There is a severe shortage of Bitcoin mining machines. Ant Financial’s official website has sold out all futures for August this year.

Even as the leading bitcoin mining machine maker doubled its prices to take advantage of strong demand brought on by the soaring prices, it still sold out its inventory for the next three months in a matter of weeks.

According to a previous report by CoinDesk, in early December, Antminer’s official website had pre-sold Bitcoin ASIC miners with an estimated delivery date of May 2021. Less than a month later, Bitmain’s official website had sold out its miners until August 2021 futures and significantly increased the price.

At the end of November, Bitmain’s Antminer S19 cost $1,897. Now, the same machine is selling for $3,769, a 98% increase.

The surge in mining activity comes as Bitcoin ended 2020 up more than 300% and is currently trading above $30,000. Miners’ revenues have also soared, with the dollar amount earned per TH of computing power per second (TH/s) reaching 1.6 yuan on Sunday, the highest level since August 2019, according to data from the Mining Industry Association.

To meet growing market demand, Bitmain “has increased the efficiency and functionality of our manufacturing plants,” said Nathaniel Yu, director of international marketing.

But Yu believes that as “more institutional investors become interested in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology,” demand for mining machines will not fade anytime soon.

The current mining machine market conditions are described as a "perfect storm" of capacity constraints: manufacturing plants have limited capacity, large factories have bought up supply, and companies with strong balance sheets have entered the market and are able to place large orders.

These huge orders come from mining companies like Riot Blockchain (RIOT), which bought over 31,000 new machines this year, Core Scientific, which bought 59,000 machines from Bitmain in one order, and Marathon Patent Group (MARA), which expanded its mining fleet to over 100,000 machines.

At this rate, mining will continue to be difficult to participate in throughout 2021