Nvidia shares are down. Blame Bitcoin, Ethereum, not the stock split.

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Nvidia

has made hundreds of millions of dollars selling its chips to cryptocurrency miners, but its exposure to that market is hurting the action after falling more than 3% for Bitcoin and Ethereum in 24 hours.

Nvidia shares (ticker: NVDA) fell 2.5% to $ 183.24 on Tuesday, after investors received shares in a four-way stock split after Monday’s close. Stocks may have briefly seemed to fall harder early in the day, before market data is adjusted for the split.

The stock has risen 74% in the past year, while the PHLX Semiconductor, or Sox, has risen 51%.

The company’s most recent exposure to cryptocurrencies dates back to last year, when miners discovered that its Ampere-based graphics chips were good for producing Ethereum. Chips were so popular among miners – video game players can use one or two, while miners use many, many more – that Nvidia designed a version of semiconductors specifically designed for mining. It has limited the mining functions of video game cards.

In its first fiscal quarter, which ended in April, Nvidia sold $ 155 million of its crypto chips, according to CFO Colette Kress. Management expects crypto revenue of $ 400 million for the second quarter.

Kress’s figures do not include video game graphics chips that minors buy. Some of those used by players can also be exploited. BMO Capital Markets analyst Ambrish Srivastava estimated overall first-quarter cryptocurrency revenue at around $ 650 million.

Bitcoin’s drop below $ 30,000 on Monday and the drop in Ethereum, in particular, may have scared investors who are betting that high cryptocurrency prices will continue to boost sales of Nvidia’s chips. Around noon on Tuesday, Ethereum was trading at $ 1,755.86, but last year, when the price was between $ 300 and $ 400, RBC Capital Markets analyst Mitch Steves estimated that the one of Nvidia’s RTX 3080 cards would net miners around $ 3 a day and take 233 days to break even.

Last year’s surge in interest in the Ampere chip line is not the first time that Nvidia has been heavily exposed to the volatile cryptocurrency market. In 2018, its graphics processors were also popular with miners.

Towards the end of this year, a drop in the prices of Bitcoin and other cryptos prompted miners to try to offload their hardware, triggering a flood of second-hand and cheap Nvidia graphics cards on the market. Nvidia’s sales fell, with revenue declines of up to 31% for four consecutive quarters.

Write to Max A. Cherney at [email protected]