Crypto mining rigs from Chinese manufacturer Bitmain are being investigated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) due to potential risks to U.S. national security. According to Bloomberg, the federal government launched an investigation, “Operation Red Sunset,” to determine whether Beijing can access these mining machines remotely and use them for cyberespionage or to sabotage the power grid. As part of this probe, the government intercepted some of Bitmain’s imports, dismantled the machines, and tested their chips and code.

The findings of this teardown haven’t been published yet, as the investigation is still ongoing. Aside from assessing Bitmain’s technical capabilities, the authorities are also potentially investigating tariff and import tax violations by the company. However, this isn’t the first time the company’s name has appeared on the DHS's radar. In 2024, then-President Joe Biden shut down a massive Bitcoin mining operation owned by a Chinese entity that used thousands of Bitmain’s Antminer rigs. The government gave the order because it was within a mile of Warren Air Force Base, which hosts some of the U.S.’s Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles. It also appeared earlier this year in a U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report, which said that Bitmain miners can be remotely manipulated, posing a threat to the U.S.

In its defense, Bitmain released a statement denying these accusations and saying that it “strictly complies with U.S. and applicable laws and regulations and has never engaged in activities that pose risks to U.S. national security” and that it “has no awareness of or any information at all regarding any alleged federal investigation purported to be called ‘Operation Red Sunset.’” It also acknowledged that some of its products were impounded because of issues raised by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), but that “nothing out of the ordinary” was discovered during that test.

Bitmain is the largest manufacturer of mining rigs, controlling at least 80% of the market. However, the geopolitical rivalry between Washington and Beijing is complicating its operations, with the U.S. becoming wary of large Chinese tech companies. This tension has especially heightened after China enacted its National Intelligence Law in 2017, which compelled companies and individuals to cooperate with Chinese intelligence agencies. We expect things only to get more complicated, especially as many of these manufacturers are transferring production to the U.S. as a strategic move to pivot toward more ‘politically acceptable’ sources.

The U.S. government will add Sophgo, a Chinese tech company, to the Department of Commerce's Entity List for being an intermediary between blacklisted Huawei and TSMC, reports Reuters. For Sophgo, being placed on the Entity List means that it will no longer be able to procure advanced chips, effectively signaling the end of its operations. On the other hand, Huawei will likely try to find other intermediaries to place orders for different chips from TSMC.

Since September 2020, Huawei has been unable to legally purchase chips made using American technologies (i.e., virtually all chips). Sophgo violated U.S. export rules, and the U.S. Commerce Department is therefore expected to add it to its Bureau of Industry and Security's Entity List. Companies on the Entity List face stringent export restrictions, requiring a license for shipments, which are usually denied. As a result, Sophgo will be unable to place its orders with TSMC or buy chips outside of China, spelling the end for the company. 

Earlier this year, Sophgo placed an order for Huawei-designed Virtuvian computing chiplets for the company's Ascend 910 processor with TSMC, violating U.S. sanctions. Research firm TechInsights uncovered the issue during a teardown of Huawei's Ascend 910 processor. After TSMC confirmed the match, it ceased shipments to Sophgo and alerted U.S. and Taiwanese authorities. 

Sophgo is affiliated with Bitmain, a Chinese Bitcoin mining equipment supplier. The company is partly owned by Micree Zhan, Bitmain's co-founder, who indirectly holds a 23% stake in Sophgo through an investment company. Although Sophgo has denied any direct or indirect business with Huawei, Bitmain and Sophgo have reportedly supplied AI processors to Chinese government entities, including state-owned firms, universities, and police departments, according to a Reuters report. 

Bitmain, known for its Antminer brand, is a major supplier of cryptocurrency mining hardware. The company has distanced itself from the controversy, stating that it is not involved in the investigation. However, Sophgo communicated with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in 2023 using a Bitmain email address, which clearly suggests a connection between the two companies. 

Although Huawei and other Chinese entities will be unable to use Sophgo to procure advanced chips, it appears to be a common practice to use proxies to obtain sophisticated processors they are not supposed to obtain. At this point, no one knows how many more intermediaries Huawei might be using to acquire those products.

Bitmain, one of the world's largest suppliers of cryptocurrency mining ASICs, has temporarily halted salary payouts from September, ceased all staff bonuses, and is considering a 50% cut to basic wages due to financial challenges. Additionally, plans for an initial public offering (IPO) have been put on hold, reports CoinTelegraph.

Bitcoin has lost its value in the recent quarters, which made Bitmain's products far less attractive to smaller players. Meanwhile, large miners continued to buy them. For instance, Hive, a significant player in Bitcoin mining that also happens to deploy Intel's mining ASICs, recently acquired 2,000 units of Bitmain's S19 XP ASIC miners. Each of these devices carries a list price tag of $4,653, though it is unclear how much Hive paid for them. After integrating these devices, Hive reportedly anticipated its tools to yield a revenue of $80 per megawatt hour, which encompasses earnings from both Bitmain and other models. 

Beijing-based Bitmain is one of the world's largest makers of cryptocurrency mining hardware that reportedly commanded 70% of the market and even managed to obtain priority access to TSMC's production capacities. The company's Antminer ASIC line is recognized for its hash rate efficiency in mining Bitcoin. Their standing in the market was so formidable that many in the industry considered their products the gold standard. 

But 2019 and 2020 were tumultuous years for Bitmain and its leadership. A protracted conflict between its co-founders, Jihan Wu and Micree Zhan, reached a climax in 2021, which the duo finally settle: Wu agreed to step back from his chairman and CEO roles and sell his company stake to Zhan for $600 million. 

Amidst these corporate shake-ups, Bitmain had eyed an aggressive growth strategy. In 2021, they were gearing up for an initial public offering (IPO) with aspirations of achieving a whopping $5 billion valuation by the close of 2022. However, the ongoing financial downturn in the market seems to have dashed these plans, at least for the foreseeable future.

Bitcoin mining is thriving in Russia, despite the international sanctions imposed on the country following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. This upswing is due to an influx of mining machines from manufacturers like Bitmain and MicroBT, whose expansion is driven by a saturated U.S. market, reports CoinDesk.

Russia has held a dominant position in the global Bitcoin hash rate because of its cheap energy and cold climate, which makes it somewhat easier to cool down mining data centers. In addition, China's 2021 ban on crypto mining boosted Russia's hashrate even further, making it one of the world's largest mining industries. Now that the U.S. market is saturated with mining machines from Bitmain and MicroBT, more machines are shipping into Russia than to any other market, according to Ethan Vera, COO of Luxor Technologies.

Russia's booming mining industry stands out against its struggling economy, which has suffered under severe sanctions imposed by the West. These sanctions do not entirely prohibit involvement in the mining sector, although they present 'significant risks,' according to David Carlisle, vice president of policy and regulation at blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. Foreign mining companies cannot conduct business with sanctioned entities or make payments to state banks and companies, which makes it harder to set up data centers in the country. In addition, these companies also face potential reputational risks given the current geopolitical climate.

The rising price of Bitcoin, coupled with increased activity on the Bitcoin blockchain driven by projects like Ordinals, have created a favorable environment for mining. Some factors make Russia particularly more competitive when it comes to mining. Firstly, increased regulatory scrutiny and taxation in the U.S. and other countries made them less appealing for mining. Secondly, changes in Kazakhstan’s regulatory environment, limiting the amount of electricity available for Bitcoin mining, made some miners move away from Kazakhstan, possibly to Russia. Thirdly, energy costs in Russia are significantly lower than elsewhere. Current prices for installing machines at a colocation datacenter are between $0.05-$0.055 per kWh in Russia, significantly lower than U.S. prices around $0.08 per kWh.

Cryptocurrency Mining Group (CMG) suggests Russia will be the only country able to significantly accelerate hash rate growth due to these conditions.

Mining rig manufacturers like Bitmain and MicroBT are capitalizing on the opportunity presented by Russia's thriving sector. Both companies are purportedly expanding their presence in the Russian market, providing after-sales services such as maintenance and repairs to local miners, albeit without officially confirming it.

Despite geopolitical tensions and sanctions, Russian miners and their international clients remain undeterred. These sanctions may have even inadvertently boosted the Russian mining industry, offering an alternative revenue stream for power producers hit by the economic downturn and facilitating the conversion of Russian rubles to Bitcoin, which can be traded globally. Despite potential hesitation from European and U.S. miners, Chinese miners are keen to fill any voids, taking advantage of the thriving Russian market and China's close relations with Russia.

But the skies are not completely blue for the Russian mining sector as companies working in Russia or with Russian entities may be sanctioned by the U.S. government. 

Following the invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. government imposed sanctions on BitRiver, Russia's largest hosting provider and a key player in the mining industry, which was the first instance of a mining entity being targeted by U.S. sanctions. The aftermath of this decision has left companies, such as the retail-oriented Compass Mining, uncertain about how to manage their equipment. Obviously, doing business with a sanctioned entity like BitRiver presents considerable risks for companies.

If you’ve got a spare Raspberry Pi lying around, you really should put it to good use. If you don’t have a functional project in mind, you could always gamble a bit like maker Data Slayer is doing with this Bitcoin mining project. With a Raspberry Pi Zero alongside a USB Antminer device, he’s taking a chance (a very small chance) that he will luck out and win some serious cryptocurrency.

The way the project works is simple enough. The Raspberry Pi is running Raspberry Pi OS. It’s connected to an Antminer via USB which is responsible for handling Bitcoin mining algorithms. The system is connected to it Bitcoin wallet which will receive a handsome deposit if he’s lucky enough to win an entire hash. Because the system is so small, it’s not practical enough for regular mining and is better suited for what’s called lotto mining. In this case, he has a 1 in 2 billion chance of winning a whole block each day.

