One ambitious bitcoin company is seeking to
make mining a hobbyist activity again.
China-based Bitmain let slip today it
will soon release its latest bitcoin mining rig, the R4, which
it believes will be powerful enough to "bring mining back home".
Representatives for Bitmain said in an
email to CoinDesk that the R4 is "the second most powerful bitcoin miner
in the world", and that it will seek to reach enthusiasts with its
production.
By building the miner with 16nm chips, Bitmain
said it is able to reduce the cost of electricity for the miner, a leading
factor for profitability. According to the spec sheet, users can expect a
hashrate of 8.6 TH/s with a power consumption and efficiency of 845W and nearly
0.1 J/GH, respectively.
Ambitious aims
For the average bitcoin enthusiast, mining is
a thing of the past.
Ever since the first
ASIC chips were introduced in early 2013, bitcoin mining difficulty has
skyrocketed, making it more difficult for the average person to eke out any
sort of profit with their own hardware. But Bitmain is providing details
on why it believes the activity may once again be viable for the general
market.
To ensure the miner can achieve the proposed
power rates, the company is advising that customers also buy its newly launched
APW5 power supply unit. Bitmain explained that the APW5 "will be our
most advanced power supply".
The Antminer S9
achieved similar power rates and is now the "go-to" home mining
hardware, but problems emerged. For example, when a miner is going at full
power, the fans can be absolutely deafening. (As heard in this video of
a miner with a small farm in his garage).
To get around that, Bitmain has designed a new
fan, which it says was "inspired by the fan of a silent split air
conditioner" to reduce noise issues.
According to the company's spec sheet, it
should only achieve a noise level of 52 decibels, about as loud as a
conversation at home.
While Bitmain removed
all mention of pricing from its website except to say that the sale would start
on Monday, screenshots of
the product page show it could sell for $1,000. Along with it, the APW5
PSU may cost prospective miners an additional $300.
Questions ahead
But while the miner may succeed in being
quieter and more efficient, there's still the question of profitability.
Assuming the current bitcoin price,
electricity costs of $0.12 per kilowatt hour and an upfront $1,300
hardware cost, breakeven with this hardware is 391 days, not factoring in any
mining pool fees.
What hasn't yet been solved is the fact that,
in many of the most popular locations, electricity costs are still extremely
high. That's why mining operations congregated in the Pacific Northwest,
western China and very cold parts of the world such as Iceland.
Naturally, if the price of electricity goes up
or the price of bitcoin goes down, the time to breakeven could be even longer.
Whether Bitmain can
actually bring the bitcoin miner back home remains to be seen. Yet solving for
noise, one of the main complaints of mining, could be a big first step.
