On the 17th of August, the Ant Training Academy (ATA)’s first ever Level 2 Maintenance Training course，with a cohort of fifteen students, successfully came to a close.

The Academy, developed by Bitmain, will continue to launch new courses and certifications to provide professional development opportunities across the industry, and to set a new global standard for cryptocurrency miner maintenance.

Raising the standard of after-sales service by nurturing maintenance professional development

“The course and materials are very professional and practical, which cover the main models on the market. From the two weeks of course, I have gained a deeper understanding of power supply maintenance and circuit analysis,” remarked one of the successful students, who now holds a Level 2 Certificate of Accomplishment.

The course has been designed to focus on the maintenance of mining machines, teach basic skills of power supply reparations and welding, and to enhance the capacity and drive of enrolled students.

“It is Bitmain’s mission to continuously nurture professional maintenance personnel to the industry and build ATA course certificates to be a global standard for cryptocurrency miner maintenance,” said Andy Niu, Bitmain’s Customer Service Manager.

The course will continue to run for the rest of the year, with an additional classroom being opened up to increase admissions and reduce waiting times for enrolled students. It now opens intake for the Level 1 Maintenance Training session running from 11-23 November 2019 and two Level 2 Maintenance Training sessions running from 23 October – 5 November and 27 November – 10 December 2019.

Bitmain will reveal details on its new after-sales service strategy at the World Digital Mining Summit (WDMS) this October

At this year’s WDMS, in Frankfurt, Germany,  from 8th – 10th October, Bitmain will map out the entire after-sales service ecosystem, outlining the industrial supply management chain, through to the consultation, technical support, product support and maintenance services that are available to customers.

Bitmain will also outline the strategy, new initiatives from the after-sales services team and address some of the concerns currently facing the industry.

Apart from that, the two-day summit features industry investment and innovation for the mining sector. Major thought leaders include Jihan Wu (Bitmain Co-Founder), Micree Zhan (Bitmain Co-Founder & Chairman), John Ge (Matrixport CEO) and Marco Streng (Genesis Mining CEO), as well as top brands will present at this year’s summit. 

Participants of the WDMS can also expect panel discussions on Bitcoin Block Reward Halving and Traditional Finance and Crypto Finance Ecosystem, and networking dinners and opportunities of growing their network and business.

For further information and tickets to the WDMS, please visit: https://miningconf.org/

The highly anticipated conference hosted industry leaders who shared insights on new initiatives to support the mining ecosystem and initial details on upcoming miner models

USA, CALIFORNIA SEP 04, 2019 – Bitmain – the world’s top 10 fabless chipmaker – hosted the 4th Crypto Mining Forum (CMF), a full day mining event which promotes initiatives for miners in the North Central South America region. 

The event provided attendees with in-depth analysis and insights on the cryptocurrency mining industry with a special focus on how Bitmain provides enhanced services for current and future customers. 

The CMF also provided attendees the opportunity to speak, share ideas, network, and discover new resources from Bitmain and other participants. The event included a variety of customer-focused keynote speeches, panel discussions on the topic of mining optimization in the NCSA region and the awarding of the Antminer Pizza Campaign. 

During his speech, Bill Zhu, Bitmain’s Managing Director of Marketing, Sales & Service shared how Bitmain’s innovative mining ecosystem provides end-to-end support for miners from purchasing, to after-sales, hosting services, and financing. Zhu also announced that Bitmain will be releasing new Antminer models in the following weeks.

There were also discussions on how Bitmain would better help its customers plan and adjust for future fluctuations. Sharif Allayarov, Bitmain’s NCSA Regional Director, explained how the company has improved the product purchasing experience, incorporated pre-order agreements as well as purchase agreements from the standard purchasing process. 

Andy Niu, Bitmain’s Customer Service Manager also shared how an improved support system can better serve its customers through its after-sales service and the newly launched Ant Training Academy. He also revealed new plans to strategically launch repair centers in the USA and across different countries to decrease miner downtimes. 

