Cryptocurrency News Archives - Page 4 of 6

Category: Cryptocurrency News (page 4 of 6)

Bitmain’s Jihan Wu Delivers Keynote at The Way Summit, Moscow

Today, Bitmain co-founder, Jihan Wu presented a keynote speech on the debate of Decentralization and Centralization in Proof of Work (PoW) at The Way Summit in Moscow, Russia.

The Way Summit is a leading international forum, held in Moscow, that brings together investors and talent from the West and East.

Jihan spoke alongside leading cryptocurrency influencer Roger Ver, Capital Markets Managing Director at Accenture, Michael Spellacy, and a selected number of industry thought leaders.

After explaining that in its essence, PoW is an economy model that is decentralized by design, Jihan went on to weigh upon its benefits to the cryptocurrency network.

The greatest threat to PoW, he argued, is centralization.

With PoW, the network is maintained through the established social contract between all network users meaning that the resilience of the network doesn’t just rely on a single node, ensuring greater security.

When PoW markets are centralized it can lead to market failure due to factors such as an artificial barrier to entry and price distortion caused by manipulation, Jihan explains.

There is also a common misconception that ASICs cause centralization whereas GPUs do not. Jihan busts this myth noting that centralization is a result of market failures and other factors, which exist even for GPUs. In fact, Jihan noted that ASICs can actually prevent centralization.

One of the key points he makes is that, higher profits for miners actually incentivises more miners to contribute to the network, expanding the mining user base.

With an expanded mining pool, networks are less susceptible to 51 per cent attacks.

Jihan’s insights were well-received by the audience of revolutionary-minded entrepreneurs, investors and individuals contributing to the community and offered a chance to reflect on how PoW algorithms and economic theory work in practice.

After connecting with a community who are powering the theory behind the development of blockchain economies, we look forward to bring with us new insights back to Bitmain.

Being a part of The Way Summit has been invaluable and helpful as we continue to develop leading technologies that empower all network participants and strengthen the network.

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Antminer S17 Series

Bitmain announces selling date of next-gen Antminer S17 series

March 29, 2019 / ADMIN / 0 Comments

The Product Manager of Bitmain’s Antminer 17 series gives users a sneak peek into the features of the new miners which offer “steep improvement” in hashrate.

HONG KONG, 29 March 2019 – Bitmain, the world’s top 10 and China’s second largest fabless chipmaker, is putting their new energy efficient miners that mine cryptocurrencies based on the SHA256 algorithm, such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH), up for sale globally on 9 April 2019.

The key features of the Antminer S17 include: improved energy efficiency; higher hashrate and size compatibility with the previous S15 series.

The new miners in the 17 series include: Antminer S17 Pro, Antminer S17, and Antminer T17.

Ahead of the new model release, Yangxin, Product Manager of Bitmain’s latest Antminer series, reveals what went into the production of the new and improved 2nd generation 7nm ASIC BM1397 mining chips.

“The new miner offers a steep improvement in the hashrate in terms of space and power consumption,” said Yangxin.

The new chip equipped in the 17 series offers a 28.6 percent improvement in power efficiency in comparison with Bitmain’s previous 7nm chip, the BM1391.

Yangxin has specialized in the field of IC (Integrated Circuit) design for over a decade and currently manages miner production delivery, which includes system design and mass production. Here’s what he had to share on the following:

On the highlight features of the new Antminer S17, Yangxin said:

“There are two key indicators to look for when measuring the quality of a mining machine: efficiency and the hashrate:

The stand out features of the S17 are reflected in the following:

Improved performance compared to the previous generation chip. Improved energy efficiency has a big part to play in this.
Higher hashrate in a single miner. This increases the hashrate density per unit space and saves deployment costs for mining farms.”

On the improvement of the 15 series and the 17 series Yangxin said:

“Electricity bills are very high for Bitcoin mining right now so the improved energy efficiency means a significant drop in costs and, thus, increase in profits. Secondly, the new miner offers a steep improvement in the hashrate in terms of space and power consumption. This will be especially meaningful for mining farms when you consider the investment needed with set up.

On what’s next and whether there is an incentive to develop higher hashrate miners beyond 7nm chips Yangxin said:

“From a technical point of view, there is no end to the development of technology. However, in the short run, the driving force behind the development of next-gen miners beyond 7nm chips is slowing down due to physical limitations.

