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

Bitcoin (COIN:BTCGBP)
Historical Stock Chart
From Feb 2024 to Mar 2024 Click Here for more Bitcoin Charts.
Bitcoin (COIN:BTCGBP)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2023 to Mar 2024 Click Here for more Bitcoin Charts.