Data Slayer is using a Raspberry Pi Zero W which needs network connectivity to function. It’s connected to the Antminer USB stick which requires a huge heatsink while operating to keep cool. For storage, the project is relying on a 32 GB micro SD card. The system is a headless setup so it must be operated over SSH.

To conserve resources, Data Slayer is using the 32-bit Lite version of Raspberry Pi OS. Once he had the operating system installed, he remoted into the Pi via SSH to install CG Miner. This application is main driver behind the mining operation. In the demo, Data Slayer is using the SHA-256 algorithm for mining which can be configured in CG Miner. The project video shares plenty of details on how to install the system, set up the miner, and connect it to your wallet.

Is this project practical? Not really. Is it fun and worth tinkering around with on a lazy afternoon? Absolutely. If you want to recreate this Raspberry Pi project or just get a closer look at how it goes together, check out the original video shared to YouTube by Data Slayer and be sure to follow him for more cool projects as well as any future updates on this one.

Cryptocurrency mining company Hive Blockchain said this week it had begun to deploy 5800 Intel Blockscale accelerator-based BuzzMiner mining systems that it designed itself. To date, this is the first large-scale deployment of Intel-powered mining machines. Also, the company disclosed that it earned $3.15 million in December by lowering its power use and, therefore, the number of Bitcoins it mined, reports CoinDesk. 

Hive constantly optimizes its hardware to improve efficiency and lower power consumption. Late last year, the company ordered the production of 5800 Hive BuzzMiners — cryptocurrency mining machines that it designed itself based on Intel's Blockscale custom ASICs. So far, the company has received and installed 1423 of these machines and shipped 987 systems to Sweden, where they will be installed by January 15. The remaining systems will be tested and shipped by the end of the month. In addition, Hive plans to replace older ASIC and GPU-powered mining hardware with its own BuzzMiner machines. Meanwhile, Hive appears to be the largest buyer of Intel's Blockscale chips.

Also, the company recently procured 3570 Bitmain S19j Pro miners, 2050 of which have been installed already. 

Hive mined 213.8 Bitcoin in December using ASIC and GPU hardware, which equaled 113.2 Bitcoin Per Exahash. Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency mining company earned $3.15 million in income from its energy price hedging and grid balancing strategy. It essentially means that it did not mine when the demand for energy was high. Instead, it sold electricity back to the grid.  

An interesting fact is that Hive's production was down by about 20% month-over-month in December. Meanwhile, the company’s grid balancing strategy and selling electricity back to the grid more than offset declines in cryptocurrency mining.  

Cryptocurrency mining got significantly less profitable in recent quarters due to lower demand for Bitcoins and because it got harder to mine cryptocurrency, which is why Hive and its rivals must improve their efficiency to stay in business. 

"Our technical team has updated our software stack which monitors the vital statistics of our global fleet of ASIC miners," said Aydin Kilic, president & COO of Hive. "This allows us to have great insight and granularity into the performance of each machine, using bespoke API calls, as we carefully study the overall fleet efficiency (in Joules per Terahash), to ensure we are mining for maximum profitability during a Bitcoin bear market. We continue to strive for excellence, ensuring that as we scale our hashrate we also optimize our uptime, to ensure ideal Bitcoin output figures and leading the sector in performance."

Gone are the days when you must wait in a six-month queue or pay thousands of dollars for an ASIC miner. Nowadays, if you want an ASIC miner, you can grab one directly from Walmart (via Bitcoin Magazine). Admittedly, they aren't dirt cheap, but some have decreased in price.

Bitcoin has seen a downward trend over the last few months. The cryptocurrency started the year strong at around $47,000 in January but has since dropped to around the $20,000 mark in November. Despite Bitcoin's price reduction, optimistic miners continue diligently working the mines, but these are million-dollar companies with tons of mining equipment. Unfortunately, it's too late for the average Joe to jump on the mining bandwagon, given the difficulty of mining a bitcoin.

China's ban on cryptocurrency mining has forced many sellers to take refuge at Walmart to offload their ASIC miners. Walmart's marketplace has devices from all the big names, including Bitmain, Goldshell, and Canaan. Of course, it's not only ASIC miners, either. The third-party sellers also commercialize control boards, individual ASIC chips, cables, connectors, and other tidbits you may need to set up your mining operation.

The Walmart marketplace offers ASIC miners options at different price points. We see devices going from $2,500 up to $14,600. For example, Bitmain sells the AntMiner S19J Pro for $9,984 on its online store. The same AISC miner is available at Walmart for $6,000, 40% cheaper than buying it from the manufacturer. A seller also listed the AntMiner T19 for $199, but it's out of stock.

Bitcoin mining as an individual simply isn't profitable when you factor in the equipment and electricity costs. Coming back to our example, the AntMiner S19J Pro generates $1.26 daily, assuming you pay around 10 cents/kWh for electricity. It'll take roughly 13 years to recover your $6,000 investment. Electricity will probably cost more in that time, or your ASIC miner may bite the dust, meaning you'll never break even. So unless you already have a big mining outfit or live in a wonderland where electricity is almost free, you should stay away from these ASIC miners on Walmart's marketplace.

Cryptomining has been in the headlines in recent months for all the wrong reasons if you are a cryptocurrency investor or speculator. It isn’t all doom and gloom for crypto, though, as we have recently reported on newer, more efficient mining equipment becoming available from the likes of Intel and Bitmain. Moreover, on Thursday, Bloomberg reported that the cost of mining Bitcoins had reached a 10-month low.

Some may have scoffed at the new ASIC cryptomining systems becoming available this summer, considering the dire valuation charts for all the major blockchain-based currencies. However, it now looks like new efficient mining systems coming online are quickly having a beneficial impact on the bottom lines of mining operations. Even with the ongoing crypto crash, the difference between costs and crypto valuations makes mining operations sound highly profitable for the time being.

According to data from JP Morgan, at the start of June, cryptomining operations were spending $24,000 to mine one Bitcoin (BTC). Today, they expect to mine a Bitcoin after spending only $13,000. To put that into perspective, you can sell 1 BTC today for almost $21,000, which is better than a 60% profit.

The Bloomberg report asserts the reduction in mining costs is entirely down to the deployment of more energy-efficient mining rigs. One must also remember that this is happening while energy prices are rocketing worldwide. That makes the mining cost reductions and efficiency of the latest mining equipment all the more impressive.

Cheaper Mining to Result in Lower Bear Market Valuations?

Interestingly, a crypto valuation theory shared in the source report suggests that lowering the production cost could negatively impact BTC valuations. In other words, some see the production cost as a resistance line buoying BTC, and perhaps other major cryptocurrencies. If this line can be shifted down, so too can crypto valuations when we are in a bear market.

We mentioned above that 1 BTC is worth about $21,000 today. Some might feel the valuation is very low, but if we learn from history and the two previous bull/bear markets Bitcoin has been through, we should expect it to drop to about $13,000 before the pain ends (80% down from its peak), and before there can be a recovery. However, where we stand in 2022, with a war in Europe and on the precipice of a recession, we shouldn’t expect things to pan out exactly the same, or reverse as quickly as in 2018 and late 2020.

Overall, it is interesting to see such a dramatic cut in the costs of Bitcoin mining (and likely other currencies too). Whether reduced mining costs will contribute to further reductions in valuations, or help miners stay afloat during this slump, remains to be seen. Similarly uncertain are the depths of the worldwide inflation, recession and financial issues we will see through 2022 and beyond.

Bitmain launched its long-awaited Antminer E9 system today. The firm claims that one Antminer E9 system has the crypto-computing power to match 25 Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards. That is quite an achievement, which Bitmain measures in Ethereum mining performance terms. In brief, the Antminer E9 is capable of 2,400 MH/s of ETH mining performance, white eating up to 1,920W, and its efficiency is at 0.8 J/M.

Since it first teased the Antminer E9, the specs appear to have changed somewhat, with no real explanation from Bitmain. Last April, Bitmain teased that it was about to launch a specialized Ethereum miner capable of 3,000 MH/s, using 2,556W, with an efficiency of 0.85 J/M. At the time, it boasted that it could out-mine 32 GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards. Today, the finished shipping product is said to offer a mining performance equivalent to 25 GeForce RTX 3080. However, it seems to be a little more efficient. So Bitmain might have changed the Antminer E9 specs for pricing, efficiency, or another reason - but the company didn't provide any explanations.

Bitmain's Twitter account says that the Antminer E9 should be available today. We checked the site just a couple of hours after the touted hardware sales started, but it wasn't available. It may appear on the Bitmain retail site later; however, it isn't showing when the check box shows sold-out products.

The Antminer E9 has been through a prolonged gestation period since its teaser regarding the Ethereum targeting system in April 2021. At the time, Bitmain said it would launch "very soon," but the company seemingly encountered problems releasing the ASIC miner. Bitmain didn't share the pricing for the Antminer E9, either. Cryptocurrencies aren't such an attractive investment as they were in the pre-war, pre-double-digit inflation, pre-recession spring of 2021.

As well as the crypto crash, which has paused chiefly since mid-June, there is another significant negative to the prospect of investing in a specialized ETH miner today. The oft-delayed 'Merge' where ETH mining ends, due to the transition to a Proof of Stake (PoS) model, is firmly penciled in for August this year. Sadly, there have been multiple setbacks, so that it could suffer another delay again.