With the nm size shrinking quantum effects, among other new challenges, come into play. It is promising that TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) is already in the process of building 5nm chips. We will continue to follow the development of this technology but it is still early days.

It takes several iterations to create new miners based on the next generation semiconductor process. The solutions to the challenges of nanometer scale mass production require more investment and further research and development.

Considering the rapid pace of development in this area in the past few years, the industry would soon have to find what the next generation would be. For the near future, 7nm would remain the most preferred in terms of performance and economics.”

The new Antminer 17 series will go up for sale on Bitmain’s official website on 9 April 2019.

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Bitmain: Following a busy 2018, what can we expect in 2019?

January 21, 2019 / ADMIN / 0 Comments

As we move into this new year, here at Bitmain we’ve been doing a bit of reflecting on what a year 2018 has been, as well as what we expect this coming year.

This past year we have really focused our efforts to accelerate the creation of a platform and environment designed to scale with exponential growth. We want our innovation to enable anyone, anywhere to mine and benefit from new global digital currencies. As we have always maintained, we have made it our mission to ensure the stability and security of digital currency, to foster greater adoption, usage and efficiency.

There have been many major developments including filing our application to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. In fact, there are too many to list over the past year and we can often forget about the little things that can make a big difference. As such, we have summarized our most memorable milestones that make us proud.

The 7nm ASIC and Asicboost

In the past year, we launched a number of exciting products and have continued to explore ways to boost mining efficiency. Amongst the many products and software upgrades we launched, a notable one was the new firmware that supports the AsicBoost optimization.

The firmware enables significant savings in energy costs and in addition to the S9, its functionality is available on other BM1387-based models, including the R4, S9i, S9j, T9 and T9+.

But perhaps our greatest milestone of 2018 has been our next generation 7nm ASIC chip, designed for SHA-256 mining. Incorporated into our recently launched Antminer S15 and T15s, the chip provides significant improvements in terms of performance, power consumption and delivering outstanding performance. For the entire industry, this not only accelerates the development of digital currency mining, but also provides miners with a better mining experience.

Bitmain Antminer S15

Sophon (AI)

We’ve been working on AI since 2015 and in Q1 we saw the release of the BM1682, our second chip for AI applications and later we released the BM1880 chip for AI.

We also launched edge computing boards and USB modules to support it. In combination, Sophon products can recognize faces, objects, license plates and even fingerprints, whilst providing AI level security. We are already seeing some of the generational-shifting results from the technology and we can’t wait for what 2019 brings.

Investing in Circle

In May last year, we announced our partnership and lead investment in Circle Internet Financial’s US $110 million Series E round. Circle is a global crypto finance company with a clear mission to change our global economy as we know it. Their pioneering work in creating a tokenized US dollar coin, USD Coin, supported by the CENTRE open source framework is bringing us one step closer to realizing the benefits of the Internet of Money era.

Through our partnership with Circle, we’re also helping advance CENTRE’s efforts to introduce more reliable multiple-fiat backed stable coins, that will provide financial interoperability globally.

Funding open-source developers and projects

We continue to find promising open-source developers, projects and organizations. For those that we find to have potential and share our vision we fund them, usually with no strings attached. It means a lot to our community and ourselves for us to fund projects that get us excited with no-strings-attached because it gives us confidence that those technologies will be available one day. Whilst it is our policy to not reveal who we are funding with how much to respect the individual or organization’s privacy, it is safe to say we already spend a great deal on these and we are looking to do some more in 2019.

The Big Fork

It goes without saying that the BCH and BSV split was a significant topic within the global cryptocurrency space last year. It was exciting to see different passions clash for the future and betterment of cryptocurrencies without the purported “hash war” being fought. Having ourselves been through a similar (but much longer!) conflict over the future of Bitcoin just about 18 months back, we understand the BSV community’s decision to split and freely pursue its own dream. Adoption will come through power, flexibility and sophistication of the ecosystem and we look forward to what 2019 has in store for cryptocurrencies.

Our commitment to transparency

What began as a radical experiment in transparency, with us Tweeting the shipment details of the first batch of our new ASIC-based Zcash miners, led to the formation of our transparency policy, which governs the way we mine and how we communicate with the communities that we operate in. This would not have been possible without the proactive and sincere approach taken by the Zcash community in reaching out to us. We continue to be committed to experimenting with the best ways to communicate and work with the communities in which we operate.

