying.
Medium articles we are reading
Here are Cryptopolitan’s top picks:
Are you watching?
Elon Musk is reportedly planning to give up to 30% of SpaceX IPO shares to retail investors, way above the usual 5–10%.
At a potential $1.75T valuation, this could be one of the biggest public offerings ever and one of the first where everyday investors get real access from day one.
Banks are already being lined up:
• Morgan Stanley → retail via E*Trade
• Bank of America → U.S. retail
• UBS / Citi → global distribution
The strategy is simple: bring in loyal retail investors early… and keep them holding.
Friday headline picks
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