Intel's bets on the blockchain space are attracting significant design wins, with the latest including one of the world's leading bitcoin mining companies. Blockchain company Hive has announced that it has agreed to purchase Intel's next-generation "BZM2" Bonanza Mine ASICs. Hive announced that the addition of Intel's upcoming chips would almost double its bitcoin mining power from 1.9 to 3.8 exahashes per second (Eh/s). The chips will be deployed in a new, 100 MW renewable-energy-focussed installation operated by Compute North LLC in Texas.

The deal establishes that the cryptocurrency mining devices will be delivered over one year starting in the second half of calendar 2022, lining up nicely with Intel's ASIC delivery for another of its Bonanza Mine clients, GRIID. Both companies expect the Intel-provided ASICs to offer increased performance and power efficiency compared to other available mining chip offerings. No information on the agreements' impact on the companies' bottom lines was revealed. Still, considering how we're looking at an almost doubling (95% increase) of HIVE's available hashpower on the shoulders of Intel's ASICs, this deal isn't a small one by any measure — and we have the doors open to some napkin math.

Intel's BZM2 pricing has already been non-officially disclosed as going for $5,625 per miner, with performance rated at 135 TH/s with an energy efficiency of 26 J/THs. HIVE's predicted hash power increase of 1.9 EH/s after the successful deployment of Intel's miners tells us that the company is installing ~14,000 thousand BZM2 devices.

In pure dollar terms, that means the Intel/HIVE deal could be worth around $79 million solely on hardware costs. However, despite the gargantuan cost, Intel has its competitors between a rock and a hard place: the company is extremely competitive in both efficiency and performance while undercutting its closest competitor, Bitmain's Antminer S19j XP, by almost 50% (Bitmain prices its S19j at around $10,455, with pricing being pegged to Bitcoin's value and updated daily).

Aydin Kilic, President & COO of HIVE, said that "Intel's energy-efficient and high performance blockchain accelerator is expected to reduce our power consumption over current ASIC miners on the market." He also expanded on the company's part in the product development and deployment, positioning HIVE more as a partner than a client: "HIVE will participate in the system development process from design verification, through to the prototype stages, and then factory & test engineering regimens to arrive at a production model; we are well-positioned and excited to undertake the process ahead."

Blockchain-related technologies and products are only expected to increase as time passes, and Intel seems to have pivoted its position to take advantage of the current and future market. While the last several years saw Intel mostly ignore the cryptocurrency space, the company now has three distinct product segments (and related business decisions) that are either directly or indirectly related to blockchain. In fact, Intel beat both AMD and Nvidia in its blockchain dive, at least when it comes to designing silicon that's especially geared towards blockchain workloads.

While Nvidia and AMD have been content in allowing their GPU solutions to be either freely used (AMD) or by adapting existing products towards cryptocurrency-mining-specific product lines (think Nvidia's Cryptocurrency Mining Processors [CMP]). Intel now stands as the first company of the three to fully design a mining-oriented product with its Bonanza Mine ASICs.

At the same time, Intel's latest FPGA solutions, in the form of the Agilex-M series, are now also being marketed for blockchain-related workloads, a first for the product segment. The third (current) angle of attack on the market isn't as direct as this one and doesn't carry a distinct marketing angle, but perhaps that's a wise decision on Intel's part: the company has confirmed that its upcoming ARC Alchemist graphics cards will perform at 100% of their capabilities when it comes to cryptocurrency mining workloads.

Intel's entrance into the Bitcoin mining hardware market is undoubtedly disruptive, and given new information that has come to light, it now looks like the company's mining hardware could have the best price-to-performance ratio on the market. Intel recently presented its prototype chip and Bitcoin miner at a recent tech conference, but those models aren't the ones shipping to customers — the second-gen Bonanza Mine chips that are shipping to customers have remained shrouded in mystery. However, A recent SEC filing by one of Intel's premier partners has revealed both the pricing and performance of Intel's second-gen Bonanza Mine (BZM2) Bitcoin miners.

According to the listing, BZM2's performance weighs in at 135 TH/s with 26 J/THs of efficiency. Additionally, the miner is roughly half the cost of a competing Bitmain S19 Pro while being 15% more efficient, rivaling the best hardware on the market from competing companies.

News of Intel's Bitcoin-mining 'Bonanza Mine' chips originally filtered out without much fanfare via a listing for a tech conference presentation. Soon after, the discovery of an IPO filing by GRIID, a Bitcoin mining company that's among Intel's first customers, revealed some of the details of Intel's go-to-market strategy. Intel followed with its official announcement that it had entered the Bitcoin hardware business with three large customers in tow, and then finally showed its prototype Bonzanza Mine system at ISCC. That prototype system isn't competitive against today's systems, but now we know that Intel's shipping products actually either beat or challenge Bitmain and MicroBT, the market leaders.

The new SEC filing by GRIID now tells us the basics of the shipping Bonanza Mine systems (h/t to Hashindex). The slide doesn't specifically name Intel's hardware next to the specs. However, all of the details, including fixed pricing, guaranteed chip allocation of 25% of production capacity, and the top-tier US manufacturer details (Intel is the only US-based bitcoin hardware manufacturer), line up perfectly with GRIID's prior supply agreement disclosures with Intel.

As such, these performance specifications and pricing are assuredly for the second-gen Bonanza Mine systems, but with the caveat that these systems could be tailor-made for GRIID. That means we could see a slight difference in performance/pricing for different custom designs, like those we expect to see from BLOCK. 

The slide lists performance of the new miner at 135 TH/s with 26 J/TH of efficiency, second only to Bitmain's S19j XP system. The Bonanza Mine-powered system is also 15% more efficient than the next best system on the market, the Bitmain S19j Pro. Peak performance for the BZM2 system weighs in at a competitive 135 TH/s. A bit of basic math reveals the system runs at approximately 3510W.

We also included Intel's first-gen prototype, the BZM1, designed in 2018, for comparison. The new BZM2-powered system is roughly twice as efficient while offering more than three times the performance of the prototype. However, we still don't know what process node is used for the second-gen chips (rumored to be TSMC 5nm) or how many chips are in each system (the prototype uses 300).

We plotted performance vs efficiency in the chart above, with results in the upper left-hand corner being the most desirable. The BZM2 chips are clearly far more performant and efficient than the prototype BZM1 models. Additionally, the BZM2-powered Intel system only trails Bitmain's premier Antminer S19j XP by a small margin, but these performance and efficiency metrics are close enough that pricing and supply will be the determining factors for most buyers.

GRIID says the new Intel mining systems cost $5,625 per miner. Given that GRIID has guaranteed access to 25% of Intel's production capacity, we expect the company to benefit from volume pricing. In either case, that's roughly half the price of the $10,455 Bitmain S19j Pro, but it's noteworthy that pricing for the S19j Pro can fluctuate wildly. Bitmain, and other Bitcoin hardware providers, adjust pricing daily based on Bitcoin's spot valuation and the projected payoff time, thus exposing customers to Bitcoin volatility and exorbitant pricing.

Additionally, the existing mining hardware providers are based in China and suffer from long lead times and severe supply disruptions and shortages due to their lack of supply chain control. These companies also have to deal with the 25% tariffs for products that originate in China and are exposed to the volatility associated with a longer supply chain, which can be especially punishing for equipment bound for the US due to the increased cost of shipping and logistics.

In contrast, Intel sticks to fixed pricing that isn't based on Bitcoin spot pricing and the company is based in the US, thus avoiding tariffs and other expenses while simplifying support. These are important advantages because China's ban on mining has made the US the primary destination for cryptocurrency miners. In the end, factoring in Intel's pricing and logistics advantages, the BZM2 systems could win over competing miners.

Intel's first publicly-named customers include BLOCK (formerly known as Square and helmed by CEO Jack Dorsey of Twitter fame), Argo Blockchain, and GRIID Infrastructure. Given the competitive performance, pricing, and advantages of being a US-based supplier, that list will surely grow after Intel's silicon starts to hit the market in the second half of this year. 

At ISSCC 2022, Intel shared the deep-dive details of its new Bitcoin-mining Bonanza Mine ASICs and outlined how it melds 300 of these tiny power-efficient chips into a powerful 3,600W miner that delivers up to 40 THash/s of performance. [EDIT: We have since found the specifications and pricing for the newer model that is shipping to customers, which you can read about here.]

We first discovered Intel's Bonanza Mine ASICs in a listing for a presentation at the ISSCC 2022 conference, and the information below comes from the presentations at the event. This material covers the first generation of Intel's mining chips, known as BZM1, but the company has already moved on to its second-gen 'Bonanza Mine' ASIC, known as BZM2, that it is now making available to customers to challenge the likes of Bitmain and MicroBT.

After news of the company's efforts came to light, Intel finally officially acknowledged its blockchain/Bitcoin silicon program, divulging that it already has several large customers for the second-gen chips. That includes BLOCK (helmed by CEO Jack Dorsey of Twitter fame), Argo Blockchain, and GRIID Infrastructure.

Intel hasn't shared details of the second-gen chips and systems yet, but we do know they are derivatives of the BZM1 ASICs shown below. 

Here we can see the BZM1 chip in its rather small 7 x 7.5mm exposed-die FCLGA package (132 balls). As you'll see below, 300 of these chips power the system.

Each chip die measures 4.14 x 3.42mm, for a total of 14.16mm^2 of silicon, so these are comparatively small slivers of silicon. The smaller die size improves yield and maximizes wafer area usage (up to 4,000 die per wafer), thus helping maximize production capacity (though it does require more wafer dicing/packaging capacity). Intel says these are 7nm ASICs, but doesn't specify if that is its own 'Intel 7,' the original 7nm before it renamed the process node to 'Intel 4,' or TSMC's 7nm process.

