The battle for technological supremacy between the US and China is once again affecting the world’s big companies and the crypto market. Recently, the US government has imposed strict export restrictions on Nvidia, a leading tech company that makes graphics processing units (GPUs). Now the company will need a special export license to sell some of its special chips like H20 chips in China, Hong Kong and Macau.
Table of Contents
- What Are the New Restrictions on Nvidia?
- Financial Impact on Nvidia
- Why Are AI Crypto Tokens Affected?
- Which AI Tokens Were Most Affected?
- Broader Tech Market Turmoil
- What Could Happen Next?
- Conclusion
The impact of these restrictions is not only limited to Nvidia’s earnings, but its direct impact is also being seen on AI based crypto tokens. Due to the reduced availability of chips used in AI technology, those projects which are working on GPU-based infrastructure are now in trouble. As a result, the prices of crypto tokens related to AI have seen a huge decline.
What are the new restrictions on Nvidia?
Nvidia’s H20 chips are specially designed to train and run AI models. Many big Chinese tech companies like Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent etc. use these chips to train their AI systems. But the US government believes that these technologies can strengthen China’s military and surveillance system, so it is necessary to limit the access to these chips.
From now on, Nvidia will have to seek permission from the US Department of Commerce before sending these high-end chips to China. After this decision, Nvidia itself said that it could lose about $5.5 billion in the first quarter of fiscal year 2026.
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Why are AI crypto tokens affected?
AI crypto tokens are digital currency projects that combine artificial intelligence technologies with blockchain and smart contracts. The technological backbone of these tokens is often based on GPUs – which are needed for model training, data processing and automation.
The reduction in the supply of Nvidia’s chips will make hardware for AI projects expensive or rare. This will slow down their development speed and also reduce investor confidence in the market. For this reason, the total market cap of AI crypto tokens has declined by 3.7% in the last 24 hours, which has now reached $20.1 billion.
Which AI tokens were most affected?
According to crypto market analysts, the following major AI tokens have been affected by this decline:
• Render (RNDR) – Offers GPU power as a decentralized network.
• Fetch.ai (FET) – Supports AI-based autonomous agents.
• Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) – Focuses on data sharing and monetization.
• SingularityNET (AGIX) – Provides decentralized AI services.
All these tokens have seen a decline of up to 4-8% in the last 1-2 days, which indicates that investors are worried about this news.
Turmoil in the tech world
Nvidia is not just a chip manufacturer, but the basis of the modern AI revolution. Its chips are essential for running large AI models – such as GPT, BERT, DALL-E. If these chips are not available to AI-based startups and companies in China, their growth may slow down.
This news has also seen fluctuations in the shares of tech companies. Especially those companies that provide AI services in China have increased pressure.
What can happen next?
Nvidia has expressed hope that after obtaining a special export license from the US government, it will be able to continue supplying its chips to some extent. However, it is difficult to say how fast or easy this process will be. On the other hand, China can also now pay more attention to its indigenous chip companies, so that dependence on America can be reduced.
Investors in the crypto world are now closely looking at the strategy and long-term outlook of AI projects. Projects that are moving to alternative GPU suppliers or decentralized computing models may gain investor confidence.
Conclusion
The new US sanctions on Nvidia have once again shown how geopolitical decisions can shake the technology and crypto markets. The drop in AI crypto token prices may be a temporary reaction, but if the supply problems of chips are prolonged, it could seriously impact the growth of the sector.
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