Quantum
Blockchain Technologies Plc
(“QBT” or “the Company”)
Porting
Method A and Method B into Commercial Miners
HIGHLIGHTS
-
Engaging
with North American cryptocurrency miners
-
Redesign
of Method B for
Chinese manufactured mining machines, which opens up a further 75%
of total bitcoin mining market for QBT
-
Method A
increases mining performance by nearly 10%
-
Method B
increases mining probability by 2.6 times
Quantum
Blockchain Technologies Plc (AIM: QBT), a disruptive software and
ASIC chip developer focused on changing the way Bitcoin is mined,
reports that in the past three months, the Company has engaged with
a number of the largest North American cryptocurrency miners in
order to better understand their commercial needs. This typically
entails these parties providing QBT with a number of the most
commonly used mining rigs available in the market for the Company
to study and implement the porting of its Method A and Method B
chip enhancements.
The
Company is targeting not only Intel’s Blockscale based miners, but
also the most popular mining rigs produced in China, which are used by more than 75% of the
global Bitcoin market(1}.
However, due to lack of publicly available technical documents
concerning the mining machines produced by Asia-based manufacturers, the Company has been
faced with a very challenging software engineering project.
Nonetheless, through the partial redesign of Method B, the Company
can start porting on the equipment made by the largest mining rig
manufacturer in that region. The Company’s R&D Machine Learning
team has been able to quickly modify Method B while retaining the
entirety of its performance enhancements, as confirmed through
internal testing undertaken by the R&D team. QBT expects that
this encouraging result will (once the porting of Method B on the
mining rig firmware has been completed), allow the Company to
pursue commercial arrangements for the deployment of QBT’s methods
in the mining hardware market segment.
As a
result, the Company is looking to engage with potential partners to
deploy Method B in Chinese produced mining rigs, which currently
represent over 75%{1}
of all
operational machines in the Bitcoin mining industry. In monetary
terms, at the current overall hashing power of the Bitcoin network,
this represents more than 2.5 million miners{2},
costing an estimated USD 5 billion at
an average cost of USD 2,000 per
mining rig.
Installing
QBT’s Method B on Chinese manufactured rigs is anticipated to
increase the success rate of the mining probability of these
machines by 2.6 times. Because of the intrinsic nature of Method B,
in order to achieve the same mining success rate a mining
enterprise would have to increase its hashing power by 50%. QBT
believes, therefore, that employing Method B QBT believes this
could provide meaningful cost savings to the whole bitcoin mining
industry, in terms of reduced aggregate capital expenditure.
Furthermore, increasing the hashing power, via Method B’s software,
without adding new miners could represent a major energy
saving.
Further
announcements in relation to the porting of Method B on Asian
manufactured mining rigs will be made in due course.
Francesco Gardin, CEO and Chairman of QBT
commented: “QBT
has now entered into the engineering phase of its first two
products: Method A which our laboratory tests show an increase in
the mining performance by nearly 10% and Method B, which increase
the mining probability by 2.6 times. The overall response from the
North American miners has been encouraging ; by increasing the
hashing power, without increasing CAPEX could, in their view, be a
game-changer, especially in the current market, where the price of
Bitcoin has fallen below $30,000 and
with the next ’halving’ expected in about nine
months.
“The
Company, therefore, is focusing its main efforts on speeding up the
porting process of both Method A and B in
order to reach commerciality.”
This announcement contains inside information for the purposes
of Article 7 of the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) 596/2014 as it
forms part of UK domestic law by virtue of the European Union
(Withdrawal) Act 2018 ("MAR"), and is disclosed in accordance with
the Company's obligations under Article 17 of MAR.
For further information please contact:
Quantum Blockchain Technologies Plc
Francesco Gardin, CEO and Executive
Chairman +39
335 296573
SP Angel Corporate Finance (Nominated
Adviser & Broker)
Jeff Keating +44
(0)20 3470 0470
Kasia Brzozowska
Leander (Financial
PR)
Christian
Taylor-Wilkinson
+44
(0) 7795 168 157
About
Quantum
Blockchain
Technologies
Plc
QBT (AIM: QBT) is an AIM listed investment company with a strategic
focus on Quantum Computing, Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies and
Artificial Intelligence. The Company has commenced an aggressive
R&D and investment programme in the dynamic world of Blockchain
Technology, in order to disrupt the current method of bitcoin
mining, as well as discovering other advanced blockchain
applications.
Glossary of Terms:
Halving:
Bitcoins
have a finite supply, which makes them scarce. The total amount
that will ever be issued is 21 million. The number of bitcoins
generated per block is decreased 50% every four years. This is
called “halving.” The final halving will take place in the year
2140. [3]
Hashing
power: Hash power or hashing power is the power that a computer or
hardware uses to run and solve different hashing algorithms, such
as SHA-256 in the case of bitcoin.
Mining
rig: A mining rig is a special hardware system, usually based on
graphic processing units (GPU), or dedicated ASIC chips, used for
mining cryptocurrency.
Porting:
In computer science, it is a process of adapting, sometimes with
modifications, a software component to enable its use on a platform
different from the original one. Porting is done when the software
is somehow adjusted, not when the source code is completely
rewritten in a different programming language.
[1]https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2023/06/13/bitmains-s19-bitcoin-miners-account-for-bulk-of-network-hashrate-says-new-research/
[2]https://5264302.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/5264302/special-insights/coinmetrics-research_the-signal-and-the-nonce.pdf
[3]
https://quantumblockchaintechnologies.co.uk/investor-relations/glossary