Each Bonanza Mine ASIC has 258 mining engines, and each engine computes parallel SHA256 double hashes. These engines comprise 90% of the die area and operate at what Intel characterizes as an 'ultra-low' voltage of 355mV.

Each ASIC operates at 1.35 to 1.6 GHz at 75C, consuming an average of 7.5W apiece while hitting up to 137 Ghash/s. That works out to 55 J/THash/s at 355mV.

Zooming out to the 300 chips in the system, there's a total of 4,248mm^2 of silicon that delivers up to 40TH/s at 3600W of power consumption. It's clear that Intel will need to be far more competitive against Bitmain and MicroBT's existing miners. For instance, Bitmain's Antmienr S19j Pro 104T does 104 THash/s at 3,068W, while the newest model, the S19j XP, does 140 THash/s at 3010W. Again, these are Intel's first-gen Bonanza Mine chips, but its new contracts are for the second-gen 'BZM2' models that remain shrouded in mystery. 

Intel solders on 75 Bonanza Mine ASICs per hash board, arranged in 25-deep voltage stacks with ganged stack-voltages. The hash board also houses a microcontroller that manages power-on and thermal/stack-voltage monitoring. A 10MB/s UART serial link shuffles data between the chips and the control unit that sits atop the full system. 

Here we can see both the block diagram and images of the full system. Four hash boards are placed vertically into a single unit with four fans that keep the system cool.

The control unit sits atop the device, housing an Intel-FPGA-based system controller and an Arm Cortex core that runs the mining daemon and distributes the work among the 300 chips. The ARM core also adjusts the on-die PLLs to control chip frequencies and verify the ASICs' hash results. As you would expect, the unit also has an Ethernet connection to communicate with a larger mining pool. The system also has a programmable power supply. 

As shown above, the system can operate in different power/thermal profiles, like Power-Saving, Balanced, and High-Performance, to tailor the usage profile, thus yielding anywhere from 54 to 60 J/THash.

Intel built the system described above from the first-gen Bonanza Mine chips. However, Intel's second-gen chips can obviously be used in several configurations: GRIID's supply agreement with Intel has plenty of redactions to protect sensitive information, but it also heavily references Intel's Reference Design Materials. These are a series of documents that customers use as guidance when integrating the Bonanza Mine chips into their own custom systems.

This implies that Intel will supply the silicon to some of its customers, who will then create their own systems. This also meshes well with Jack Dorsey's plans for BLOCK, which he says will create a "bitcoin mining system based on custom silicon and open source for individuals and businesses worldwide." Of course, Intel could also manufacture complete mining systems and bring them to market through partners, but we'll have to wait to learn more about its go-to-market strategy.

Intel's first-gen Bonanza Mine chip sets a promising tone for its second-gen Bonanza Mine chips that are already working their way out to customers. However, there are still plenty of unknowns about the technical details of the second-gen chips, like performance, efficiency, pricing, power consumption, the process node, foundry used, and so on. We also don't know Intel's plans for its future roadmap.

Intel has a question and answer session scheduled at ISSCC for later in the week, and we'll follow up with more information after. 

Update 2/20/2020: Added details about Bitmain performance.

Intel's Raja Koduri penned a blog post that officially announces the company's plans to enter the cryptomining/blockchain market with a roadmap of specialized energy-efficient accelerators. Intel will begin delivering the new chips, comprised of the Bonanza Mine ASICs that we recently unearthed, this year to several large customers as it enters the Bitcoin mining market that it expects to grow by $2.8 billion from 2021-2025. Intel's first customers include BLOCK (formerly known as Square and helmed by CEO Jack Dorsey of Twitter fame), Argo Blockchain, and GRIID Infrastructure. We'll provide a bit more detail on those relationships below.

Intel also announced that it had created a new Custom Compute Group, folded under Koduri's Accelerated Computing and Graphics (AXG) Business Unit, to design and build its blockchain hardware. The group will also build other unspecified custom accelerated supercomputing hardware based on Intel's existing IP blocks. It's unclear if those products could address other types of cryptocurrency mining, or if the unit will also serve as an adjunct to Intel Foundry Services (IFS). 

Intel shared an image of its new blockchain accelerator, but Koduri's missive is light on technical details. However, we already know quite a bit about the company's upcoming Bitcoin-mining hardware. We first discovered Intel's Bonanza Mine chips in a listing for a presentation at the upcoming ISSCC conference, but the company has already moved on to its second-gen 'Bonanza Mine' ASIC, known as BZM2. This chip has a specialized architecture designed specifically to accelerate SHA-256 (a cryptographic algorithm) processing for Bitcoin mining at ultra-low voltage. These energy-efficient chips produce what Intel characterizes as "over 1000x better performance per watt than mainstream GPUs for SHA-256-based mining."

However, GPUs aren't often used for SHA-256 / Bitcoin mining, so that isn't the best comparison. Instead, Bitcoin is typically mined on ASICs, which are specialized processors specifically designed to execute one type of workload. ASICs afford efficiency and performance advantages over more complex types of chips, like CPUs and GPUs, that can perform the same task.

Intel's Bonanza Mine will compete with other ASIC-based devices from companies like Bitmain (which has a quasi-monopoly on high-end miners) and MicroBT. These companies suffer from long lead times and charge prohibitively high pricing (often based on Bitcoin's valuation) for their chips. They also have to rely on third-party design houses and foundries for manufacturing. Foundries like TSMC don't tend to give these companies preferential status in their fabs due to the uncertainty of the demand and sporadic nature of cryptomining; instead, they prioritize longer-term steady business from bigger chip designers.

Intel has tremendous production capacity of its own, but it isn't clear if it will fab the BZM2 ASICs in its own internal fabs or outsource production to TSMC (BZM2 is rumored to use TSMC's 5nm). However, Intel has traditionally outsourced roughly 25% of its silicon production and will drastically increase that amount over the next few years as it moves its GPU and some CPU production to TSMC, meaning it has more purchasing power than competing mining hardware firms. Additionally, Intel has tight control over its supply chain and has its own production, including packaging and test (OSAT) capacity, a critical step in the manufacturing process that has proven to be one of the major contributors behind the ongoing semiconductor shortages.

Intel says that its mining hardware consists of tiny pieces of silicon (the first-gen BZM1 chip measures a mere 14.2mm^2), so this new foray shouldn't impact its supply of current products. However, much like you can see in the image of half of a Bitmain S19's hashboard above, mining ASICs are deployed en masse. We expect Intel's solution will have a similar arrangement, so it will consume a non-trivial amount of silicon in aggregate. However, the smaller die size boosts yield and maximizes wafer area usage (up to 4,000 die per wafer), thus helping maximize production capacity (though it does require more wafer dicing/packaging capacity). 

Intel's First Bitcoin Mining Customers

Intel has announced three of its first customers, BLOCK (formerly known as Square), Argo Blockchain, and GRIID Infrastructure, but it's possible that the company has other large customers that wish to remain unnamed. The Bitcoin mining industry has been plagued by hardware shortages and excessive pricing for the last few years. Considering that analysts predict 1.5 to 2 million Bitcoin miners will ship this year, that will likely continue. As such, Intel could prove to be a disruptive force in this market segment given its scale, more predictable pricing, and likely more predictable supply.

We can see some of those aspects come into play with Intel's deal with its first publicly known customer, GRIID computing, which will soon go public at an estimated $3.3 billion valuation. Intel has guaranteed GRIID that it will sell it a minimum of 25% of its overall mining ASIC supply through 2025 at fixed pricing (until 2023), which is far more desirable than the fluctuating pricing from competing firms like Bitmain that assign pricing based on Bitcoin valuation. GRIID considers Intel's pricing assurance to be a considerable competitive advantage over other mining firms, noting that hardware costs are the largest expenditure for any mining deployment.

GRIID's supply agreement with Intel has plenty of redactions to protect sensitive information, but it also heavily references Intel's Reference Design Materials, which are a series of documents that customers use as guidance when they integrate the Bonanza Mine chips into their own custom systems.

This implies that Intel will supply the silicon to some of its customers, who will then create their own systems. This also meshes well with Jack Dorsey's plans for BLOCK, which he says will create a “bitcoin mining system based on custom silicon and open source for individuals and businesses worldwide.” Intel could also manufacture complete mining systems and bring them to market through partners, but we'll have to wait to learn more details about its go-to-market strategy.

Intel's listing for the upcoming ISSCC conference notes that Bitcoin mining is currently estimated to consume 91TW-hour of power annually, which is greater than the country of Finland, but points out that customized accelerators can optimize energy efficiency. Koduri acknowledges that blockchains require tremendous amounts of energy, but says that Intel aims to provide scalable and energy-efficient solutions to "promote an open and secure blockchain ecosystem and advance this technology in a responsible and sustainable way."

Intel's publicly-acknowledged customers all say they focus on sustainable energy sources. Notably, GRIID claims that approximately 74% of its power consumption is carbon-free, with a goal of being 90% carbon-free by the end of 2023 — all without carbon offsets or credits. GRIID hasn't released firm projections of the number of machines it plans to deploy, but it intends to operate three industrial-scale facilities totaling 734 megawatts of power by 2023.

The publicly-traded Argo Blockchain, which recently purchased 20,000 Bitmain Antimer machines for its West Texas data center, says it is climate-positive and focuses on hydropower for most of its facilities, though it will use a combination of wind and solar for its Texas plants.

