Bitmain's Guo Yiliang: Chip research and development is Bitmain's core competitiveness. It is expected to launch a new generation of water-cooled mining machines by the end of the year

The development of crypto mining is entering a mature and stable scale stage. The total market value of global cryptocurrencies has exceeded 2 trillion US dollars, and the continued popularity of the crypto market has driven institutions to enter the mining market. Against this background, the global computing power distribution pattern has undergone new changes, the scale of overseas computing power has gradually expanded, and mining concept stocks have gradually emerged in the US capital market. Faced with the changing trend of today's digital currency mining industry, Bitmain is accelerating its development after the "2020 Magic Series". This world-leading technology company, which was established as early as 2013 and has achieved full coverage of mining machines, mining pools, mining farms, cloud computing power, energy recycling and other fields, seems to be brewing and welcoming the new highlights of the 2021 mining revolution.

On April 24, the "2021 New Infrastructure Blockchain Summit" hosted by Inbit and co-hosted by Golden Finance and Yikuang was held in Chengdu. At the meeting, Golden Finance interviewed Guo Yiliang, the head of sales and business in China for Bitmain, and had a dialogue on the current mining trend, Bitmain's in-depth layout and new ASIC mining machine technologies.

New concepts and new journeys rooted in the computing power development ecosystem

Since its establishment in 2013, Bitmain has been at the forefront of the industry with its technological innovation. In April, Bitmain also revealed that it would soon launch a new Ethereum mining machine, the E9, and said that the new Ethereum mining machine would be a "game changer" with a computing power equivalent to 32 Nvidia 3080 graphics cards. This means that the E9 can calculate at a speed of about 3040MH/s.

Not only Ethereum, but also Bitcoin mining machine sales, Bitmain has continuously set new records. On April 13, Integrated Ventures, a software company in Pennsylvania, USA, announced that it had purchased 4,800 Bitcoin (BTC) mining equipment from Bitmain; on April 15, Taoping signed an agreement with Bitmain to purchase Antminer S19jPro, costing about 157 million yuan; on April 16, Clean Spark, a Nasdaq-listed company, had signed a contract to purchase 22,680 Bitcoin mining machines to meet "urgent needs" and increase production capacity. It can be said that as a leading mining machine manufacturer in the industry, Bitmain has already made huge profits in this round of bull market. However, Bitmain's layout is far more than that.

At the Shenzhen Summit on March 12 this year, Bitmain Chairman Zhan Ketuan made clear the future development direction of Bitmain. He said that Bitmain will continue to be rooted in computing power, adhering to the concept of "long-term, win-win, and loyalty", and achieve long-term mutual benefit and win-win with more excellent supply chain partners and customers, and constantly enrich and give benefits to ecological partners in the fields of mining pools, mining farms, cloud computing power, energy recycling, etc., to provide solid guarantee for customers' long-term investment value.

It is worth mentioning that Bitmain's sales business will also be expanded from a single mining machine sales model to multiple modules of business, including mining machine sales, mining pool promotion, mining farm construction, after-sales business, Ant Academy promotion, AntSentry operation and maintenance, etc., providing customers with high-quality, stable and comprehensive solutions from purchase, installation and configuration to mining machine operation and maintenance.

Old models have considerable profits, and mining resources are becoming increasingly tight

Facing the hot market in the crypto industry, Guo Yiliang shared from the perspective of mining machine sales that from the several mining machine pre-sale activities held by Bitmain last year and even this year, the market demand for mining machines is very urgent. Under the current market conditions, the profits of S9 and some other brands of old models are also very considerable, and they will continue to operate for a period of time, which means that the resources of the mining farm will gradually become tight. It is expected that by the end of this year's flood season, they may be more scarce than last winter.

As a leading company in chip R&D and mining machine production, Bitmain's original intention is not only to produce and sell more mining machines, but also to hope that after customers get the Antminer, they can have a high-quality and stable mining farm to host and operate. This year, Bitmain will also spend human resources to actively seek some companies to build a batch of large-scale and high-standard mining farms. In addition to mining farm resources, mining machine operation and maintenance are also business modules that the industry needs to continuously improve and expand. Ant Academy is a training service project launched by Bitmain. The ultimate goal is to allow more people to learn to operate and maintain Antminers, making the entire market more and more convenient. At the same time, AntSentry, the operation and maintenance software that Bitmain has used internally for many years, will soon be available on the market, and it will be free and open.

As the number of mining machines gradually increases this year, the scale of mining farms is also gradually expanding. The flood season is coming, and a large number of machines will be relocated. However, the existing mining machine maintenance points and maintenance personnel are obviously not enough to meet the speed of mining machine repair. Therefore, Bitmain is now planning to expand more authorized maintenance points and franchise maintenance points, increase the coverage area of ​​maintenance stations, and ensure the operation qualification rate and yield of Antminers. This is also one of Bitmain’s recent strategic directions.

Launched 5nm model and expected to launch a new generation of water-cooled mining machine by the end of the year

In recent years, cryptocurrency mining has made great progress. Mining machines, as the "weapons" of miners, are also constantly pursuing lower power consumption and higher efficiency. As the world's leading supplier of Bitcoin chips and mining machine solutions, what new ASIC mining machine technologies Bitmain can bring in 2021 is also the focus of market attention.

