There are several ASIC manufacturers to choose from in the market. Bitmain (Antminer) holds the largest market share at 74.34%, followed by MicroBT (Whatsminer) with 17.98%. Canaan (Avalon) is the third-largest manufacturer and the only one that is publicly listed. All these companies originated in China and have production facilities in various Asian countries. Additionally, MicroBT also assembles miners in the United States.
Throughout 2023, the top three ASIC manufacturers (Bitmain, MicroBT, and Canaan) all introduced new models. In addition to air-cooled ASICs, Bitmain and MicroBT both released hydro-cooled models. The MicroBT 50 & 60 series and the Canaan 14 series also include dedicated immersion miners.
Sub 20 J/TH Bitcoin Miners
In September 2023, Bitmain announced the launch of the S21 series, which is expected to hit the market in early 2024. The air-cooled version of the Antminer S21 boasts an efficiency of 17 J/TH, while the hydro-cooled S21 Hyd achieves an impressive 16 J/TH. Following the S21, Bitmain also unveiled the T21 series. The T21 offers the flexibility to switch between Normal Energy Mode (NEM) and High Energy Mode (HEM). In NEM, it reaches 190 TH/s at 19 J/TH, while in HEM, it achieves 233 TH/s with an efficiency of 22
J/TH.
The Whatsminer M60 series is available in air-cooled, hydro-cooled, and immersion-cooling versions. The S series boasts an efficiency of 18.5 J/TH, while the non-S series achieves just under 20 J/TH. The M66S immersion-cooled miner can even reach an efficiency of 17 J/TH when operated in low power mode. Canaan introduced the Avalon A14 series. The A1446I immersion-cooled miner runs at 170 TH/s with a power consumption of 3320W, resulting in an efficiency of 19.5 J/TH.
Other Bitcoin ASIC Miner Manufacturers
In addition to the top three manufacturers, there are also smaller players in the ASIC miner market, such as Auradine, DesiweMiner, Ebang, ePIC, StrongU, iPollo, and Goldshell. These manufacturers often try to differentiate themselves from the top players by offering unique features. Here are some examples:
ePIC Blockchain offers ASICs designed in North America. Their machines are air-cooled but immersion-ready and utilize a Universal Mining Control (UMC) board & firmware, allowing for dynamic tuning.
DesiweMiner stands out with two notable features. Firstly, their smart boost machines automatically overclock. Secondly, the control board includes a display showing information such as the IP address, power usage, hashrate, and efficiency. Auradine, a Silicon Valley-based company, produces the TeraFlux miners which feature EnergyTune. This program allows for quick power adjustments without system rebooting. Both power and hashrate can be adjusted to the desired target, with the system automatically tuning accordingly.
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More About Choosing a Bitcoin ASIC Miner
Crypto mining equipment comes in different types. However, the equipment's hashing power, energy consumption, and mining rewards are the key factors that determine mining profitability. Investors aim to balance miner cost, hash rate, power consumption, durability, and overall cost-effectiveness. Typically, a miner can be a CPU, GPU, ASIC, or FPGA.
CPU Mining in 2024
CPU mining was the first method used to mine Bitcoin. With a hash rate of around 10 megahashes per second, Satoshi used a computer's basic central processing unit to verify the genesis block. However, due to the increasing mining difficulty on the Bitcoin network, the computing power provided by CPU miners could no longer keep up. Miners had to shift to GPU miners for profitable Bitcoin mining. Although you can still mine some cryptocurrencies using CPU miners, mining BTC with a CPU is no longer profitable.
GPU Mining in 2024
Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) emerged to alleviate the increasing complexity of crypto mining. The first Bitcoin mining with a GPU took place in October 2010, leveraging the GPU's parallel processing power, enabling them to compute the cryptographic puzzles faster and more efficiently. Their primary advantage is their ability to run multiple operations in parallel, and miners can even use multi-GPU setups to run concurrently. With most modern GPUs, you have up to 2000 times the hashing power delivered by a 20-kilohash CPU miner.
FPGA Mining in 2024
With the continuous volatility of the crypto industry in terms of crypto prices, mining complexity, and mining costs, there's a constant need to mine more efficiently. Consequently, field-programmable gate array (FPGA) miners were introduced to make mining more lucrative. An FPGA miner is an electric circuit that can be programmed and reconfigured to perform different tasks. They offer up to five times the cost and energy efficiency of GPU miners, and you can use the same equipment to mine different cryptocurrencies with different algorithms.
ASIC Mining in 2024
Despite the convenience of FPGA miners, investors still sought more improved mining machines that provide efficiency in energy consumption and initial cost. Furthermore, crypto mining was growing into a large-scale billion-dollar industry, even as competition among nodes and mining difficulty increased.
Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) provided a workable solution due to their high computing power. Ideally, ASIC miners are much more powerful than popular GPU mining rigs. Unlike GPU miners, whose power is measured in megahashes per second,
ASIC's power is computed in terahashes per second. The first ASICs were also 200 times more powerful than the standard GPU miner.
While crypto mining remains an ever-evolving industry, ASIC miners continue to be the linchpin of Bitcoin mining. They are uniquely tailored to validate transactions on blockchain networks more efficiently, and above all, their prices have reached an all-time low in the last couple of months.
