The battle for high-performance mining machines

The price of coins is rising, the flood season is coming, and as the computing difficulty continues to increase, high-computing-power mining machines are increasingly sought after by miners and mining machine sellers.

The September futures price of Shenma M20S 68T was about 14,856 yuan, and the November futures price was about 19,521 yuan, an increase of 31.45%.

The September futures price of the Ant S17 53T mining machine was about 11,010 yuan, and the December futures price was about 22,000 yuan, an increase of 50%.

High-computing-power mining machines are hard to come by, and futures are scheduled for November and December.

At present, according to the official websites of Ant, Shenma, Ebit, Avalon, and Innosilicon, high-computing-power mining machines have long been sold out. The Avalon 37T A10 series has been scheduled to September; Ebit E11 and E12 series have been scheduled to late October; Shenma M20S and M21 series futures have been scheduled to November; and Ant S17 series futures have been scheduled to December.

Futures are in short supply, and the futures prices of high-computing-power mining machines continue to rise in different time periods.

The futures price of Shenma M20S 68T in September was about 14,856 yuan, and the futures price in November was about 19,521 yuan, an increase of 31.45%. The official website of Antminer shows that the futures price of Antminer S17 53T mining machine in September was about 11,010 yuan, and Xinjiang miner Wang Lei consulted that the futures price of the mining machine in December was about 22,000 yuan (based on full 53T), an increase of 50%.

A mining machine dealer from Huaqiangbei, Shenzhen, put together an order and got 35 53T Ant S17s, with August futures. The dealer told Shenlian Finance, "There were not many when they were released, and one company could get dozens of them."

Zhao Wen, a salesperson at another mining company, also confirmed this statement: "It is difficult to order a high-computing-power mining machine, and there are too many people and too little meat."

Currently, the futures for the S17 series mining machines have been scheduled until December.

Wang Lei's mining farm has been running 890 53T Ant S17 mining machines. This batch of mining machines is the spot goods that Wang Lei has received from multiple mining companies since May 20.

Wang Lei told Shenlian Finance: "Most of these products are priced between 22,500 and 25,000 yuan, and the most expensive one is 30,000 yuan."

Wang Lei is still considering whether to order 1,000 53T S17 December futures, the price of which is 420 yuan/T. For Wang Lei, what he considers is not the price of the currency, but the cycle of mining.

"Now taking the December futures, based on 50T/unit, the price is about 21,000 yuan/unit. The current spot price is 30,000 yuan, and the price difference is 9,000 yuan." Wang Lei has to consider how many bitcoins he can mine in the next five months.

"I am a small miner with no capital support. I have to pay for everything myself, so I need to consider how to maximize profits. There is no supply in the market now, so I have been thinking about it for a long time."

A mining company in Chengdu also ordered Antminer S17 and Shenma M20S. A department head of the mining company revealed that they bought thousands of 68T Shenma mining machines at a futures price of 190 yuan/T, while less than 1,000 futures of 53T Antminer S17 were available, with an average price of about 14,000 yuan.

Regarding the pricing of mining machine futures, Bitmain told DeepChain Finance that the price of mining machine products will take into account multiple factors such as currency price, total network computing power and difficulty.

In 2018, miners maintained the security of the Bitcoin network with 37E computing power, and also defended the last line of defense in the blockchain industry.

On June 27, 2019, Bitcoin surged to $13,720. Those who were still sleeping on the belief that the "bear market will last for two years" woke up completely and regretted not getting on board in time.

The price of Bitcoin continues to hit new highs, and the flood season is coming.

From June 19th to date, in just 20 days, the computing power of the entire Bitcoin network has increased from 53.61E to a maximum of 71.3E. The latest computing power difficulty has also exceeded the peak in October 2018, reaching 7.93T.

Zhang Wencheng, sales director of Shenma Mining Machine, predicts that by the end of this year, the computing power of the entire Bitcoin network will rise to more than 100E.

The greater the computing difficulty, the more advantages the mining machines with high computing power and excellent power consumption ratio will have. This is also the reason why miners and mining machine sellers are more willing to choose high-computing power mining machines.

Zhang Li, founder of Langshen Mining Machine, said that because everyone can foresee that once the flood season is over, cheap electricity will be difficult to find, miners can only buy mining machines with high computing power and low power consumption to survive the dry season.

Zhang Li believes that the choice of all machines depends on the expectation of Bitcoin price, because the mining difficulty will eventually reach 11T-12T. If the price of the currency is estimated to be 50,000 US dollars, it doesn’t matter what kind of mining machine you choose. If it is estimated to be 20,000 US dollars, low-computing-power machines will lose their competitive advantage.