The Bitmain Crypto Index

We recognized that our community of miners, users and investors needed a performance reference point for the largest and most liquid cryptocurrencies. So, in November, we rolled out our institutional-grade cryptocurrency index service. The service publishes performance data both a real-time price every second, as well as a daily reference price at 10:00am Hong Kong Time, on a 24/7/365 basis. We are committed to serving our fantastic community, and this is just one of the ways are doing so.

We expanded stateside

We broke ground on a new blockchain datacenter in Rockdale, Texas, representing a considerable investment into the local, county and statewide economy of the US. This was also followed by a new facility in Washington State. These represent key components of our strategic investment in the US market.

Image courtesy: Bitsonline.com

Houston Rockets!

And of course, how can could we forget AntPool’s sponsorship of the Houston Rockets? Who said that mining was all work, no play?

Preparing the company for the future

In preparation for the future, we decided near the end of 2018 that it was time to rationalize our business. Our wide portfolio and varied lines of work have expanded to a point where we have the problem of choice and this year was the time to choose. We started to optimize the business and streamline our flows to focus back on the core missions and activities that best rally behind our vision. We as a company will be lean and more focused towards our goals and we look forward to a 2019 where we can see what our collective efforts can achieve in this manner.

So, what’s the outlook for this year?

While there have been ups and downs in the market, we see this as being part and parcel of the change needed to build a stronger ecosystem. In fact, if we look back, blockchain technology has seen many difficulties in the first decade, and the industry has gone through numerous challenges but has never stopped developing to present day.

While many have commented on the fall in value of cryptocurrencies, we see this as the effects of a stabilizing and maturing market. In fact, we’re beginning to see big name investment institutions coming into the market to provide different digital assets.

We are edging towards an internet of money era, where currencies can move quickly and easily across border without the reliance of traditional institutions. We believe that ASICs will continue to play a fundamental role securing and transforming the complexity of cryptocurrency into useful and trusted assets for everyone.

This year we also anticipate greater adoption of cryptofinance, starting with regulators recognizing the important role cryptocurrencies can play in our financial system and moving away from the sentiment that it is a threat to stability. We most recently saw this when the United Kingdom government proposed giving the financial regulator more power to oversee cryptocurrency assets, as well as the Hong Kong SFC introducing the first set of rules governing the market. Considered regulation can help more people and institutions enjoy the benefit from new global digital currencies.

Blockchain technology has continued developing to present day and has risen above many challenges to get to where we are now. This year, we can expect to see its development gravitate around blockchain applications.

As applications continue to develop, the industry’s market capitalization will fuel growth. Exponential growth in blockchain user traffic will at the same time demand greater data processing capacity, with hardware acceleration and parallel computing technologies being integrated with blockchain, to solve this problem. As a world leading high-performance computing chip company, we believe that there is a significant role for Bitmain to play in meeting this demand and building on its existing innovations such as the 7nm ASIC.

Our mission is to produce hardware and software, as part of our commitment to contribute towards the security and stability of a multitude of cryptocurrencies. We look forward to continuing this effort this year, and contributing to a distributed, decentralized world that empowers everyone. ---------------------
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Announcing Coconut Remote Anonymous Authentication

December 6, 2018 / ADMIN / 0 Comments

We are excited to announce Coconut, a system and application solution that provides users with real name registration for the platform while enhancing the privacy. As privacy and regulation become increasingly important within the digital asset sector, Bitmain has developed a centralized identity authentication process that meets both regulatory requirements while fully protecting user privacy by separating the real-name authentication responsibility from business partner/platform.

On the other hand, we also understand that a fundamental value of blockchain is used to keep a user’s identity and their transaction history private and separated. While we strongly believe in this value, new regulations are requiring practitioners to identify business participants. Bitmain is launching Coconut to satisfy these new regulations and allow organizations to conduct business legally and compliantly.

Although there are numerous identity authentication schemes in the industry, most of these schemes focus on the use of blockchain to store and verify users’ identity information, or they attempt to carry out authentication in an absolute decentralized manner, which, considering today’s reality, seems to be part of a cryptopian future. The failure of the existing schemes to address the issues today has prevented them from being adopted widely. Coconut aims to use technical means to solve the problems in the service layer instead of the network layer.

