Another company is getting into NFTs. This time it’s semiconductor, graphics card and CPU company AMD, the makers of the Ryzen CPU.
It’s not every day that I report on two massive companies getting in on the NFT game, having earlier today written about how Australian airline giant Qantas wants to get in on the latest craze, but here we are.
This time though, I’m a little more disappointed, considering that I like AMD and I’m also thinking about the environmental impacts and prevalence of scams in the NFT space. It’s a bit odd seeing AMD get in on it now, considering the NFT bubble looks to have burst and typically, AMD stans (like myself) don’t tend to convert into NFT ones.
Overnight, the official AMD Reddit account was snapped posting about it… before removing the post.
Now, what could have sparked AMD’s removal of this post? Well, it’s probably no surprise that avid members of the AMD subreddit are not fans of NFTs, as the comments would suggest.
“Can’t get a graphics card? Let me sell you a link to a picture of one,” one user wrote.
“Hey, uhh… I was just wondering… Is this an out of season April fools joke?” wrote another.
“So what’s next? Maybe collaborating with an Ethereum mining farm too, really rub it in the rest of computer enthusiasts’ faces?” wrote a third.
If it does come as a surprise, let me fill in the blanks. NFT and cryptocurrency enthusiasts need the same thing that gaming and computer enthusiasts need: powerful computer components, which AMD just so happens to manufacture (AMD, in fact, manufactures the top three CPUs of the past 30 days, according to CPUbenchmark.net).
While that does mean there is some overlap in terms of the userbase (that there are definitely gamers who dabble in the crypto world), it also means that there’s choked demand between these groups for components.
Of course, this isn’t aided by a global chip and semiconductor shortage, but you’ve probably seen cryptominers using dozens of processors and GPUs in mining crypto and maintaining blockchain networks.
AMD hasn’t addressed why it removed the post, but it seems like they may have misunderstood their audience.
Anyway, back to the announcement, it’s a partnership between AMD and Hackatao, a duo of NFT artists from Italy. Additionally, the NFT collection will be “Powered by NFT Studios”, as the website reads. NFT Studios is a separate NFT production company.
The announcement website is filled with tonnes of flavour text like “We are queens and kings”, “We have no subjects, no armies, nothing to conquer but knowledge and virtue” and “Our kingdom is the metaverse that we create for ourselves” along with instructions on how to buy NFTs.
I hated having to spend $1,000 on an RTX 3060 last year (a card that originally had an RRP of $529 in Australia) but it’s ok because I can buy a JPEG? Anyway, if you want to learn more about AMD’s collab with Hackatao, you can do so on the announcement website.