The CEO of Bitmain, Jihan Wu, has announced that Bitmain has fully developed a 7 nm chip for Bitcoin mining, and is planning on releasing a new series of Antminers that use these new chips. 7 nm transistors are the smallest known transistors to have been used for Bitcoin mining so far and have already been integrated into rigs by the Japanese companies GMO Internet and Triple-1. The launch of 7 nm Bitcoin mining rigs by Bitmain is major news, however, since Bitmain is the largest crypto mining rig manufacturer, this will make 7 nm mining chips mainstream.
The 7 nm Bitcoin mining chips are possibly the most efficient Bitcoin mining chips ever produced, they use 0.042 W/GH, which is 16% less energy consumption than the 7 nm chips produced by Triple-1 which consume 0.05 W/GH. Bitmain says they achieved this efficiency via a unique circuit structure and low power technology.
This will be a drastic improvement for Antminers, since currently, Antminers use 16 nm chips at 0.1 W/GH. Therefore the old 16 nm Antminers use 138% more electricity than the new 7 nm Antminers. The 16 nm Antminers are the most dominant mining rig in the world, so the 7 nm Antminers will solidify Bitmain’s dominance in the mining industry.
The announcement from Bitmain comes only a day after Bitfury announced the release of their new 14 nm mining chip which consumes 0.055 W/GH. This efficiency is quite impressive for a 14 nm chip and was apparently achieved via optimal power distribution, cooling designs, and optimal silicon packaging. However, Bitfury’s new 14 nm chip uses 31% more energy than Bitmain’s new 7 nm chips. This shows that transistor size is a dominant factor in mining chip efficiency, but also suggests that eventually 7 nm chips could be optimized further as Bitfury did with their 14 nm chip, and perhaps electricity consumption far lower than 0.042 W/GH could be achieved with 7 nm chips.
At the current Bitcoin mining difficulty of 7 trillion, Bitmain’s 7 nm chips would still be profitable even at a Bitcoin price of USD 2,900, far below the USD 5,800 support level. At the Bitcoin price support level of USD 5,800, the mining difficulty could be as high as 15 trillion, corresponding to an increase in the hash rate of over 100%, and these new 7 nm chips from Bitmain would continue to be profitable.
Since Bitmain will be mass producing 7 nm Antminers, the 16 nm Antminers will soon become completely obsolete. The new 7 nm Antminers will likely lead to a continued acceleration of the Bitcoin hash rate.
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