Finally, BLOCK (formerly known as Square), also has a heavy focus on renewable energy sources. The company recently partnered with Blockstream Mining to build an open-source solar-powered Bitcoin mining farm in the United States.

More To Come

Intel's Bonanza Mine chips could give it a solid beachhead in the lucrative Bitcoin mining market where its new competitors, like Bitmain and MicroBT, have long dominated. Intel will also not limit the mining performance of its standard Arc Alchemist GPUs that will come to market soon, allowing it to compete with its old rivals AMD and Nvidia in other types of cryptocurrency mining (like Ethereum).

This provides Intel with a dual-pronged strategy of ASICs and GPUs for the rapidly-growing blockchain/cryptomining market that it hasn't participated in before (at least not publicly). Plugging those products into Intel's global production and supply chains could help the company grow quickly and sidestep some of the production shortfalls we've seen with other mining hardware providers. 

Intel will present its first-gen Bonanza Mine chips at an industry event later this month, and its claimed 137 GH/s performance and 18.2 W/TH efficiency rivals the best mining ASICs on the market. That sets a promising tone for the company's second-gen Bonanza Mine chips. However, there are still plenty of unknowns about the technical details, like performance, efficiency, pricing, power consumption, the process node, foundry used, and so on. We also don't know the company's plans for its future roadmap.

One thing is clear, though: If Intel can deliver enough silicon with competitive efficiency, performance, and pricing, its entrance into the Bitcoin hardware market could disrupt the status quo and touch off a new performance/efficiency arms race. We're sure to learn more during the company's investor event next week and the ISCC presentation at the end of the month. Stay tuned. 

Most ordinary people haven't been able to mine Bitcoin at a profit for years. As the difficulty of mining the cryptocurrency has increased, most rewards have gone to massive operations that rely on a bunch of incredibly powerful machines. But solo miners with relatively weak setups have found success in recent weeks using USB-based mining rigs.

The most recent example comes from a solo USB miner participating in "solo.ckpool.org," which purportedly offers "no frills, no fuss 2% fee anonymous solo bitcoin mining for everyone." The miner solved a block with a rig that had a hashrate of approximately 8.3 terahashes per second (TH/s) and earned more than $215,000 worth of BTC. The types of USB miners used are available from retailers like Amazon and Bitcoin Merch (when you can find them in stock).

The miner in question has a rig capable of an 86 TH/s hashrate, but It was operating at one-tenth that performance when the block was solved. For context, Bitmain recently announced the Antminer S19 Pro+ Hyd, which is capable of reaching a hashrate of approximately 199 TH/s. That's more than twice what this setup offers.

The difference is even starker when you consider that Bitmain targets miners willing to buy multiple rigs at once. It won't even sell the container for the Antminer S19 Pro+ Hyd unless the buyer purchases 190 miners. The new rig's price hasn't been revealed, but judging by Bitmain's other products, it likely costs at least $10,000.

Most people can't really compete with the scale of those operations. However, some miners can still get lucky as the one who solved this block did. Solo miners seem to be enjoying some good luck: Bitcoin.com reported that smaller operations earned between $260,000 to $270,000 in January alone.

Does this mean that everyone should think about mining Bitcoin again? Probably not. It's still a resource-intensive process, and even these solo miners rely on specialized hardware instead of consumer products. This miner, in particular, seems to be using a "stick miner" made by GekkoScience that features Bitmain chips.

Bitcoin is also becoming increasingly difficult to mine, and until its value rebounds from the 34 percent drop it's seen over the last month, the rewards won't be as great as they were just a few weeks ago. Still, at least these recent victories have gone to people running small rigs rather than megalithic operations.

Bitmain has revealed a new liquid-cooled mining rig, the Antminer S19 Pro+ Hyd, that's said to be capable of producing 198 terahashes per second (TH/s) of compute power so miners can keep pace with the increasing difficulty of earning Bitcoin.

Bitcoin.com said the Antminer S19 Pro+ Hyd is nearly twice as powerful as the base Antminer S19 Pro, which boasts a 110 TH/s hashrate, and bests the 140 TH/s hashrate of the next-gen Antminer S19 XP that Bitmain expects to ship by October.

Bitcoin miners will need as much compute power as they can get. The difficulty of mining the cryptocurrency reached an all-time high this month, and with the global hashrate sitting at a record 199 TH/s, earning Bitcoin will only get harder.

The chain goes something like this: More difficult mining requires more powerful machines that will run at higher temperatures. Turning to liquid cooling for the Antminer S19 Pro+ Hyd should allow Bitmain to balance all of those factors.

Not that Bitmain's the first to realize this. CleanSpark announced in December 2021 that it would dunk 5,940 of its Antminer S19j Pro rigs in "a synthetic hydrocarbon compound" to increase its hashrate and reduce its operating costs.

Bitmain said on its website that the Antminer S19 Pro+ Hyd is expected to ship between May and September. The rig is supposed to be used with the Antspace HK3 container, which can hold up to 210 units, and is set to ship between March and July.

This equipment probably won't be cheap—especially since Bitmain said that "the minimum miner quantity will be 190 units"—but the company hasn't revealed official pricing. At the time of writing, both product pages simply say they are "coming soon."

That might be for the best. Bitcoin's value has fallen roughly 34 percent over the last month, so mining operations might not be looking to upgrade their setups despite the increasing difficulty of mining Bitcoin.

Bitcoin mining difficulty this week set a new all-time high of 26.64 trillion as the total hash rate of the Bitcoin network hit a record 199 TH/s. While such a turn of events is completely predictable given Bitcoin algorithms, they both happened while the price of Bitcoin is actually trending down. Is it the beginning of cryptapocalypse? 

To avoid 'oversupply' or 'undersupply' of Bitcoin and consequent drop or increase of its value/purchase power, the difficulty of Bitcoin mining is automatically adjusted based on the cumulative compute performance of the Bitcoin network (the estimated number of total terahashes per second). This is done to maintain the time it takes to mine a block at approximately 10 minutes. As more nodes are added to the network, it increases the difficulty to mine a coin or decreases it when there are fewer nodes available. The difficulty is adjusted every 2,016 blocks (about two weeks). 

After China banned cryptocurrency mining in late May '21, the total hash rate of the Bitcoin network dropped from 180.666 million TH/s on May 14 to 86 million TH/s by July 4. Today, total hash rate of the network sits at 198.864 million TH/s, an all-time high, according to Blockchain.com. Bitcoin mining difficulty also reached its all-time high of 26.64 trillion (up 9.32% from the previous record in mid-May) on January 21 and will continue to increase as more mining machines come online, reports CoinDesk. 

As the Bitcoin network regained its performance since early July (as mining farms from China moved to Kazakhstan, Russia, and even the USA), the price of Bitcoin increased and topped at $67,582 in mid-November. But now that the Bitcoin network has more performance than ever and the mining difficulty is higher, Bitcoin costs $37,962, down 44% from its November peak. 

"Given the soaring price of bitcoin last year, miners booked 'super profits,' so they tried to get more mining capacity online as fast as possible," said Jaran Mellerud, researcher at Oslo's Arcane Research, in a conversation with CoinDesk."From July 2022 to December 2022, most of the largest miners have enormous deliveries of the Antminer's newest ASIC Antminer S19 XP. These deliveries will make the difficulty soar throughout the whole 2022." 

One of the things with Bitcoin is that its price now hardly depends on the amount of Bitcoins mined, which is why fluctuations between $67,000 and $38,000 happen. But as the Bitcoing mining difficulty increases while the price Bitcoin price decreases, will it be that profitable to buy and deploy new mining hardware at a rapid pace going forward?

Update: Intel provided further comments, which we've added in the article below.

Tom's Hardware broke the news yesterday that Intel would present a new "Bonanza Mine" ASIC chip designed for ultra-low-voltage and energy-efficient Bitcoin mining at the upcoming ISSCC conference, but Intel would neither confirm nor deny if it would make the chip available to customers. Today, Fox Business reports that crypto-mining startup GRIID, which is set to go public for an estimated $3.3 billion on the NYSE in the coming days, has signed a long-term contract with Intel for its "BZM2" mining ASICs. This means Intel will in fact compete with its own specialized ASICs for Bitcoin mining, opening up a new market that the company hasn't addressed directly in the past.

GRIID divulged the news via its S-4 filing, which covers its plans to operate three industrial-scale facilities totaling a massive 48 megawatts of power. The company's filing says that it has contracted with both Bitmain and MicroBT for mining ASICs, but has also "[...] entered into a definitive supply contract with Intel to provide ASICs that we expect to fuel our growth. The initial order will supply units to be delivered in 2022 and GRIID will have access to a significant share of Intel's future production volumes."

Bitcoin is typically mined on ASICs, which are specialized processors specifically designed to execute one type of workload. ASICs afford efficiency and performance advantages over more complex types of chips, like CPUs and GPUs, that can perform the same task. As a result, the overwhelming majority of Bitcoin mining occurs on ASICs, with companies like Bitmain providing the specialized silicon to miners at hefty premiums.

Intel sent over the following statement:  

"The SHA-256 ASIC referred to in the paper being presented at ISSCC next month was our first-generation product exploration from 2018. The supply agreement released as part of required SEC disclosures from our customer concerns the second-generation ASIC for which we will provide more details soon." - Intel Spokesperson

The GRIID listing includes several other mentions of the agreement with Intel, saying:

"On September 8, 2021, GRIID entered to a supply agreement (the "Intel Supply Agreement") pursuant to which GRIID may purchase Intel-designed BZM2 ASICs. The Intel Supply Agreement is for an initial four-year term and will automatically renew thereafter for one period unless either party provides at least 90 days' notice prior to the end of the initial four-year term. The Intel Supply Agreement provides GRIID with fixed pricing for the BZM2 ASICs for all orders placed prior to May 2023. In addition, subject to certain conditions, GRIID will be entitled to purchase from Intel at least 25% of all qualified Intel-designed ASICs through approximately May 2025."