The CMF also involved discussions on hosting services for miners, Nathaniel Yu, International Marketing Manager explained more about Bitmain’s mining farm evaluation system and big data report, which will take place during the WDMS 2019 this coming October 8-10 at Frankfurt, Germany.

Lastly, Daniel Yan, Founding Partner and SVP of Trading, Matrixport discussed how the company can offer its financial services which benefit miners through trading, lending, and custody. Miners could take Matrixport as a one-stop-shop to fulfill all their crypto-financial needs, from liquidating/hedging their coin holdings, getting loans or safeguarding their crypto assets.

BTC.com’s Jane Hu, COO and Antpool’s Eric Wang, Operations Manager also attended the CMF event to discuss the future of mining pools and new services, which continues to service the sector globally to support cryptocurrency mining operations.

The Antminer S9 launch coincided with the starting gun for the great bitcoin bull run of 2017, which led to never-before-seen highs of $19,783. Much like Bitcoin, it has remained a strong part of the cryptocurrency industry ever since. 

During the spike in mining activity leading up to 2017, hardware was struggling to keep pace with the difficulty of the algorithm, as many miners joined the industry.

The launch of the Antminer S9 in May 2016 offered improvements of up to three times on existing models, which marked a change in delivering a higher hash rate without decreasing energy efficiency. 

Able to mine under the SHA256 algorithm at a rate of 14 TH/s, the S9 quickly came to dominate the cryptocurrency mining industry, with each batch selling out within a few hours. It offered a significant increase in ROI – one that was unparalleled by other miners at the time.

Ever since, the Antminer S9 has remained in high-demand, as seen with ongoing requests about the next batch.

In fact, the Antminer S9 remains one of the most used miners ever up to this very day. It was the world’s first Bitcoin miner to make use of 16nm chips, a powerful chip that continues to power the world’s most power-efficient bitcoin miner.

Launching a new generation of Antminer S9 models marks the perfect opportunity to review the progress made since the first S9 hit the market.

Evolution: The next steps

Launched at the height of the bull run, Bitmain engineers worked tirelessly to improve the Antminer S9’s performance.

The team managed to release the Antminer S9i just a year later, on May 2018, followed by the improved Antminer S9j, mere months later in August 2018. Each model offered an improved hashing rate of 14.5Th/s, whilst achieving a reduction in energy consumption.

In that same August, Bitmain started to experiment with more ecologically minded means of running and cooling down miners with the Antminer S9 Hydro and its water-cooling system. It was able to operate with a hashrate of 18 TH/s, whilst maintaining a lower noise level and running an improved cooling mechanism.

In this period of intense growth, it was important for the mining community to be supplied with the best technology there was, without diverting too much from industry-wide long-term goals and developments.

Entering a new chapter

With no sign of demand for the S9 models slowing, Bitmain has continued to work on making this model more efficient and more affordable than ever.

A new design structure was introduced for the S9 Special Edition (SE) and the S9k, achieving an enhanced performance whilst limiting power consumption. The S9k hashes at a rate of 13.5 TH/s, with a remarkable power-efficiency rating of 85 J/TH. 

The S9 SE takes it one step further – delivering a hashrate of 16 TH/s whilst achieving an even better power-efficiency rating of 80 J/TH, and only weighing in at a modest 4.5kg, making it the most energy efficient of the Antminer S9 series. 

The original Antminer S9 was revolutionary at the time with its 14 TH/s hash rate, but demanded 100 J/TH; an additional 15-20% more energy, which eats into mining profits.

The Antminer S9 SE breaks even a bit over 3 months – based on the price of Bitcoin at the time of this writing. That said, miners with access to cheaper electricity or renewable energies can be seeing pure profits even earlier. This is a marked improvement on the standard set by the S9, and one that will be continually improved on.

In such a rapidly-evolving space as cryptocurrency mining, engineers never know where exploratory developments will take them, so it’s always an exciting day to unveil an improved product.

As new means of mining continue to be developed, it is important to uphold the legacy of the models that paved the way.