The production of mining machines is subject to the mass production capacity of chips.

On March 29 this year, Antminer officially announced the second-generation 7nm Antminer S17 series mining machine, which will be available for sale on the official website on April 9.

On May 19, MicroBT officially released the Shenma M20 series of Bitcoin mining machines in Chengdu. There are five models in total, all of which use Samsung 8nm chips.

The 7nm chip of Antminer comes from TSMC, and the 8nm chip of Shenma Miner comes from Samsung.

TSMC's major customers are Apple, Qualcomm, AMD and other large companies. The chip orders of mining machine manufacturers are far less than those of Apple and Qualcomm. Due to the insufficient production capacity of wafers, TSMC's total production capacity is limited, so the production order of chips depends on the order volume.

In comparison, Samsung's chip production capacity is relatively sufficient.

MicroBT founder Yang Zuoxing told Deepchain Finance that the volume of Shenma's mining machine chips in TSMC is still very small. This is also the reason why Shenma Mining Machine chose to abandon TSMC and cooperate with Samsung instead.

Chip production capacity is insufficient, and high-computing-power mining machines are even more scarce.

Zhang Wencheng revealed that the shipment volume of Shenma mining machines in June was about 300,000 units, and the futures mining machines for August to October have been sold out.

Zhao Wen told DeepChain Finance that unlike previous years, this year Bitmain will prioritize distributing mining machine quotas to miners, and the rest will be redistributed to mining machine dealers.

Wang Wei, a mining machine dealer, confirmed what Zhao Wen said: "Bitmain has an internal rating system, which evaluates the purchase volume in the bear market and orders starting from 20 million, giving priority to medium and large miners; Shenma's minimum order amount is 100 million yuan, regardless of miners or mining machine dealers."

Zhao Wen experienced the bull market in 2017.

Zhao Wen recalled: "At the beginning of 2017, the profit of mining machines was not high and there were not many mining companies. Starting from October, the price of coins rose, more and more novice users entered the market, and the machines began to be in short supply."

During the busiest time, Zhao Wen only slept for 2 hours for four consecutive days.

In the second half of 2017, more and more mining companies came to the market, and Zhao Wen had business dealings with 14 mining machine sales companies, including Tiantian Mining, Guihua Technology, and Yutong Mining.

In 2018, the cryptocurrency industry cooled down and the mining machine business of mining machine manufacturers was hit hard.

After the BHC war, the entire digital currency market hit a freezing point, and many small and medium-sized miners could not bear the mining costs and chose to shut down their machines. Antminers, which account for 70% of the mining market, are being cleared out of the mines.

Bitcoin player "Rotten Apple" once periodically recorded the computing power of the entire network. On December 7, 2018, the Bitcoin computing power once dropped to 37E.

Zhao Wen described the mining company's losses in the second half of 2018: "At first, the T9+ and Shenma M3 series were very popular, but later we lost money on every order we placed."

Zhao Wen said that it was precisely because of the coin price and computing power difficulty that the subsequent S9, T9+, and M3 reached the shutdown price one after another. After these machines were shut down, they were taken over by foreigners, mining machine dealers, and miners at low prices.

Li Xuewen, the owner of a mining farm, was one of the buyers of these machines. Before the Spring Festival last year, Li Xuewen bought a total of about 20,000 mining machines, with prices ranging from 700 to 1,100 yuan.

Li Xuewen told Deepchain Finance: "At that time, when each mining farm had 1,000 machines, we would go to the farm to collect them. We also bought the mining machines that were cleared out by Bitmain's Ordos mine."

What Li Xuewen didn't expect was that after the price of the currency rebounded, the price of these second-hand mining machines that had been sold at a low price rose back up. At present, the mining machines have not been sold and are still running in Li Xuewen's mine.

The bull market not only gave miners and mining companies a break, but also allowed mining machine manufacturers to survive the capital winter ahead of time and begin to seize a new round of mining machine market.

An industry insider speculated that based on the shipment volume (capacity) of S17 in September and October, if Shenma really released 100,000 M20S, it would immediately grab the market. The insider said that Bitmain is also thinking of countermeasures.

Regarding the new changes in the mining machine market, Yang Zuoxing told Deepchain Finance: “I hope the market structure will change.”

(Except Zhang Li, Zhang Wencheng, and Yang Zuoxing, all other names in this article are pseudonyms)

This article comes from: Deepchain

Link: https://xcong.com/articles/3559904

Source: Xiaocong APP

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