The statement refers to the cryptomining ASICs as "BZM2," which appears to be the codename for the Bonanza Mine chips, or a variant thereof. [EDIT: This proved to be accurate: Intel tells us that this is the second-gen chip, whereas the first-gen model will be presented at the ISSCC conference.] Intel will begin delivering ASICs this year, and GRIID has a guarantee for at least 25% of Intel's ASIC supply until May of 2025, signifying that this is a long-term four-year contract. Pricing is also locked in until May 2023.

This confirms that Intel is servicing the crypto mining hardware market, an area where it could enjoy quick growth due to its tremendous production capacity, particularly with older nodes like 14nm that are suitable for this class of accelerator. As we covered yesterday, the primary bitcoin ASIC manufacturers, like Bitmain and MicroBT, suffer from long lead times and charge prohibitively high pricing for their chips, largely because they have to rely on third-party foundries to make the chips. Additionally, foundries like TSMC tend to not give these companies preferential status in their fabs due to the uncertainty of the demand and sporadic nature of cryptomining; instead, the fabs prioritize longer-term steady business from bigger chip designers.

On the other hand, Intel controls its own supply chain and has its own production capacity. The emergence of its Bonanza Mine chips gives the company a nice entry point into the lucrative cryptomining market where its old competitors, like AMD and Nvidia, and new competitors, like Bitmain and MicroBT, have dominated. Intel will also not limit the mining performance of its standard GPUs that are coming to market soon, giving it a dual-pronged strategy of ASICs and GPUs for blockchain/cryptomining markets.

Yesterday, Intel confirmed to Tom's Hardware that the company has worked on crypto accelerators for years but didn't share any details about if it would offer the chips to customers. The announcements come after comments from Intel GPU chief Raja Koduri that confirmed the company was working on new silicon for blockchain/cryptocurrency tech, which you can read about here.

Intel will share more information about the new hardware on Wednesday, February 23rd, at 7 am PST at the ISSCC conference. In addition, the presentation will include a video demo of the chip.

Update: Intel's Bonanza Mine chip has now appeared in a contract with a mining startup, confirming that Intel is entering the cryptomining hardware business. 

Original Article:

It appears that Intel could enter the Bitcoin-mining hardware business, but not with its new upcoming GPUs. The ISSCC conference is a yearly gathering of the best and brightest minds in the chip industry. This year, Intel has a presentation scheduled in the 'Highlighted Chip Releases' category to outline a new "Bonanza Mine" processor, a chip described as an "ultra-low-voltage energy-efficient Bitcoin mining ASIC." That means Intel could soon compete with the likes of Bitmain in the market for specialized ASICs for Bitcoin mining. Intel also commented on the new chip to Tom's Hardware, saying "Intel has done design work around SHA 256 optimized ASICs for several years beginning with pathfinding work done in Intel Labs. We will share more details in the future."

The presentation comes on the heels of comments from Intel's GPU Chief Raja Koduri during a live stream last December, indicating that the company is working on specialized hardware for blockchain/cryptocurrency technologies. 

Bitcoin is typically mined on ASICs, which are specialized processors specifically designed to execute one type of workload. ASICs afford efficiency and performance advantages over more complex types of chips, like CPUs and GPUs, that can perform the same task. As a result, the overwhelming majority of Bitcoin mining occurs on ASICs, with companies like Bitmain providing the specialized silicon to miners at hefty premiums.

The first signs of Intel's interest in mining hardware surfaced in 2018 in the form of a patent for a specialized processing system that uses an optimized SHA-256 datapath (a cryptographic algorithm) for high-performance Bitcoin mining. As with all patents, the end product takes some time to come to market, but Intel has a wealth of experience in hardware-assisted SHA-256 algorithms due to the use of these instructions in its CPU products. Paired with its silicon production capabilities, Intel could be a particularly competitive entrant into the Bitcoin hardware market, especially given the focus on low-power, high-efficiency operation.  

Fast forward to December 29, 2021, and Intel's Systems and Graphics Architect, Senior Vice President and GM Raja Koduri appeared on popular streamer Dr. Lupo's show to promote the company's launch of its first gaming GPUs, the Arc Alchemist lineup that will launch this year.

Intel has signaled very clearly that it will not limit the mining performance of its upcoming discrete gaming GPUs, but the company still doesn't want its GPUs used for that purpose. Naturally, GPUs are used for Ethereum mining and other types of coins — not Bitcoin — but the topic led Koduri to make a few interesting statements about blockchain technology, which is the fundamental underlying tech behind crypto.

Koduri explained that Intel doesn't have an install base as a newcomer to the discrete gaming GPU market. As such, Intel would rather its GPUs be used by gamers than miners. However, Koduri's further comments are telling (28:20 in the above video):

"The other part of the answer is that we do think that this whole blockchain, as you call it, which coins are good  [...], I think blockchain is a transaction thing that is run much more efficiently than the burning of hardware cycles, is something that we are working on." Koduri said, "And that's not a GPU thing, so don't try to confuse that as a GPU thing. GPUs will do graphics, gaming, and all those wonderful things. But being able to do much more efficient blockchain validation at a much lower cost, much lower power, is a pretty solvable problem. And you know, we are working on that, and at some point in time, hopefully not too far into the future, we will kinda share some interesting hardware for that."

Given the timing of the ISSCC presentation, and the subject matter, it appears that Intel will share that information about the new hardware on Wednesday, February 23rd at 7 am PST. The 'DS1' moniker in the presentation listing denotes that Intel will have a video demo of the chip.

For now, it isn't clear if Intel will release the Bonanza Mine chip as a product for the public or if it remains confined to a research project. However, given that the chip is in the "Highlighted Chip Releases: Digital/ML" track and Koduri's comments, it's logical to expect that these chips, or some variant thereof, could be offered to customers in the future.

The primary bitcoin ASIC manufacturers, like Bitmain, suffer from long lead times and charge prohibitively high pricing for their chips, largely because they have to rely on third-party foundries to make the chips. Additionally, foundries like TSMC tend to not give these companies preferential status in their fabs due to the uncertainty of the demand and sporadic nature of cryptomining — instead, the fabs prioritize longer-term steady business from bigger chip designers. All of this is to say that Intel could make a meaningful and lucrative entry into this high-margin market backed by its incredible production capacity, giving it a leg up over competitors. Whether or not that will happen remains to be seen. 

We'll be there at ISSCC to learn more about the new chips. Stay tuned.  

Update 1/18/2022, 11am PT: Added Intel's statement to the article.  

When most people think of Tesla, they think of its bombastic and eccentric CEO Elon Musk and mid-range to high-end electric vehicles that can travel 270 to 400+ miles per charge. However, several people are leveraging the large lithium-ion battery packs inside their cars to mine for cryptocurrency, according to a new report from CNBC. 

Teslas are Point A to Point B vehicles, so you’d be forgiven if cryptomining didn’t immediately spring to mine for usage cases. However, given that the current Model S features a 100 kWh battery pack, it’s possible to harness that energy for mining under ideal circumstances.

In the case of Chris Allessi, he uses a Bitmain Antminer S9 ASIC that is powered by his Model S’ main battery via a power inverter to mine for Bitcoin. Alessi also alleges that he used his car’s central processor, a pokey Intel Atom-based SoC, to mine for Monero using the built-in Tesla web browser. However, we’d imagine that it’s not worth the effort due to the more fruitful prospects of Bitcoin.

But is it really worth it to use your Tesla as a mobile cryptomining platform? Well, it depends. For Allessi, charging his Model S is free for the life of the vehicle using Tesla's vast Supercharging network. This perk was available to all new Tesla vehicles purchased before January 2017. So, in essence, he's able to mine for Bitcoin while not taking a hit on one of the most expensive components of the cryptomining equation: ongoing electricity costs.

While it's technically possible to mine for Bitcoin with all the requisite hardware, Allessi argues that it's not worth it in the end, adding, "And right now, even though the price for Bitcoin has gone up dramatically, so has the difficulty level."

For Tesla owners who aren't so lucky to have free and unlimited Supercharging available, the benefits and profit potential are even more dubious. Siraj Raval, who owns a 2018 Model 3, claims he netted between $400 to $800 per month last year mining for Ethereum. Raval's setup is a bit more complicated. It involves hacking the Model 3's internal software to gain direct access to the CPU, then piggybacking five [unnamed] GPUs that tie into the vehicle's main battery.

"It's a computer with wheels," Raval claimed. "It's so simple to hack into this computer car."

But there's only one problem; unlike Alessi, Raval doesn't have access to unlimited Supercharging. So that means he must rely on charging from the grid at home, which of course, adds to his monthly utility bill. So whether Raval uses his Model 3 to mine or plugs a mining rig directly into a wall outlet at home, he's paying for the electricity used to mine for Ethereum.

One must also remember that the lithium-ion battery pack in Teslas (and all other electric vehicles) degrade over time. According to Tesla's estimates, its batteries will lose roughly 10 percent of maximum charge [PDF] after 200,000 miles. So for a $50,000 Model 3 Long Range with a 358-mile range, you'd be looking at a loss of nearly 36 miles during that span. Mining for cryptocurrency could potentially hasten that wear depending on how crazy people get with their hardware setups, which again begs the question, "What's the point?"

