Bitcoin Global News (BGN)
August 15, 2018 -- ADVFN Crypto NewsWire -- Last week Bitmain
made headlines for finishing their IPO, and the week prior for a
new mining facility in the United States. Their business is
primarily semiconductor design, which has earned them the majority
share of cryptocurrency mining where ASIC miners are applicable,
but their business is laying the foundation to support more
versatile income streams. The ability of Bitmain to create novel
hardware design for mining gives them strong influence over the
market.
Mining Tech Moves
Miners
Founders Jihan Wu and Micree Zhan
started Bitmain immediately after implementing
ASIC compatibility for mining. They were the first to do so, and
now hold the majority of the mining hardware market.
This is important, because it can
force miners to purchase new hardware, driving profits to whichever
company is able to provide the needware equipment. Bitmain is also
involved in producing hardware, and can feed themselves business in
this way. This also influences the population that is doing the
mining.
Current miners of a coin that is
mine with GPUs or CPUs would be forced to mine other coins if
Bitmain released the code to mine the coin with ASICs. This
happened when the Monero community forked their blockchain to
maintain ASIC-resistance. It’s essentially a form of
tech-segregation. ASICs are in short supply, and extremely
expensive.
Miners Move The
Market
Bitmain’s mining portfolio is
composed Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Dash, Ethereum and a few
others, such as Siacoin, which is only a tiny percent. But
their leadership and mining community are following suit with
Monero, by forking their blockchain to resist ASIC mining
capability.
This holds to decentralization
principals. Bitmain’s dominance of the mining market, and
capability to produce ability to manipulate the growth of coins.
Miners are the basis of cryptocurrencies. If there is no mining
community, a cryptocurrency cannot function, and the value of the
coin will drop. Once it has dropped low enough, it’s unlikely
miners would bother to put there computing power to that
coin.
Dual Purpose Funding For
Expansion
Bitmain’s valuation rose to $15
billion with the completion of the IPO, but they company hope to
reach $30 billion when listed to Hong Kong Stock Exchange next
month. They had previously been funded by Circle, which highlights
a mutually beneficial relationship. Circle has added cryptocurrency
support this year, with plans to extend to a mobile wallet and even
ideas of banking services. Bitmain covers the root technology of
cryptocurrencies, and the hardware support that Circle
doesn’t.
Bitmain co-founder Jihan Wu noted
one of the most important aspects in an interview in June, that “Circle
has been much more experienced with regulators. That’s why Bitmain
is interested in Circle as well.”
The announcement of the mining
project is indicative of Bitmain’s interest in diversifying their
capabilities and gaining foothold in the U.S. chip market. The
facility could function as a mixed-use mining and data center
space. It’s being built in a former smelting facility in Rockdale,
Texas, and will cost nearly $500 million. It will be fully
operational by 2019, and create around 400 jobs.
By: BGN Editorial Staff
News:
Bitmain
Cryptocurrency
Mining