Once users are identified by organizations, they are given an Intel® Enhanced Privacy ID (EPID) private signing key which cryptographically proves they are a valid member of a group without revealing their “real name” identity. The real-name authentication organization (“KYC service provider”) can use the Intel EPID public group key to verify a user’s identity without revealing personally identifiable information (PII data). In other words, with Coconut, users’ identities are kept private and their Intel EPID credentials allow various organizations to easily, quickly and conveniently verify a user’s authenticity. As an added protection, when the user’s Intel EPID private key is lost or copied, the valid signatures corresponding to the Intel EPID certificate can be revoked and added to the blacklist. It effectively reduces the risk of fraudulent identity.

In a conversation with Lorie Wigle, Intel VP Software and Services Group-General Manager, Platform Security Product Management, she expressed that “AI, analytics, and blockchain technologies are delivering new insights and business models from user data. However, GDPR and other privacy initiatives are placing controls on the use of personal data that could limit the impact of these breakthrough technologies. Intel EPID was created as an open technology and ISO standard to solve the intersection of managing identity at scale while offering anonymity for users and devices. Bitmain’s implementation of Intel EPID unleashes the true potential of blockchain technologies by improving privacy as a barrier to adoption.”

Being the interactive hub of user activity, aKYC service provider and business platform performs the role of an issuer of Intel EPID identities. Coconut plays crucial roles, and there are multiple business models it fits in. Coconut can be an identity authentication app that provides an Intel EPID identity service to external business platforms. Or for big corporate groups it can be used as an authentication system for risk management. After one-time real name authentication in the system, the user can participate in all businesses under the group. For institutions with high social credit, such as banks, in addition to internal use, their Coconut systems can be used externally as well.

We believe this advanced solution will enable both individuals and organizations to freely participate in blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies, despite new regulations surfacing within the industry. We believe that Coconut is the best scheme to balance anonymity and regulation. Besides, it can be implemented easily with consistent technical standards and it can be used extensively because of a strong feasibility.

We have shared Coconut development documentation at Github, you can find it here: https://github.com/coconut201812/coconut

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The 7nm Antminer S15 and T15 are now available for purchase

November 8, 2018 / ADMIN / 0 Comments

We’re pleased to announce that the newest Bitmain next-generation 7nm miners – Antminer S15 and Antminer T15, with two variations of each – are available for purchase today, November 8, 2018, at the following times:

Russia: 17:00
Germany: 15:00
USA: 9:00 (EST)

Our new miners utilize innovative technologies to improve the performance of the new miners’ power and power consumption, and computing performance.

The Antimer S15 provides long-term energy efficiency through its use of Bitmain’s 7nm chip that integrates over 1 billion transistors per unit. This feature significantly improves the computing performances of Antminer. The chip contains a unique circuit structure and low power technology.

Photo: Antminer S15

Additionally, the Antminer S15 chip uses an exposed die package solution moving beyond the traditional over-molding plastic package. The back side of the wafer is in direct contact with the heat dissipation interface and the heat sink, improving the heat transfer efficiency.

The Antminer S15 high-performance mode can achieve a hash rate of 28 TH/s with a power efficiency as low as 57 J/TH; its energy-saving mode can improve power efficiency to 50 J/TH while maintaining a hash rate of 17 TH/s.

Similarly, our Antminer T15 high-performance mode sees a hash rate of 23 TH/s and a power efficiency as low as 67 J/TH. Its energy-saving mode can improve power efficiency to 60 J/TH while maintaining a hash rate of 20 TH/s.

Photo: Antminer T15

On both modes, the heat dissipation efficiency is significantly improved from prior modes. Adopting the new heat dissipation structure, the parallel fan design is applied to both modes to shorten the wind speed and reduce wind resistance. As a result, the reliability for long-term operation of the miner has been upgraded while reducing maintenance cost.

For large mining farms, both modes are easy to implement as an all-in-one design of miner with PSU and can be set up vertically or horizontally, making it flexibly adapted to different mining farms and miner racks. With the new high conversion power supply APW8, 16-18V high-voltage output, new miners can effectively reduce the power loss during the power conversion process, helping mining farms save on electricity costs.

