Crypto Mining Blog

It is already clear that Scrypt mining is moving to ASIC devices with Gridseed already shipping a lot of units and though they are not so powerful in terms of total hashrate if you multiply the numbers the total increase in hashrate is actually quite big. So far the only company actually shipping Scrypt ASIC devices is Gridseed, but many more are working on devices and promise to start shipping later this year. And GPU miners are already either moving to alternative algorithm crypto coins or selling their hardware and moving to ASIC devices. Below we have prepared a short list of companies that are claiming to be working on Scrypt ASIC miners with some information about the prices and expected shipping dates. Do note that listing a company here does not mean we endorse it or confirm that they are safe to invest in the hardware they are promising. So be very careful when choosing what and where to invest in and do a thorough check should you decide to throw in a couple of hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

Gridseed is a Chinese company and currently the only manufacturer of Scrypt capable ASIC mining hardware. They produce the ASIC chips that the single chip CG3355 USB DualMiner ASIC devices are based on (not listed on their official page) that are already a bit obsolete with just up to 70 KHS in Scrypt only mining mode and a bit high price of about $80 USD per unit. The devices that Gridseed makes by themselves are the 5-chip Infinity USB miners with a hashrate of about 300 KHS in Scrypt only mode (overclockable to 360 KHS and voltmodable to about 500 KHS) with a price of about $160-$180 USD. The latest product by the company that was launched recently is their Gridseed G-Blade 80-chip Scrypt ASIC miner that offers abut 5.2 MHS hashrate and had a retail price of $3000 USD, though it is currently available at about $1600 USD.

Innosilicon is another Chinese company that is just about to start shipping their Scrypt ASIC solutions called A2 Terminator. They already have their 28 nm ASIC chips ready and working miner prototypes available and these devices will most likely start shipping by the end of May, so they will be faster than other companies and follow in the footsteps of Gridseed. The company claims their chips can do 1.6 MHS to 1.8 MHS at only 10W power consumption or up to 150 MHS per box performance with 1KW power supply and quiet fan cooling. The batch A2 ASIC chips is currently priced at $199 USD per chip for 1K order and up and $189 USD for 5K order or up, so these miners will not come very cheap at least at first. The Innosilicon A2 Terminator official miners with 88 MHS (within 5% variation) using 750W power supply should be priced at $12K USD, so not that cheap compared to other solutions, but available earlier.

KnCMiner is a company from Sweden, Europe and is the only company besides Gridseed that had previously shipped products and thus you might have a bit more trust what they claim than the other companies below. So far the company had made and shipped only Bitcoin ASIC miners, and they have just recently announced that they are working on Scrypt ASIC hardware as well. The KnC Titan Scrypt ASIC miner is supposed to offer a minimum 250 MHS Scrypt mining hashrate with a total power consumption of up to 1000W and a price of $9995 USD with no VAT included. This is a bold claim as KnC had initially announced the Titan to be 100 MHS and had soon after that increased the hashrate to 250 MHS, thus making this the most powerful Scrypt ASIC miner. If you want to pre-order the KnCMiner Titan Scrypt ASIC you need to pay up front the full amount of almost 10K USD + VAT (depending on your location) and expect a delivery in Q2/Q3 of 2014 according to the latest official information.

You can consider the three companies mentioned above as the top 3 for Scrypt ASCI miners, they should be the safest choice from all, though do note that we are not guaranteeing anything or recommending them over the other available options!

Zeus Integrated Systems is a new company claiming to have offices in USA and Hong Kong, their website is registered in January this year and they promise shipping dates at the end of Q2 for their products. The smallest miner from the company is Zeusminer S-Flex Portable USB 300 KHS Scrypt ASIC Miner that seems to be designed to be powered by a USB port and the device is priced at just $99 USD. There is a 10 pack 3 MHS version consisting of 10 of the smaller miners at the price of 10 miners or $990 USD. And then moving to 8 MHS for $2500 USD, 16 MHS for $4800 USD and 80 MHS for $25000 USD and 160 MHS for $48000 USD. The power consumption claimed is about 100W per 8-10 MHS. They sure do some pretty bold claims especially for the more powerful blade type of miners they have available for pre-order on their website. Interesting fact is that Zeus has apparently partnered with Seeed Studio to resell their products, some of which are already listed there for pre-orders, though their prices are higher than on the official website.

Alpha Technology was one of the first new companies to make some bold clams about an upcoming Scrypt mining ASIC that they were working on. The company is apparently based in UK, Europe, however the development is being done in India by a company called Dexcel Electronics. Alpha Technology is currently offering two products, a lower performance 16 MHS Viper (Scrypt) Miner with a price of £1350 UK Pounds and 90 MHS Viper (Scrypt) Miner with a price of £5450 UK Pounds (prices are without VAT). The product page of their website is a bit misleading as it cites only 30% of these total product prices as Alpha Technology requires only 30% to be paid in advance for pre-ordering the product. Their shipping targeted is Q2/Q3 of 2014, so similar to that of KnC, though they have made claims to be able to ship before the competition. And there was a bit of a battle going on between them and KnCMiner when the Swedish company has announced an increase in the hashrate of their ASIC, Alpha Technology also increased the speed ratings for their hardware. Currently their offers are lower in terms of hashrate but they promise the same power efficiency and an earlier shipping than the competition.

