David Vorick, lead developer of Sia, recently shared a blog post titled “The State of Cryptocurrency Mining,” which provides a perspective into the cryptocurrency mining world.
First off, we’d like to express our appreciation for David and what he’s achieved with Sia. The crypto community revolves around transparency and trust, and we hope to someday work with David and his team.
That said, the article reflects some persistent misunderstandings about our business, and we’d like to take the opportunity to clear up the confusion. We’d like to briefly address the most egregious ones.
“Playing Dirty”
The article accuses Bitmain of “playing dirty,” claiming that that the company has attempted to block Obelisk from manufacturing in China.
Considering the truly vast number and diversity of suppliers in China, it’s difficult to consider that Bitmain could possibly exert such powerful control over a competitor’s supply chain to the degree the article suggests. The article does try, though. Indeed, this section—fully six percent of the total article—tries to accuse Bitmain of “playing dirty” while stating twice that there is no evidence of same.
There are numerous suppliers and other third-party agencies involved in the manufacturing of a miner, both in China and elsewhere.
This is, at its very bottom, a conspiracy theory, much like some of the other ones we frequently encounter. This brings us to the next item.
A3 and “Flooding the Market “
The article asserts that Bitmain floods the market with its mining rigs. Here is what really happened: At launch, Bitmain introduced a strict one-miner-per-user batch allocation policy and other methods [1][2] in order to restrict hoarding and combat centralization. The number of miners made available per round was purposely limited to help further regulate their introduction into their respective ecosystems. Since then, we’ve enforced this policy with the launch of all ASIC miners for cryptocurrencies that can be profitably mined by GPUs. The article’s calculations here are merely speculative.
Again, in an article that makes a number of accusations, we wanted to tell our own side of the story. Our license-to-operate within the cryptocurrency ecosystem is vital to our business and we do not take it for granted. We will continue to provide industry-defining mining hardware and services, while remaining sensitive to the communities in which we participate.
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May 15, 2018 at 5:56 pm
Would be a good start if you disclosed how many units get sold on every batch. D3 sales have left a very sour feeling towards bitmain.
May 28, 2018 at 11:00 am
Hi Carlos.
Although we never promise any ROI on our miners and only promise performance of the miner, which we even back with a warranty, we understand your concern and have tried to go beyond what is expected of any consumer electronic manufacturer by carrying out Z9 mini shipments in an extraordinarily transparent fashion : https://blog.bitmain.com/en/antiminer-z9-mini-shipments-experiment-radical-transparency/
May 15, 2018 at 5:59 pm
If that’s the case whereby you limit one miner per one user, please explain why you allow Antminer Z9 mini to be purchased by Max 50 units per user? Used to be one unit per user. That way, I could still believe if you say Bitmain is contributing to allow GPU mining to still be profitable to mine by not making difficulty sky high. Look at A3 now, earning a mere 2xx SC per day, can’t even cover cost of electricity. I think you better relook at the release strategy from Bitmain before publishing such article.
May 28, 2018 at 10:55 am
1. The first batch had the limitation of 1 miner per user. The batches shipping later than that had an increased limit.
2. Please refer to https://blog.bitmain.com/en/antiminer-z9-mini-shipments-experiment-radical-transparency/ to learn more about the extraordinary transparency with which Bitmain is carrying out the Z9 mini shipments. From my personal knowledge, I believe that such transparency is unheard of in the history of consumer electronics.
May 16, 2018 at 12:13 am
I really do like Bitmain, I like your logo and the amazing miners you make. My A3 I have in my girlfriends moms extra bedroom brings unexpected joy from a loud machine. I don’t have very much money after being kicked out of my house in Houston, Texas but I was somehow able to save up enough to get one Antminer A3. I was hoping to quit my terrible pizza delivery job to focus on college in the coming fal of 2018 if I could get enough miners. I had a lot of hope in my A3 being able to kickstart getting more, but I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. I could afford the X3 or B3 when they came out, heck I couldn’t even get the E3 when it was only 800 bucks. When I hear of all these bad things Bitmain might have done I honestly feel pain in my chest that a company with so much success would be so greedy. I don’t believe the accusation, but I have trouble when my A3 went from 11 bucks a day to about two in the time it took to get set up. I just want to buy my girlfriend all that she wants without worrying about money everyday. I guess this is kind of a rant, but I don’t want Bitmain to be evil.
May 28, 2018 at 10:50 am
Hi Lorenzo.
Thanks for the candid feedback. We appreciate it. If you are a Bitmain customer, Bitmain goes way beyond what any other consumer electronics’ business goes to keep its customers happy. Unfortunately the price of the cryptocurrency that you are mining and also the difficulty are not entirely in our control. We always advise all our buyers to deliberate well before placing an order on shop.bitmain.com We have written it clearly on the product page of all our products so every customer can be reminded of it before placing an order. If you face any issues with the performance of your miner, please leave our support team a message at support.bitmain.com
May 16, 2018 at 1:35 am
What incentive do you have to promote decentralization? Why enforce the one miner per batch policy?
May 28, 2018 at 10:46 am
I believe Bitmain has more incentive than anybody I can think of considering that it is the world’s biggest company (in revenue, global presence, employee count) in the cryptocurrency space and its entire business depends on the value of those cryptocurrencies. Bitmain’s license-to-operate within the cryptocurrency ecosystem is vital to its business and Bitmain does not take it for granted.
May 16, 2018 at 4:34 am
It is not hard at all to believe China is rife with IP theft, market manipulation, government meddling, cyber espionage, corporate theft, etc.. Bitmain does not disclose its relationship with the Chinese govt.. Like other major telecom players ZTE and Huawai who were caught violating sanctions on Iran and North Korea . What else would you expect from a communist dictatorship?