Antminer S15 and Antminer T15 are officially on sale on the Bitmain international website (https://shop.bitmain.com/).---------------------
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World Digital Mining Summit by Bitmain and BitKan held successfully last weekend in Tbilisi, Georgia (Sept. 21-23)

September 29, 2018 / ADMIN / 0 Comments

Bitmain co-founder, co-CEO, Jihan Wu, announces Bitmain’s new BM1391 7nm chip for SHA-256 mining

World Digital Mining Summit by Bitmain and BitKan held successfully last weekend (Sept. 21-23) in Tbilisi, Georgia

The World Digital Mining Summit, an event hosted by Bitmain together with BitKan, was successfully held last weekend, September 21-23, at the Hualing Tbilisi in Georgia, with cryptocurrency media and attendees heralding the summit as a great success. The event drew over 1,000 attendees from all over the world, including: Georgia, Russia, Eastern and Central Europe, North, Central and South America, not to mention China, Japan, Korea and other countries in Asia Pacific and globally.

Spectators enjoy the opening ceremony at the historic Tbilisi Opera

Opening at the Tbilisi Opera on Friday, Bitmain co-founder and co-CEO Jihan Wu announced the launch of Bitmain’s new 7 nanometer process ASIC chip. Placing this 7nm technological innovation in the context of the development of blockchain technology to date, Wu also shared a detailed vision for the industry’s future, including the integration of AI and blockchain for decentralized artificial intelligence, and the emergence of cryptographic algorithms based on quantum computing. Roger Ver, CEO of Bitcoin.com followed, discussing Bitcoin Cash (BCH), a vision for the coin’s future and the underpinning importance of economic freedom as a core value for Bitcoin Cash.

Bitcoin.com CEO, Roger Ver presents on Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and its core value of economic freedom

Saturday saw Bitmain’s Head of Sales and Business Development, Sharif Allayarov kick off proceedings in the Grand Hall, presenting on challenges facing miners currently, notably hash rate growth and also providing details on Bitmain’s AntBox and Antminer series, and how Bitmain’s products provide market leading specifications and added value for miners. Operations Director of BitKan, Cheng Yao, came next, presenting on BitKan’s offering and discussing how miners may find the correct benchmark in a volatile market. This was followed by enlightening keynote speeches from Marco Streng, CEO of Genesis Group; Olsen Su, Bitmain’s Head of Global Mining Farms; Shaun Chong and Kevin Zhang of the Bitcoin.com Pool; Lingchao Xu, Project Director of Antpool; Dmitry Ozersky, Managing Partner of Electro.Farm; Jason Zhuang, Project Director of BTC.com; Batyr Hydyrov, CEO and Founder of Uminers; Martha Zhang, Co-founder of DEx.top; and, Shera Lei, COO of Rockminer. The last speaker for the day was Amaury Séchet, Lead Developer of Bitcoin ABC, discussing plans and opportunities in scaling Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and the impact for mining economics.

Team members from Bitmain and BitKan cut cake for event attendees together with local host partner, Birtvi

Sunday saw a full schedule of keynote speeches in both the venue’s Grand and Sub Halls. Sean Walsh, CEO of Hyperblock initiated proceedings in the Grand Hall, presenting Hyperblock’s vision for the exponential growth of money technology, detailed proposals for affiliate marketing as a means of bringing more users into the cryptocurrency eco-system and exploring some of the key supply and demand economics underlying Bitcoin’s volatility. This was followed by Sue Wang, CEO and Founder of Mining presenting on mining opportunities in North America. Other engaging keynote speeches followed by Kirill Orekhov, Business Development Director of En+ Group; Igor Runets, CEO of Bitriver Limited; Beqa Avaliani, CEO of BIRTVI and Inge Snip, Head of Communications at BIRTVI. The afternoon was kicked off in an intriguing keynote speech by Beatrice O’Carroll, Head of Sales and Relationship Management (OTC Trading) of Circle, on de-mystifying OTC markets within the cryptocurrency space, explaining Circle’s OTC platform offering and how miners can get involved. The afternoon in the Grand Hall proceeded with other interesting keynote speeches from Khikmatulloev Rustam, CEO of Sigma Pool; Micah Smith, COO of Blockchain Infrastructure Research; Ryan Xu, BD Director of ViaBTC; and Giorgi Berezovski of Fulcrum LLC.