Guo Yiliang pointed out to Golden Finance that chip research and development has always been one of Bitmain's core competitiveness. Bitmain has launched two models this year, S19j and S19jPro, which are supported by the world's most advanced 5-nanometer technology. Although this is the first release of a 5-nanometer mining machine, its first hashboard was designed in 2019. After continuous testing and design optimization by R&D engineers over the past year, this model of machine is now very stable.

In addition to the mining machine chips, power supply and heat dissipation design are also key points for mining machine design. Some mainstream mining machines on the market are still air-cooled. The environment, temperature, humidity, and dust will have a great impact on the stability and life of the mining machine. In addition, the current conditions in the mining field cannot accurately control the temperature in the computer room. But in fact, as early as 2018, Bitmain had launched its first water-cooled mining machine, the S9 Hydro. This mining machine had excellent performance and stable operation at the time, but because it was launched at the stage when the market turned from bull to bear, the model did not produce a good market effect.

It is worth noting that, although it has not reached the stage of mass production, there are already some small-scale water-cooled computing machines running in the market. Enthusiasts and experts in the industry are very optimistic about the technical design of water-cooling heat dissipation. Golden Finance also learned that Bitmain has not given up the development of water-cooling technology. It has been operating and developing internally in the past two years. After a period of accumulation and precipitation, it will launch a new generation of water-cooled mining machines at the end of this year. When water-cooled mining machines are quantified in the market and occupy a certain market share, I believe that some problems in the mining industry will be solved.

North American mines are experiencing a development boom, and carbon peak policy is not the dominant factor

At this year's two sessions, carbon peak and carbon neutrality were written into the government work report for the first time. Carbon peak refers to my country's commitment that carbon dioxide emissions will no longer increase before 2030, and will gradually decrease after reaching the peak. Carbon neutrality refers to the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions directly or indirectly generated by enterprises, groups or individuals within a certain period of time, and then offset their own carbon dioxide emissions through plant planting, energy conservation and emission reduction, so as to achieve "zero emissions" of carbon dioxide. When carbon peak and carbon neutrality became "hot words" discussed by representatives and members, they also triggered discussions in the mining industry. Because mining machines require a lot of electricity to operate, and the main electricity currently used comes from thermal power plants, plus in April this year, Inner Mongolia closed some mines due to excessive carbon emissions, etc., various factors have caused the mining industry to worry about this matter.

In fact, as carbon dioxide emissions increase, the global greenhouse effect grows, which will indeed pose a threat to the human ecosystem. This is not only a practical issue that the mining industry needs to consider, but also a practical issue that all industries need to consider. If we want to reduce the impact of the carbon peak policy on the industry, we need to find the root cause of the problem and solve these pain points through product design and technological improvement. For example, if we can centrally manage the heat generated by mining machines and make effective use of it, we can avoid many problems. This is also what Bitmain will do next to promote the sustainable development of the industry.

It is worth mentioning that Bitmain also revealed that it will conduct an inspection of U.S. mines from May in terms of mine scale, electricity price, quality, business relations, mineral relations, etc., to help miners seize the gold rush in the North American market. Bitmain mentioned that the number of mines in the overseas market, especially in North America, must have increased rapidly this year, but the reason is not due to the domestic carbon peak policy, because Western countries have the same high standards for environmental protection. The main reason for the accelerated development overseas is that foreign institutions and funds are increasingly optimistic about the prospects of Bitcoin. Not only do they support Bitcoin through transactions, but they are also investing a lot of money in locking in the number of Bitcoin mining machines for self-operated mining. This can be seen from Bitmain's order data, and the proportion of overseas purchases of mining machines is steadily increasing. Another point is that the construction of overseas mines has gradually matured, and the construction time has been greatly shortened. In the past, it might take a year or even longer to build a mine in Texas, but due to the current technical level and market awareness, it can be built in 8 months.

Ant Pool aims to become the world's largest mining pool platform and subsequently add financial product modules

Compared with the bull market in 2017, the competition among top mining pools is more intense in this bull market. The emergence of exchange mining pools is also gradually breaking the mining pattern of the monopoly of computing power by old mining pools. Facing competition, Ant Pool is full of confidence.

Guo Yiliang told Golden Finance that Antpool was established in 2014 and has been operating stably for 7 years. In the future, Antpool will definitely become the world's largest mining pool, and of course it will not be limited to a single business line of mining pools. Because as Bitcoin's recognition becomes higher and higher, the number of deposits will increase, and its financial attributes will inevitably become stronger. Miners' demand for digital currency financial management, as well as some financial products and services such as pledged currency loans will increase accordingly. In order to give customers more choices, Antpool must also add this product module.

For the development of the industry, it is a good thing that more companies are involved in the layout. According to the data, there are indeed many mining pools at present, but the top 3 or top 5 mining pools in terms of computing power have not changed much in the long run, which also shows that the market share of mining pools mainly depends on technology accumulation. Next, Antpool will also focus on technology and services to provide more diversified products to the market.