Shenma M30 new product released, 3X mining machine competition kicked off

At 10:30 am on April 17, the new Shenma M30 series was officially released. MicroBit broadcast the press conference to the entire network in a "return" gesture.

In the article about this press conference, the official WeChat account of Shenma Mining Machine quoted a sentence from "The Bookstore on the Island": "There is the most difficult year in everyone's life, which makes life beautiful and vast."

2019 was a year of both glory and silence for MicroBT. The annual sales of the third-generation mining machine M20 series launched by MicroBT in May 2019 reached 600,000 units, accounting for 35% of the computing power of the entire network; in the same year, MicroBT's leader Yang Zuoxing was taken away for investigation on suspicion of commercial infringement.

Today, MicroBT returns to the mining industry with the new Shemma M30 series. Yang Zuoxing retreated behind the scenes, while MicroBT’s COO Chen Jianbing, who was also Yang Zuoxing’s college classmate, stepped to the front.

01. The new machine has a high price and early delivery time

MicroBT's new product launch conference was very concise, with the entire meeting lasting about an hour. In addition, both COO Chen Jianbing and Sales Director Zhang Wencheng showed a sense of confidence from the inside out at the conference.

Chen Jianbing had a calm demeanor and a gentle tone; when elaborating on the sales strategy, Zhang Wencheng used words like "confident in the supply chain", "accumulated capital inventory last year (confident in funds)", "the epidemic has not affected mass production (confident in delivery)", "the warranty of mining machines has been extended to 1 year, and other friendly companies want to follow suit, the difficulty and cost will be greater than that of BitMicro (confident in the product)".

At the conference, MicroBT launched a total of four mining machines, namely the M30S with outstanding cost performance; two high-performance, low-power machines M30S+ and M30S++; and M31S+, which MicroBT calls "the first choice in the flood season". The parameters and spot prices of the four mining machines are shown in the following table.

Note: Power consumption is calculated, and the spot price of mining machines is slightly higher than the futures price

It is not difficult to see that MicroBT's two high-performance mining machines, M30S++ and M30S+, are benchmarked against Bitmain's Antminer S19 Pro and S19 respectively. The M30S++ is not as extreme as the Antminer S19 Pro (power consumption ratio 29.5 J/T, computing power 110T/s), but is slightly better than the S19 Pro in computing power; the M30S+ has better power consumption ratio and computing power than the S19 (power consumption ratio 34.5 J/T, computing power 95T/s).

The biggest problem with the Shenma M30 series mining machines is the price. By comparing the futures prices of mining machines, it can be found that the price of M30S++ is more than 40% higher than that of S19 Pro, and the price of M30S+ is about 1/3 higher than that of S19. Such prices are less acceptable to miners.

According to Wu Blockchain, the high price of MicroBT’s two high-performance mining machines is likely due to the low production capacity and the number of chips. These two mining machines are mainly for performance competition with the competing S19 series, and the M30S is the main shipping mining machine. In fact, according to Bibi News, among the four new models mentioned above, only the M30S and M31S+ are currently sold on the official website.

However, the Shenma M30 model also has a big advantage over the Ant S19 series: early delivery time.

Sales Director Zhang Wencheng said at the press conference that Shenma is offering four types of futures mining machines with a term of 30, 60, 90 and 120 days. According to the MicroBit official website, the earliest batch of machines will be shipped on April 18, 23 days earlier than the first batch of S19 series mining machines that have been sold. Miners may be able to gain a greater first-mover advantage in computing power from the time window between receiving the new machines and before the Bitcoin halving.

In terms of mining machine sales, MicroBT has proposed five major sales strategies: 1. Continuing the tiered pricing strategy of the M20 series. Users are divided into 12 levels based on their cumulative order amounts. The higher the level, the lower the price of the mining machine;

1. Futures price protection strategy. When the spot price of mining machines is lower than the futures price, miners will be compensated with coupons, which can be up to 10% of the payment; 3. Delayed compensation strategy. If the mining machines are delayed in delivery, MicroBit will pay miners coupons of 0.03% of the undelivered value every day, which is three times the amount of last year;

4. The warranty period of the mining machine is extended to 1 year. 5. The high-performance mode is opened, and the actual computing power of the mining machine has a certain room for improvement, thereby increasing the mining income of miners.

Compared with the "three tricks of financial instruments" that Bitmain used at last year's customer appreciation meeting, MicroBT's sales strategy this time is still relatively traditional. On the one hand, MicroBT takes the hard-core route of mining machine performance and machine stability, and on the other hand, it uses greater "coupons" to attract miners. However, it is an indisputable fact that the M30 mining machine is more expensive than the S19 series, and in a sense, coupons may just be a means of binding miners for a long time.

02. With a payback period of more than 500 days, mining companies are having a difficult time this year

After Whatsma's new model comes out, whether the market will buy it and whether MicroBT can continue last year's performance may be a big question mark.

First, as mentioned above, the two high-performance M30 mining machines are more expensive than the Antminer S19 series, which will greatly affect the purchasing decisions of miners, and the lower-performance M30S mining machine does not have much advantage over the S19 series in terms of price. In 2019, MicroBT seized a large market share by relying on its cost-effective mining machines, but this year, they do not seem to plan to engage in price wars.

Secondly, Shenma Mining Machine has encountered a real opponent this year - "market".

There is less than a month left before the mining revenue is halved, and the price of Bitcoin remains sluggish. It has been more than a month since the cryptocurrency market was "bloodbathed", and the price of the currency has not fully recovered. The overseas epidemic is still a huge uncertainty factor. Although the global quantitative easing policy can stimulate asset inflation, if the real industry continues to be hit by the epidemic, the crypto market will obviously not be able to remain immune.

Bibi News calculated the static payback period of the five mining machines, S19 Pro, S19, M30S++, M30S+, and M30S, based on the futures prices of the Shenma M30 series and Ant S19 series mining machines, as well as the electricity price of $0.05/kWh, the Bitcoin price of $7,000, and the total network computing power of 117 EH/s. The situation is not optimistic. The average payback period of these five mining machines is about 370 days, and the payback period of M30S++ is even as high as more than 500 days.

Static payback period

It should be noted that as new machines enter the market and the computing power of the entire network increases, the actual payback period of the machine is likely to be longer than the calculated result. The "critical hit" brought by the halving of Bitcoin to the mining circle in the short term may double the payback period. As Chen Jianbing said at the press conference, the payback period of future mining machines can no longer be measured by the standard of 6 to 8 months.

Chen Jianbing mentioned at the press conference that MicroBT's values ​​are "extreme, win-win, and integrity". In fact, all mining machine manufacturers are trying their best to achieve the ultimate. As the new generation of mining machines enters the 3X power consumption ratio era, it is becoming increasingly difficult to break through the ultimate performance of mining machines. The third and all subsequent halvings in Bitcoin mining revenue will bring more intense competition and more brutal fighting among mining machine manufacturers.