"Why would you want to put that kind of wear and tear on a $40,000 to $100,000 car?" Allessi told CNBC. 

CleanSpark recently announced that it plans to use immersion cooling on nearly 6,000 cryptocurrency mining rigs in a bid to reduce its operating costs and boost performance. That means submerging the systems in liquid to more efficiently manage its operating temperatures. Immersion cooling is becoming increasingly popular among mining companies as they look to squeeze out every bit of performance and reduce costs to maximize profits.

The company said that switching to immersion cooling has "proven to significantly increase the hashrate of bitcoin mining machines, reduce power consumption, and extend the life of the machines—thereby maximizing financial gains."

That's why it plans to immerse 5,940 of the Antminer S19j Pro mining rigs at its Bitcoin mining facility in Norcross, Georgia. CleanSpark said it will start with 8 MW worth of the rigs in February; eventually, that figure is expected to rise to 20 MW.

"Upon completion, the 20 MW project will consist of 180 liquid-filled tanks, with each tank holding 33 units of the Antminer S19j Pro machines—the newest generation series of bitcoin miners on the market—fully immersed in a proprietary cooling liquid," the company said. "The liquid is a synthetic hydrocarbon compound that has no electrical conductivity, is fully biodegradable and safe."

Besides lowering its operating costs, CleanSpark said that switching to immersion cooling should also reduce the impact its mining has on the environment, which has become increasingly concerning to the cryptocurrency industry's critics.

Presumably switching from air-based cooling technologies to liquid immersion cooling will also provide other benefits. It would be a surprise if these mining rigs were to, say, burst into flames while fully immersed in this "synthetic hydrocarbon." 

Bitmain will reportedly bring 56,000 of its Bitcoin mining rigs to Georgia following the Chinese government's decision to shut down cryptocurrency mining operations.

The company's lead product offering is the Antminer series, which use TSMC-made cryptocurrency mining application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) that can match the hashrate of multiple GPUs, making them popular for large-scale operations. (At least until the crypto-crackdown in China forced it to halt sales earlier this year.)

ISW Holdings, which is mid-transition to the new BlockQuarry brand, announced on Tuesday that it will form one such operation in partnership with Bitmain and Bit5ive. The companies are supposed to host 56,000 mining rigs, set to consume up to 200MW of electricity at a BlockQuarry facility called "POD-CITY" in Georgia.

The plan seems to be for Bit5ive to manufacture "BLOQPODS" that can be grouped into "BLOQ PARKS" operated by BlockQuarry. Each pod is said to feature 280 of Bitmain's Antminer S19J mining rigs to offer a 28,000 terahash per second (TH/s) hashrate while consuming up to 1MW of power via "renewable clean energy."

BlockQuarry's website claims that each pod offers "100% mobility and transportability to any place in the planet"—which could be a selling point for cryptocurrency mining operators who don't want to figure out how to move all their equipment again if other governments follow China in banning the industry.

The company soon to be formerly known as ISW Holdings said it "expects to have the first 20 MW of power paired with rigs and running full-out by October 2021" and "all 56k miners hooked up to all 200 MW of power and running full-out by October 2022." At that point, it expects to make over $10 million per month in service fees.

Anyone looking for a five-year-old GPU might be in luck soon. The Block reported that China’s Supreme Court has ordered the return of 485,681 AMD Radeon RX  470 8GB graphics cards to Genesis Mining, which calls itself the "largest cloud Bitcoin mining company," following a legal dispute with its former hosting provider.

Genesis Mining filed its lawsuit in 2019 after the hosting provider, Chuangshiji Technology Limited, allegedly refused to return the graphics cards, as well as 60,580 AntMiner S9 mining rigs, after the companies had a payment-related spat in 2018.

Now the conflict has finally been resolved… just in time for Genesis Mining to figure out what it’s going to do with nearly half a million graphics cards after China’s decision to shut down mining operations throughout many of its provinces.

The Block said that Genesis Mining CEO Marco Streng “declined to specify the current status of the equipment and whether the hardware is in transit to Genesis Mining’s facilities.” It could mine in another country; it could also sell the GPUs.

Both options could prove lucrative. The Block estimated that Genesis Mining could see gross profits of nearly $1 million per day if the rigs hit their potential 14 TH/s hashrate on the Ethash algorithm to mine Ethereum at its current price.

The graphics cards might also fetch a decent price on the secondary market despite their age. It’s nearly impossible to find a modern GPU, let alone one of the best graphics cards, in stock, especially at MSRP, which has forced manufacturers and enthusiasts alike to settle for older models.

A quick eBay search revealed one pre-owned MSI RX 470 8GB with a leading bid of $315. Another pre-owned unit was listed at $500. Even the lower of those two figures would net Genesis Mining nearly $153 million if it were to sell its entire inventory.

It might not be wise to buy one of those graphics cards. But at this point many people are willing to settle for pretty much anything, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if Genesis Mining decided to flood the market with these RX 470s. 

Bitmain, a leading developer of application specific integrated circuits (ASIC) for cryptocurrency mining and the maker of Antminer machines, has confirmed that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) had notified its customers about planned price increases for chip production. 

"On the morning of [August] 25, TSMC notified all customers that all semiconductor processes will increase their prices by 20% from now on," a statement by Bitmain reads. 

Earlier this week we reported that TSMC had told its customers about its plans to increase prices for orders set to be fulfilled starting December. The world's largest foundry intends to increase prices of wafers processed using its newer N7 and N5 process technologies by 10%, while prices of older N16 and thicker nodes by 20%. 

The move will increase TSMC's revenues and profit margins but will increase costs for companies like AMD, Bitmain, and Qualcomm. Boosted production costs could lead to price increases, though it remains to be seen how significantly real-world prices will be affected considering the fact that loads of products are not sold at their MSRPs.  

Normally, contract chipmakers never comment on their pricing and keep all related information strictly confidential. Yet nobody can stop foundry customers from commenting on chip prices, which is exactly what Bitmain has done. 

For Bitmain, chip prices may not be the most important issue. The company sells its Antminer cryptocurrency mining machines at a significant premium and usually sells everything it makes almost immediately. The company needs more ASICs from TSMC, so it's eager to pay extra and ask for additional capacity (if TSMC can provide it, of course) to get more chips and build more Antminers. Now Bitmain might increase the prices of its machines, citing TSMC's price hikes. The company says it will open sales in September for the next batch of Antminers that will be delivered in Q2 or Q3 of 2022. 

"The Bitmain supply chain team will strive to steadily increase the production capacity of Antminers while adhering to manufacturing quality," the statement reads. "The next batch of ant mining machines is under preparation. It is expected to open Q2-Q3 batch sales in 2022 in September, so stay tuned!"

Bitcoin miners could be stuck with used rigs for a while. Bloomberg today reported that Bitmain indefinitely halted most of its sales after Chinese mining operations started dumping their equipment because they're being forced to shut down.

Bitmain makes cryptocurrency mining equipment based on application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) designed specifically for that purpose. The company is best known for Bitcoin and Ethereum-related tools, but it supports other coins, too.

The crypto market's struggles appear to have directly affected Bitmain's financials. Bloomberg reported that the price of the company's "top-tier rigs plunged by about 75% since April." The price of Bitcoin fell more than 50% in that same timeframe.

Halting its sales is supposed to give Bitmain a chance to stabilize the price of its products. (It says it wants to give mining operations a chance to sell their used equipment at higher prices, too, but we doubt that's its primary motivator.)

The company hasn't disclosed when it plans to resume its sales. It should probably be sooner than later, though, based on reports that TSMC plans to start producing a mining-devoted ASIC based on its 5nm process some time in the third quarter.

Bitmain could theoretically modify its order, but as the automotive industry has learned throughout 2021, fabs don't take kindly to changing demand. It wouldn't be hard for TSMBC to find someone else willing to buy 5nm chips in Bitmain's stead.

There is also the question of who'd be willing to purchase Bitmain's mining equipment when sales do resume. China was responsible for most of the world's crypto mining; it will take time for miners in other regions to make up for that loss.

Bitmain does seem to have something resembling a contingency plan: Bloomberg said the company "will continue to sell gear for future delivery of devices used to mine smaller altcoins." Maybe it's time to start looking into ASICs for Dogecoin.

As Bitcoin and Ethereum reach record-high prices, miners can increase their spending on hardware and companies developing mining ASICs waste no time rolling out new models. Bitmain, a designer of mining accelerators, has reportedly placed an order with TSMC to produce an ASIC using the foundry's latest N5 fabrication process (5nm).  

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is expected to start making Bitmain ASICs using its N5 technology starting the third quarter of the year and 'ramp up' its output for Bitmain substantially in Q1 2022, reports DigiTimes. It is unclear how high demand for mining ASICs made using a leading-edge manufacturing technology will be, but it may well reduce TSMC's ability to supply other chips that are designed for its N5 fabrication process. 

TSMC's N5 manufacturing technology offers industry-leading transistor density and power efficiency, just what the doctor ordered for mining ASICs. But these advantages come at a price. So far TSMC's N5 process has been adopted by Apple and Huawei, two companies selling high-end smartphones, tablets, and PCs. For them, SoC prices are not as important as for companies selling chips (what they sell are $1,000+ gadgets, not silicon), so they can afford to be early adopters of TSMC's advanced technologies. MediaTek, a mobile SoC company, is projected to adopt N5 technology shortly too, albeit for its top-of-the-range mobile processor.  

