More than 100,000 ASIC mining machines were added in two weeks, and the total computing power of the Bitcoin network set a new record

According to Coindesk on August 5, the total computing power of the Bitcoin blockchain has set a new record.

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According to data from mining service operator BTC.com, the average hash rate of Bitcoin mining has risen to 71.43 EH/s in the past two weeks, from 64.49 EH/s on July 23. At 2:52 a.m. UTC on Monday, Bitcoin adjusted its mining difficulty at block height 586672, and the new computing power reached 6.94 EH/s, an increase of 10.78% since mid-July.

Bitcoin mining difficulty is a measure of how easy it is to mine a new block on the Bitcoin mainnet. The Bitcoin software adjusts the mining difficulty every 2016 blocks (approximately 14 days) to ensure that the generation time of each block in the next cycle can remain around 10 minutes.

Assuming that the additional 6.9 EH/s of hashrate comes from powerful ASIC miners, such as the recently launched Bitmain Antminer S17 or MicroBT's WhatsMiner M20S, both of which have a mining rate of 55 TH/s, this means that more than 100,000 ASIC miners may have joined the mining ranks in the past two weeks. In addition, considering that these products are sold for at least $2,000 each, this means that large mining machine manufacturers have earned about $200 million in revenue.

Since the beginning of this year, the price of Bitcoin has rebounded significantly and is expected to hit a new high. In addition, the arrival of the rainy season in southwestern China has aroused people's interest in Bitcoin mining. According to reports, due to the rapid decline in electricity prices after the arrival of the rainy season, the mining power in southwestern China accounts for more than 50% of the world.

Chinese miners estimated earlier this year that Bitcoin’s hash rate would break through the 70EH/s level by this summer. (It should be noted that Bitcoin’s hash rate exceeded this level at some point in June this year, and even reached 80EH/s around August 1)

However, starting today, the two-week average mining power of Bitcoin has reached 70EH/s for the first time. Therefore, the difficulty of Bitcoin mining has also set a new record of nearly 10 trillion.

The mining machine market has undergone significant changes

As people's interest in mining began to gradually increase, the mining machine market also underwent significant changes, with mining machine manufacturers competing to produce more powerful mining equipment.

For example, the Beijing-based mining giant claimed to have 70% of the world’s mining machines, according to its prospectus for its 2018 initial public offering (IPO). Now, it may face stiff competition from rivals that some believe have the ability to launch more top-of-the-line products and bring higher profitability to miners.

Michael Zhong, a former Bitcoin mining analyst who now runs a Bitcoin mining farm, said that from 2017 to 2018, Bitmain's Antminer S9 series of miners topped the list, followed by Canaan Creative's Avalon 8 series of miners. InnoSilicon, Ebang and MicroBT, the former design director of Bitmain, were in the third tier at the time. But from January to June this year, the capacity rankings of these mining machine manufacturers have changed. Currently, MicroBT's WhatsMiner M20 series tops the list, followed by Bitmain's S17 series, and then Innosilicon and Ebang.

According to F2pool’s mining machine profit tracker, Bitmain’s flagship Antminer S17 Pro ranks third in mining profitability, behind BitFury’s Tardis and MicroBT’s WhatsMiner M20S. The WhatsMiner M20S sells for about $3,000, while the Antminer S17 Pro sells for about $4,000, according to advertising information on the two companies’ websites.

Pre-orders for these flagship mining machines have been scheduled until November and December of this year, but MicroBT founder Zuoxing Yang previously told CoinDesk that the bottleneck of mining machine production capacity lies in whether suppliers can provide chips.

Bitmain has been relying on chips from TSMC, and earlier this year MicroBT switched from TSMC to Samsung for its flagship products. TSMC and Samsung estimated in their recent second-quarter earnings call that demand for cryptocurrency mining chips will recover in the third and fourth quarters of this year.