I still don't see why we aren't seeing new ASIC suppliers set up shop. Is there a significant amount of R&D that goes into creating these chips?
So yeah, there's a huge amount of R&D and competition to get the best stuff out there. And Bitmain dominates.
You're right that Bitmain dominates ASIC Bitcoin miners, but why? Surely there are more than enough capable engineers to design ASIC miners in the US and some VC's willing to fund them, or is there something I'm missing? Manufacturing costs would be high in the US, but it's not like foreign manufacturing is an unknown concept to US based companies.
I completely agree as of 2018, but Bitcoin has been around for almost 10 years now and has seen "real" returns for the past 4 or 5 years. I suppose my question should be restated as "Did Bitmain take a gamble and it paid off?" I still find it strange that not a single prominent US based BTC miner manufacturer has hit the scene.
I would say that Bitmain was a huge gamble in the early days since the ASICs depreciate very fast and thus any delay in developing them can be fatal. But after selling eight generations of hardware at very high margins they can probably coast now.
None of them produced anything. CoinTerra was the only that didn't close as a result of charges related to fraudulent activity. Not to be a jerk, but that's not what I was asking. You provided supporting evidence to my claim.
>I would say that Bitmain was a huge gamble in the early days since the ASICs depreciate very fast and thus any delay in developing them can be fatal. But after selling eight generations of hardware at very high margins they can probably coast now.
That's more in line with what I asked. I'm not in disagreement, but rather looking for any research into why the mining market currently stands this way.
With net worth of $2.6 billion Peter Thiel could lose $26 million and make it back with a 1% fluctuation of the market.
Other people less so.
>Just a hunch: No-one in the industry with the means to do anything about it thinks the trend is sustainable enough to invest in a 6mo-1yr setup followed by another year before profit?
My impression is there's a significant amount in the investing class who see Bitcoin as a hyped bubble. Sure, there's Peter Thiels, but there's also people like Warren Buffett who won't touch it with a ten foot pole at the moment. (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/10/bitcoin-a...).
You don't need ASICs per se for general blockchain technology... the main advantage of ASICs are speed of mining, something that probably won't be needed as much once the general mania pops one way or another. So an ASIC mining chip seems to me fairly vulnerable. For instance, if you just spent a million making a lot of ASIC mining chips, news like China possibly starting to crack down on mining (https://www.ft.com/content/adfe7858-f4f9-11e7-88f7-5465a6ce1...) would probably not make you happy.
I think 21.co got AH financing on the idea of building a "miner for the masses" https://www.coindesk.com/21-intel-bitcoin-mining-strategy/ but they pivoted since then.
They could probably provide a more informed comment.
Manufacturing costs in the US wouldn't just be high, they would be impossible to actually get done. MOQ on something like this in American factories wouldn't be in the 100-500 range, probably not even 1,000. American factories are extremely non-agile, non-risk taking, and generally do not serve startups very well.
BTC being over $10k is a very new thing, too. The insane mining profits at a 1MB blocksize + $10k+ price may not last and is a new signal. It takes a lot of time, effort, luck, and perseverance - and Jihan is a formidable enemy. Sometimes it's best to just avoid a high-risk area where many, many others failed.
-Chinese reverse engineering and lax IP laws aren't actually that lax; Westerners just pretend it is.
-Bitmain isn't a US corporation, it is Chinese.
-The owner of Bitmain is Jihan Wu.
Whoa, thanks for calling out my biases O_O
> lax IP laws aren't actually that lax
I thought one of the big initiatives for the TPP was to enforce US IP in Asia?
...
Even if it was, how is this relevant to Bitmain, run by Jihan Wu, who is not American?