It Is All About BTC, LTC, ETH, DOGE, KAS mining as well as other alternative crypto currencies
If you think that BitMain has too much control over the Bitcion ASICs out there being one of the main manufacturers on that particular market, then you might be happy to learn that there is a new alternative coming next year. There are of course the Canaan Avalon miners and the Ebit E9 miners already available, though they are also hard to get, just like the Antminers from Bitmain lately. The just announced DragonMint 16T Bitcoin ASIC miner from a new company called Halong Mining is looking very promising. What makes this announcement even more interesting is the fact that one of the Bitcoin Core developers – BtcDrak seems to be directly involved in the development of the miner and with Halong Mining who developed it. According to the initial information the project has been started quite a while ago with a lot of people contributing and with a serious investment in order to be able to bring the much needed competition and innovation to the Bitcoin mining arena. The only possible problem here is that it might still be hard to acquire for some small miners and users willing to get just a single ASIC miner to play around with once it becomes available, especially if demand from large scale mining operations is as high as it is with Bitmain’s products.
The DragonMint 16T is supposedly the world’s most efficient Bitcoin miner, running faster and cooler than any competing miners currently available. It is based on the DM8575 ASIC chips that run at 85 GHS per chip with power efficiency of around 0.075 J/GHS according to the developers. If you are wondering what is the catch here, well the new miner is not yet available for sale, it is expected to start shipping in March 2018 or in about 4 months from now. You can however already pre-order the device with a minimum order quantity and a regular price tag of $1595 USD (with first day promo at $1350 USD per device). That price does not include a power supply, just the miner, but you can also add a 1600W PSU for $125 USD ($115 USD on promo), though again this is a pre-order. As with all other pre-orders and promises for a new product that is to start shipping in the future it is advice to proceed with caution, especially in cases such as this one where it is from a newcomer in the crypto space (new company)!
DragonMint 16T Specifications:
– ASIC Type: SHA256
– Hash power: 16 THS
– Network: Ethernet port
– Miner power consumption: 1205 W ±6%
– Chip efficiency: 0.075 J/GHS ±6%
– Fans: dual fan variable 6000rpm (100W)
– Power Supply: Not included (1600W recommended)
– For more details about the new ASIC miner check the official website of Halong Mining…
Have you looked at the specifications of the currently available generation of Bitcoin ASICs lately while considering getting a miner in order to get some coins at home? As Bitcoin network difficulty is progressively increasing every ~13 days, the hardware manufacturers are already hitting the limits of the 28nm production technology and the BTC exchange rate stays at low levels things are not looking good. We have checked what you can expect to earn with some of the SHA-256 ASIC miners for Bitcoin and have done some calculations that you can see below using the current network difficulty as a base.
SHA-256 ASIC Miners for Bitcoin:
Rockminer R3 Box – 450 GHS @ 450W – $185 USD
BitMain AntMiner S3+ – 453 GHS @ 355W – $215 USD
Rockminer T1 BOX – 800 GHS @ 1000W – $349 USD
BitCrane T-110 – 1.1 THS @ 1100W – $1299 USD
Spondoolies-Tech SP20 Jackson – 1.7 THS @ 1100W – $1190 USD
BitMain AntMiner S4 – 2 THS @ 2000W – $1250 USD
Looking at the list of miners above you can see that they are actually not that many options available that you are currently able to order and get very soon in your own hands. There are some miners available for pre-order with next month shipping or Q1 2015 expected availability for example but we have not included these. KnCMiner’s Neptune is also not included as these are not being sold at the moment and even if they did at the last listed price nobody would be buying them anyway. We have not listed some other miners from companies that are supposed to be shipping, but we have not found a single trustworthy review or confirmation from anyone that actually received a product from them.
Expected daily mined BTC with the current network difficulty:
Rockminer R3 Box – 0.006466 daily, 0.04526 weekly, 0.194 monthly
BitMain AntMiner S3+ – 0.006509 daily, 0.04556 weekly, 0.1953 monthly
Rockminer T1 BOX – 0.01149 daily, 0.08043 weekly, 0.3447 monthly
BitCrane T-110 – 0.0158 daily, 0.1106 weekly, 0.474 monthly
Spondoolies-Tech SP20 Jackson – 0.02443 daily, 0.171 weekly, 0.7329 monthly
BitMain AntMiner S4 – 0.02874 daily, 0.2012 weekly, 0.8623 monthly
Do note that the above numbers represent what you can earn with the hashrate that the specific ASIC miner provides with a Bitcoin network difficulty remaining at 35,002,482,026 for the duration of the whole specified period. Also these numbers represent the mined coins and you would need to subtract the costs for the electricity from them based on the power usage for the miner and your electricity prices per kWh in order to get an actual profit you will get. As you can see even 2 THS are already not that much and you are going to mine less than 1 BTC per month with this hashrate and with the current sub $400 USD price for Bitcoin when you subtract the electricity fee (can get to half the mined coins) things do not look promising. So for small time miners Bitcoin mining with ASIC miners is not very interesting anymore and even for larger farms things might not be that bright as you might think, so it is no surprise that some of these are selling their hashrate in the form of cloud services. The only thing that could make Bitcoin mining attractive to normal users again is a significant increase in the price of BTC, so you can be mining now and keeping the mined coins waiting for that to happen…
BitMain has listed the upcoming ~500 GHS AntMiner S3 Bitcoin ASIC miner on their website based on the new 28nm BM1382 chips that were recently announced. The AntMiner S3 should start shipping from July 10th with a price set at 0.75 BTC, so you can already pre-order your unit if you are interested. The initial effective hash rate for the S2 was announced to be 504 GHS plus/minus 5% and now it seem that Bitmain has lowered it a bit to 478 GHS, though the unit should be overclockable to 500 GHS or more. The power consumption for the 500 GHS hashrate that was previously announced was 390W on wall and now with the official hashrate lowered a bit the power usage is also a bit lower at 366 Watt.
AntMner S3 Final Specifications:
– Hash Rate: 478 GH/s±5%
– Power Consumption: 366 Watt at the wall
– Power Efficiency: 0.77 J/GH on wall
– Power Supply: 12V DC
– Size: 331 mm x 137 mm x 160 mm
– Fans: Two 14038 fans mounted on both front and back ends.
– Operating Temperature: 0 °C to 35 °C
– Complied with: FCC / CE
– Network Connection: Ethernet
Do note that the BitMain AntMiner S3 ships without a PSU. There are 4 PCI-e connectors for +12V DC input, but it apparently needs only two of them to be connected if you are not going to be overclocking the device, so the other two are required only if you do plan to overclock the device.
– For more information about the BitMain AntMiner S3 Bitcoin ASIC miner…