Bitfury bringing mining back to consumers?

Bitcoin mining was intended to be available to anyone with a AMD GPU, but with the advent of ASIC miners, bitcoin mining’s initial investment for a profitable operation has soared. Bitfury is introducing a 16nm ASIC chip which excpetional efficency at low power mode. Will it change the mining community?

Bitfury is one of the most respected bitcoin mining hardware supplies in the world. Supplying chips, R&D, they have continuously released revolutionary bitcoin mining technology.

Bitfury is the most reputable bitcoin mining hardware supplier due in part to its phenomenal track-record, but also their continued ability to gain investors’ money. Recently, they acquired $20,000,000 in funding according to this coindesk article.

Bitfury isn’t without competition in bitcoin mining

Bitfury aims to double the efficiency (performance-per-watt) of its chips every six to twelve months. Not many suppliers can claim that as well. KnCMiner hasn’t had trouble gaining funding either, and has plans for an arctic-cooled facility. Why the arctic? Because it supplies cold air to keep the powerful hardware cool and the area supplies Europe’s cheapest electricity. 2015 was a tough year for bitcoin mining manufacturers as many companys had to scale back their mining due to lower bitcoin prices, lack of interest and poor financial planning.

What happened to all the bitcoin mining hardware companies?

2015 was the fall of many major bitcoin miner manufacturers. We believe this is due to the market being thinned out too quickly. THis allowed the fastest developing companies to flourish as their R&D stayed ahead of the others who could not keep up with the consumer demand.

Will this really bring mining back to consumers?

Although these chips will be high powered, efficient beasts, Bitfury will remain open in supplying them. I feel that is only fair as bitcoin mining hardware, quickly looses efficiency as mining difficulty is always (most of the time) increasing. Bitfury’s CEO Vavilov reinforced this ideain the following quote:

“As a responsible player in the Bitcoin community, we will be working with integration partners and re-sellers to make our unique technology widely available, ensuring that the network remains decentralized as we move into the exahash era together.”

The video is a must-watch for those interested in bitcoin mining. The video demonstrates the feature set and efficiency bitfury’s new chips have.

Bitfury Releases 16nm sneak-peak video of high-efficiency, low-power Bitcoin mining chips (BF8162C16)

This video demonstrates the low power, high efficiency chips bitfury is working on. Although not the most exciting video, it’s a sign that the bitcoin mining hardware market is still going strong. This new devlopment means that chips with such low power might become accessible to consumers. With bitfury’s latest chips becoming the most efficient bitcoin mining chips ever made. These new chips are hashing, or mining bitcoin, at 0.006 W per GH/s or ~15ghs/W. This means that a USA outlet, with a 15A fuse, at 120V supplying 1800W. A 1600W miner could theoretically power 24,000 Gh/s or 24 Th/s. This is incredible efficiency never before seen. The most powerful part of this video was the fact that the chip was not being cooled. This owuld surely not be the case for a miner running 24/7, but any miner/computer I’ve seen mining bitcoins is LOUD and HOT.

Bitfury’s new chips will change how people mine bitcoin

Let’s hope that Bitfury won’t line their pockets, or other company’s pockets before releasing the technology in consumer grade applications. Bitfury sells its chips to third parties, who assemble the mining chips into a miner. Even if Bitfury brings this hardware to consumers, it could change the way we understand miners, a 100 W miner could power at least 1500 gh/s, depending on electricity cost and difficulty, this could be a vastly more profitable endeavor. For comparison, the antminer S3 gets 478 Gh/s on 366 Watts, or 1.3 Gh/s per Watt, truly incredible.

From households to large companys offering bitcoin mining in the cloud. The release of these chips will undoubtedly be the most revolutionary step in bitcoin mining. This could make mining more affordable, and draw more investors to bitcoin.