Marco Streng, CEO of Genesis Mining is interviewed by media following his Grand Hall keynote speech

Sunday’s Sub Hall similarly ran a full schedule of keynote speakers, Denis Slabakov, CEO of New Mining presenting on Norway as the ideal global location for mining operations, explaining the firm’s Norway data center offering. Kiril Nikolov, Sales Executive of Nexo AG spoke next, discussing the unlocking of mining operation growth via crypto-backed loans. Other engaging keynote speakers followed, including Michael Whitehorn, Co-Founder and General Manager of D coin; Arutyun Nazaryan of Bistox Exchange AG; Ramak Jon of Plouton Group; Dmitry Nikiforov of Quppy; Evgeny Kaplin, CEO of ModulTrade; Wei Huang, CEO of Dake Data Limited; Ivan Liang, OTC Director of FBG One; and Tamar Menteshashvili of Expread and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The day’s keynote speeches were closed by Rodik Mik of Direct Blockchain (presenting Buddy) on giving miners a second source of income and Denis Maksimov LLC of WattsOn presenting “The Most Profitable Mining in Europe with the WattsOn Ecosystem.”

Attendees ask questions during Circle Internet Financial speaker Beatrice O’Carroll’s ‘Demystifying OTC Markets’ Keynote Speech Q&A

The event organizers, Bitmain and BitKan, would like to express our great thanks to all keynote speakers, attendees, sponsors and event partners for joining the World Digital Mining Summit. The event was a wonderful success and we look forward to organizing a follow-up at the next available opportunity. Thank you and we look forward to meeting again soon.

Attendees discuss together in the networking area outside the World Digital Mining Summit’s Grand Hall

WDMS local host partner, Birtvi was represented by the firm’s CEO, Beqa Avaliani and Head of Communications, Inge Snip, here presenting their keynote speech in the Summit’s Grand Hall---------------------
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Bitmain Announces Next-Generation 7 Nanometer ASIC Chip for SHA-256 Mining. New Mining Machine Will Be Available Soon

September 21, 2018 / ADMIN / 0 Comments

BM1391 Chip Uses the 7nm Semiconductor Manufacturing Process and Will Greatly Improve Power Efficiency, New Mining Machine Will Be Available Soon

BEIJING, P.R. China, September 21, 2018 – Jihan Wu, co-CEO and co-founder of Bitmain Technologies Ltd., announced Bitmain’s next-generation ASIC chip BM1391 for mining cryptocurrencies using the SHA256 algorithm at the World Digital Mining Summit in Georgia today. Mr. Wu also revealed that Bitmain will soon launch a new generation of mining machines equipped with the BM1391 chip.

Bitmain co-CEO and co-founder Jihan Wu at the World Digital Mining Summit in Georgia, September 21, 2018

The new ASIC SHA256 algorithm acceleration chip carefully built by Bitmain uses one of the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturing technologies, 7nm Finfet. The ASIC chip integrates more than a billion transistors and is optimized for maximum efficiency. Thanks to its unique circuit structure and low power technology, it is stable and more efficient. Mr. Wu said tests have shown that the chip can achieve a ratio of energy consumption to the mining capacity that is as low as 42J/T.

Bitmain next-generation ASIC chip with ratio of energy consumption to mining capacity as low as 42J/T

At his keynote speech at the summit, Mr. Wu said mass production of the 7nm chip will begin and be applied to the next generation of Bitmain’s Antminer machines, improving the new miners in various performance indicators, in terms of power and power consumption, and enabling outstanding performance.

Mr. Wu also pointed out that blockchain technology has continued developing to the present day, noting that the technology’s first decade has seen many difficulties, and that the future direction of development will center around applications of the blockchain. He said that as applications continue to develop, the industry’s market capitalization as a whole will drive growth. Exponential growth in blockchain user traffic will at the same time require ever greater capacity in data processing, with hardware acceleration and parallel computing technologies being integrated with blockchain to help solve this problem.

Bitmain’s 7nm chip to be used in a new Antminer

Bitmain has been committed to the development and launch of high-performance computing chips. Since its establishment, Bitmain has independently developed and mass produced a variety of chips. In 2016, Bitmain took the lead in releasing and mass-producing 16nm chips, applying them to its Antminer S9 miner and other models. The Antminer S9 quickly occupied international markets with its high-computing power, low power consumption and strong stability, and has become a leader in the global mining machine industry. In addition, Bitmain’s Antminer series of mining machines has introduced a variety of models that support different encryption algorithms to meet the global demand of different digital currencies.