As it turns out, Bitmain is a yet another company that can afford to develop an N5 design and order its production at TSMC. There is no information about Bitmain's 5nm chip, but it is logical to expect the company to tangibly increase hash rate of the ASIC when compared to existing offerings. 

Bitmain's latest Antminer S19j miner has a hash rate of 90 TH/s as well as a power consumption of 3100W. The price of the unit is $5,017.

Anyone interested in doing some crypto mining at home, can get started by checking out our tutorials on how to mine Ethereum and how to optimize your GPU for mining, along with our list of the best mining GPUs.

Chinese mining firm Bitmain has released a teaser of the company's upcoming Antminer E9 Ethereum miner. The company stated that the Antminer E9 would launch very soon, although it didn't commit to a specific date.

The Antminer E9 could be the answer to gamers' prayers. If cryptocurrency miners jump on this new ASIC miner, they could forgo buying Nvidia's Ampere offerings, and maybe, just maybe, gamers will finally be able to pick up a gaming graphics card. The shelves won't magically fill themselves since cryptocurrency miners aren't the sole cause of the graphics card shortage; we can also blame the pandemic for that as well. Perhaps we could see more stock on the market, though.

The Antminer E9 reportedly delivers an Ethereum hash rate up to 3 GH/s, equivalent to 32 Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 (Ampere) graphics cards mining in unison. If Bitmain delivers on its promise, the Antminer E9 will be the fastest ASIC miner available and even outperform Linzhi's Phoenix Ethash ASIC miner that delivers up to 2,600 MH/s.

Bitmain didn't reveal too many details about the Antminer E9 except that it draws up to 2,556W and flaunts a power efficiency of 0.85 J/M. Therefore, the Antminer E9 isn't just faster than the Phoenix miner but also more energy-efficient. For comparison, the Phoenix miner pulls 3,000W, meaning the Antminer E9 has 14.8% lower power consumption.

Obviously, an ASIC miner of the caliber of 32 GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards will not come cheap. The current speculation on Twitter is that the Antminer E9 could sell for over $20,000 easily. Linzhi's Phoenix miner sells for between $11,300 and $13,700. Even at $30,000, the Antminer E9 could be a very attractive option for mining farms since GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards start at $2,500 nowadays, and purchasing 32 of them comes down to a whopping $80,000. 

On the other hand, Nvidia probably won't be too pleased with the news of the Antminer E9 since the chipmaker's Ampere graphics cards are selling like hotcakes. Let's not forget that between $100 to $300 million of Nvidia's Q4 revenue originated from cryptomining sales alone.

On top of that, Nvidia recently rolled out its Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP) products that focus on Ethereum mining. A little over a week ago, Nvidia updated its Q1 forecast for CMP sales to peak at $150 million, three times higher than its original estimate.

The Antminer E9 won't put a dent in Nvidia's cryptomining business unless Bitmain can produce the Ethereum miner on a large scale. It will certainly be a challenge given the global electronic component shortage that's hitting every industry.

Bitcoin ASIC design houses Bitmain and Canaan will be among the first companies to adopt TSMC’s 5nm. Bitmain received its first 5nm chips back from the fab in December, while Canaan is expected to have 5nm chips in the first quarter of 2020.

In December, Bitmain reportedly got the first test-grade 5nm bitcoin mining samples from TSMC. 8BTC.com reported that Canaan will follow suit and will be equipped with 5nm chips in the first quarter of 2020. This would be a slight concession in time to market to Bitmain, since Canaan was the first with a 7nm test chip.

As this is likely the result of the chip’s tape-out though, this means it could take another six to twelve months until the chips are ready for volume production. It is believed that Apple will be one of the first companies to adopt TSMC’s 5nm process. TSMC is likely to prioritize production capacity to Apple, making the 5nm chips from Bitmain and Canaan more symbolic than practical, 8BTC notes.

Nevertheless, 5nm is expected to provide a meaningful improvement in performance, power and area compared to the 7nm process. Leveraging EUV, TSMC claims a 1.84x logic density increase and has stated its yield improvement is faster than any previous node. It will go into volume production in the first half of 2020.

Bitcoin mining went industrial a few years ago. Because it continually gets harder to mine cryptocurrency, most people can no longer do so fast enough to make a profit, leaving the creation of new bitcoins to massive companies with serious hardware. Bitmain is one of those companies, yet it disclosed on May 7 that it decreased its Bitcoin mining production by a whopping 88% between April and May.

The company was tight-lipped about why it recently decreased production by such a staggering amount. Coindesk requested comment and was only told, "It is [in the] natural course of the mining business where the hash rate owned by one body at one instant may be owned by someone else at another instant." (Bitmain is based in China, so we suspect that message was translated somewhere along the way.)

We've reached out to Bitmain to see if it will offer more information about the decreased production. In the meantime, the company's disclosure updatedon May 7 revealed that the combined hashrate of all its hardware dedicated to the SHA-256 cryptographic hash used by Bitcoin for the last 30 days was 237.29 quadrillion hashes per second (PH/s). The previous disclosure pegged the company's production at 2,072 PH/s.

This decrease isn't only surprising because of its size. It also comes after Bitcoin's price has risen nearly 60% so far this year, and Coindesk reported in March that numerous cryptocurrency mining companies were actually planning to increase production this summer, largely because the start of the rainy season in China should lead to cheaper hydroelectric power. Lower costs + higher prices = greater profits.

It's possible that Bitmain's production didn't fall so much as it was reallocated, with the company renting out its hardware to other companies. Maybe it's not counting that hardware as being "Bitmain-owned" for the purpose of that disclosure. Maybe it thinks Bitcoin's price will fall in the near future. Or perhaps it was instructed to cool its jets--or rather its mining equipment--by the Chinese government.

That last possibility wouldn't come as a surprise. The Chinese National Development and Reform Commission announced on April 8 that it wanted the public's opinion on a modified list of industries to curtail or nix entirely. Cryptocurrency mining was one of the industries put on the chopping block. Tuesday was the last day the Chinese public could offer its opinion on the new list; maybe that's not a coincidence.

Bitmain is a small company from China that makes ASIC miners for cryptocurrencies, and it’s about to be every gamer’s best friend. The company today announced the Antminer E3, which is an ASIC miner engineered for mining Ethereum. In theory, these new ASIC miners should alleviate some of the pressure that the GPU market currently faces.

Last year, around this time, an as-yet little-known GPU-mineable cryptocurrency called Ethereum started to gain traction in the market, and its value began to skyrocket, which kicked off the great cryptocurrency craze of 2017 in earnest. Within weeks of Ethereum’s breakout, the GPU market started to feel the brunt of the excitement, and by June, graphics card prices had begun to spiral out of control. To date, we’re still feeling the “Ethereum Effect,” with graphics cards selling for far more than MSRP (if you can find them).

Recently, GPU mining profits have started to dwindle, but a cursory check online for cryptocurrency mining discussions indicates that the lower profit margins aren’t scaring off the large scale-mining operations as fast as you might hope. Though, if history is any indication of the future, as it often is, Bitmain’s Antminer E3 Ethereum ASIC miner could disrupt the Ethereum GPU-mining market.

You may recall that several years ago, you could mine Bitcoin with your home PC. These days, it’s not possible to mine Bitcoin at a profitable rate with a standard PC. The Bitcoin mining market is now dominated by ASIC miners, which are engineered to do one thing: mine Bitcoin. These specialized devices are more powerful, and significantly more efficient at mining than graphics cards and CPUs.

Ethereum is a lot like Bitcoin, in that it is built on a blockchain with an immutable ledger, and it has a finite number of coins. However, Ethereum was supposed to be ASIC-resistant because it relies heavily on fast memory, whereas typical ASIC miners feature powerful processors that can crunch the numbers, but not much in the way of memory.

Bitmain didn’t reveal the full details of the Antminer E3, so we’re not sure how the company solved the memory challenge. However, the specifications that Bitmain did release indicate that the Antminer E3 ASIC miners will soon render GPUs obsolete for Ethereum.

Bitmain said the upcoming Antminer E3 ASIC would offer 180MH/s of mining performance and consume 800w of power, which is an unheard of level of efficiency. To put that into perspective, our scrapped together “profitable” Ethereum miner pumps out 93MH/s from a combination of one R9 380, one R9 380X, one R9 390X, and one R9 Fury. That machine draws roughly 950w from the wall, which is profitable, but the gains are dropping, and it may soon be untenable to operate it. Our system isn’t the most efficient miner, to be sure, but it doesn’t make sense to spend the money on an “efficient” GPU miner with 10-series cards.

The biggest death knell for the GPU Ethereum mining market is the Antminer E3's price. Bitmain is asking $800 for each unit, which massively undercuts the current rate for a GPU-based system. To get 180MH/s out of a GPU miner, you would need six GTX 1080 Tis or nine GTX 1060s. In today’s GPU market, you’re looking at well over $6,000 (probably closer to $7,000 once you add power supplies and other equipment) to build a rig like that with GTX 1080 Tis, and roughly $4000 for the GTX 1060 rig. And that's you can get your hands on the cards in the first place.

With those numbers, it’s easy to see that Bitmain’s ASIC has the potential to kill GPU-based Ethereum mining rather quickly. However, it’s too early to get excited about the death of GPU-based mining. There are many cryptocurrencies out there, and the death of Ethereum mining could simply direct GPU miners to another coin.

Bitmain expects the first batch of Antminer E3 units to roll out between July 16 and July 31. The company was accepting pre-orders today, but the first batch sold out before we caught wind of the announcement.