Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by capnorange 1928 days ago
> but without 2 years of constantly solving sudoku under their belt, they couldn't compete with the more experienced sudoku-solvers

Inaccurate analogy. Miners are more limited by cheap electricity/cooling than CPU which is more generally available.
1 comments
Jasper_ 1928 days ago
The top Bitcoin mining pools in China create their own mining ASICs in house for competitive advantage. You just can't compete without spending years catching up to their hardware designs.
link
capnorange 1928 days ago
As long as selling ASIC's are profitable -> more R&D and eventually everyone has access to the most capable ASIC's.

Off the top of my head, data from 2 years back(things might have changed now). Bitmain, one of the top 3 mining pools, 90% of their revenue was from ASIC sales rather than mining.

As long as Bitmain has competitors, they should always be able to put out the best ASIC's to the public.

link
Jasper_ 1928 days ago
Haha, you missed the scam.

They don't sell their latest mining equipment. Why would they? They sell the mining equipment after they have no use for it and it's costing them money to keep it running.

link