As a world leading high-performance computing chip company, Bitmain has grown rapidly over the years. It now has multi-brand businesses including Antminer, Antpool, BTC.com and Sophon. Bitmain’s cryptocurrency mining machine has long been a world leader with a market share of more than 70%.

The 7nm chip reflects the R&D strength of Bitmain and further consolidates Bitmain’s industry position. For the entire industry, this not only accelerates the development of digital currency mining but also sets a new benchmark for quality, providing miners with a better mining experience.

About Bitmain

Bitmain – founded in 2013 and headquartered in Beijing – transforms computing by building industry-defining technology in cryptocurrency, blockchain, and artificial intelligence (AI). Bitmain leads the global blockchain industry in the production of integrated circuits for cryptocurrency mining, as well as mining hardware under the Antminer brand. The company also operates the largest cryptocurrency mining pools worldwide – Antpool and BTC.com. A leader in the still-nascent, high-growth blockchain technology ecosystem, Bitmain supports a wide array of blockchain platforms and startups, and actively participates in industry and community development. Bitmain has offices throughout China, including Hong Kong, and offices worldwide. For further information on Bitmain, see www.bitmain.com.

Bitmain, together with BitKan, is currently hosting the World Digital Mining Summit September 21-23, 2018 in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, featuring 30+ speakers and up to 1,000 attendees: miners, mining machine manufacturers, investors, mining pools, technologists, researchers and more. For further information, see www.miningconf.org.

Contact:

Bitmain International PR and Communications Dept.

internationalcomms@bitmain.com---------------------
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OK, What in the World is an ICO, Anyway?

September 26, 2017 / Justin Connell / 0 Comments

2017 is shaping up to be the Year of the ICO. China recently banned initial coin offerings, and instructed companies who had conducted such fundraising efforts return the money they received. Although $2.32 billion has been raised through ICOs – $2.16 billion of that has been raised in 2017, according to Cryptocompare – many people are still wondering: what in the world is an ICO, anyway?

The ICO headlines have been impressive. EOS raises $185 million in five days. Golem raises $8.6 million in minutes. Qtum raises $15.6 million. Waves raises $2 million in 24 hours. The DAO, Ethereum’s planned decentralized investment fund, raises $120 million (the largest crowdfunding campaign in history at the time) before a $56 million hack crippled the project.

Short for ‘initial coin offering’, an ICO is an unregulated means of raising funds and is commonly employed by blockchain-based ventures. Early backers receive tokens in exchange for crypto-currencies, such as Bitcoin, Ether and others. The sales are made possible by Ethereum and its ERC20 token standard, a protocol designed to make it easy for developers to create their own crypto-tokens. While the tokens sold can have diverse uses, many have none. Token sales allow developers to raise funds to finance the project and the applications they are building.

Bitcoin.com writer Jamie Redman penned an acerbic 2017 post introducing the fictitious “Do Nothing Technologies” (DNT) ICO. “[F]illled with blockchain word salad and loosely related math,” the satirical white paper makes clear that “The DNT sale is not an investment or a token that possesses any value.”

It adds: “The purpose of the ‘Do Nothing for You’ blockchain is simple to understand. You give us bitcoins and ether, and we promise we will fill our pockets with wealth and not help you in the least.”

MyEtherWallet, a wallet for ERC20 tokens oft-associated with ICOs, recently tweetstormed an indictment of ICOs: “You do not provide support for your investors. You do not protect your investors. You do not help educate your investors.” Not everyone is so generally critical of the craze.

“ICOs are a totally free market way of raising money for financial startups,” says Alexander Norta, a veteran smart contract expert. “It is actually an anarcho-capitalistic way of financing, and it will lead to many cool innovations that will significantly reduce the role of fraudulent banks and oversized governments. ICOs will revive free-market capitalism again and reduce this government run crony-capitalism we have now.”

According to Reuben Bramanathan, Product Counsel at Coinbase, individual tokens serve different functions and rights. Some tokens are essential in the functioning of a network. Other projects might be possible without a token. Another type of token serves no purpose, as is the case in Redman’s satirical post.