Mining ASICs Technologies (MAT) is a new Netherlands, Europe based company that have appeared in February this year. The company is apparently working on both SHA-256 and Scrypt ASIC miners, though they have not yet shipped any hardware their Bitcoin miners are currently marked as out of stock. The Scrypt ASIC miners that we are more interested in are called Excalibur and are available in 2 favors, 125 MHS Excalibur 4 for 6799 EUR and 250 MHS Excalibur 5 for 12900 EUR without VAT (35% paid in advance to pre-order). The company has already joined the Scrypt ASIC miner war and instead of promising a higher hashrate like the other companies above has decided to offer buy one and get 2 miners incentive, so essentially you get double the hashrate for the price of a single ASIC. They do make some bold claims for a new company that appeared in Q1 and promises shipping of actual products in Q2/Q3 of 2014.

Fibonacci is a website for a company selling Scrypt ASIC that if you happen to stumble upon by chance will probably hurry to close and not think of ordering anything from. Their website does not give a lot of information which is a mistake in our opinion as they apparently rely too much on dedicated crypto communities to publish information and do not put that information in brief on their website. Fibonacci has three miners listed on their website, a 3.5 MHS Recursion, 65 MHS Axion and 126 MHS Epsilon with no clear price information or estimated shipping dates. You need to either look for additional info in Litecointalk forum and go through a lot of posts or register in order to get a bit more details at least about prices. After registering you are presented with a page were you can purchase “mining shares” each one equal to 3.46 MHS of Scrypt mining power for about 1.03 BTC per share or about 35.8 LTC per share at this very moment. And when they do start shipping the shares you own will be translated to the hasrate of the respective miner. As for shipping dates we could not easily find information, but most likely some time later this year probably not earlier than Q3. As we said confusing, lacking information and not easily convincing you to buy from them, unless if you have been a long term follower of the project development in the dedicated crypto communities.

For the last three companies we advice to threat with even more caution than the ones already mentioned above, as there are even more concerns to what they are offering!

Flower Technology is a Canadian company, a fairly new one, that has been working on Scrypt ASIC miners. Their hardware development partner is a UK-basec company called EnSilica that has been around for a while longer on the market. The company is working on a 20 MHS Orchid Scrypt ASCI miner that is priced at $1900 (USD, or CAD?) and already available for pre-order as well as a 100 MHS Lilac Scrypt ASIC with a price of $7900 that is not yet available for pre-order. The shipping is announced for Q3 of 2014.

Bliss Devices is a USA-based company that has already caused quite a lot of concern in users in terms of their legitimacy (you can read more in the crypto forums) such as posting photos of actual existing products of other companies as their miner photos. They offer three different products, the first one is an 8 MHS capable Neon C08 PCI-E board with a 40W power consumption and priced at $1440 USD. The other two are in the form of standalone miners, a 32 MHS model Neon M32 with 300W power usage and a price of $5400 USD, and a 100 MHS Neon M100 ASIC with 800W power usage and $14400 USD price tag. The smallest PCI-E miner is with an estimated delivery date of end of October 2014 and the other two with an estimated delivery date of November 10, 2014 according to the official information. The interesting thing is that currently all of their devices are marked as sold out, so you are not able to pre-order them anymore. Another interesting fact is that they do mention about their devices capable of Scrypt-N support in the FAQ section.

Alcheminer is a apparently a new Taiwanese company that had their website up and running since last month and are already offering a broad portfolio of Scrypt ASIC hardware on it. They are talking about shipping actual hardware in June/July and compensation if it is August, or September and a full refund if not by October, so they should be pretty quick in development and production to be able to just show up and start shipping. We recommend extreme caution with them! Their smaller 4 MHS and 32 MHS miners are out of stock and only the very high priced 128 MHS miner is available, including a very attractive limited units price offer. Again we would recommended to stay away from this company as it is the one that seems least trustworthy and literally everything screams scam.

We have been approached by some of these companies that wanted to advertise here on the website, but we have declined their offers and instead have offered to review their products when they have actually working products and publish the results here for our readers. As you can see we have so far done reviews of Gridseed-based products in terms of Scrypt ASIC miners as they are the only company that already has ASIC hardware available (we have purchased and actually use these ourselves). We are more then happy to review other Scrypt ASIC hardware as it becomes available, but are not ready to advertise or endorse promises of something that might not see the light of day at all. So again we advice everyone interested in investing in Scrypt ASIC hardware to be extra careful before giving the hard earned coins or cash for a pre-order of some hardware at some of these companies listed above or from another company. In the world of crypto currencies the hardest thing to do is earn the trust of users and at the same time it is the easiest thing to loose…