“A token can have any number of characteristics,” says the technology-focused lawyer, a native of Australia who now lives in the Bay Area. “You might have some tokens that promise rights that look like equities, dividends or interests in a company. Other tokens might present something quite new and different, such as distributed apps or new protocols for exchanging resources.”

Golem network tokens, for instance, enable participants to pay for computer processing power. “Such a token doesn’t look like a traditional security,” according to Mr. Bramanathan. “It looks like a new protocol or distributed app. These projects want to distribute tokens to users of the app and they want to seed the network that is going to be used in the applications. Golem wants both buyers and sellers of computer processing power to build the network.”

While ICO is the most common term in the space, Mr. Bramanathan believes it to be insufficient. “While the term emerged because there are some comparisons [between the two ways of] raising funds, it gives the wrong impression from what these sales really are,” he says. “While an IPO is a well-understood process of taking a company public, a token sale is the early stage sale of digital assets representative of potential value. It’s really very different in terms of investment thesis and value proposition than an IPO. The word token sale, pre-sale or crowdsale makes more sense.”

Indeed, companies have moved away from the term “ICO” as of late because the term could mislead buyers and attract unnecessary regulatory attention. Bancor held instead a “Token Allocation Event.” EOS called its sale a “Token Distribution Event.” Others have used the terms ‘token sale’, ‘fundraiser’, ‘contribution’ and so on.

Both the US and Singapore have signaled they would regulate the market, but no regulator has taken a formal position on ICOs or token sales. China did put a stop to token sales, but experts on the ground their foresee a resumption. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Financial Conduct Authority in the UK have commented, but none have established a firm position about how the law applies to tokens.

“This is a space of continued uncertainty for developers and entrepreneurs,” says Mr. Bramanathan. “Securities law will have to adapt. In the meantime, if best practices emerge, we will see developers, exchanges and buyers learn lessons from past token sales. We also expect to see some token sales move to the KYC model or at least a model intended to limit the amount people can buy and increase distribution.”

Image Source: Shutterstock---------------------
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What Every Bitcoiner Should Know About ‘Bitcoin Cash’

July 27, 2017 / ADMIN / 2 Comments

In a few days the notorious August 1st is approaching, and it’s likely this day will be remembered for a long time. This week Bitcoin.com discussed the possible scenario of a user activated hard fork called “Bitcoin Cash” as much of the community doesn’t realize this fork will likely still happen despite Segwit2x’s current progress.

Also read: Bitmain’s 24 July Statement about Bitcoin Cash

What is Bitcoin Cash?

Bitcoin Cash is a token that may exist in the near future due to a user-activated hard fork (UAHF) that will bifurcate the Bitcoin blockchain into two branches. The UAHF was initially a contingency plan against the user-activated soft fork (UASF) announced by Bitmain. Since this announcement, at the “Future of Bitcoin” conference a developer named Amaury Séchet revealed the Bitcoin ABC” (Adjustable Blocksize Cap) project and told the audience about the upcoming UAHF.

Following Séchet’s announcement and after Bitcoin ABC’s first client release, the project “Bitcoin Cash” (BCC) was announced. Bitcoin Cash will be pretty much the same as BTC minus a few things, like the Segregated Witness (Segwit) implementation and the Replace-by-Fee (RBF) feature. According to BCC, a few of the biggest differences between BTC and BCC will be three new additions to the bitcoin codebase that include;

Block Size Limit Increase – Bitcoin Cash provides an immediate increase of the block size limit to 8MB.
Replay and Wipeout Protection – Should two chains persist, Bitcoin Cash minimizes user disruption, and permits safe and peaceful coexistence of the two chains, with replay and wipeout protection.
New Transaction Type (a new fix was added, note the “UPDATE” at the end of this post)– As part of the replay protection technology, Bitcoin Cash introduces a new transaction type with additional benefits such as input value signing for improved hardware wallet security, and elimination of the quadratic hashing problem.

Bitcoin Cash will have support from various members of the cryptocurrency industry including miners, exchanges, and clients like Bitcoin ABC, Unlimited, and Classic will also be assisting the project. In addition to this help, Bitcoin Cash developers have added a ‘slow’ mining difficulty reduction algorithm just in case there’s not enough hashrate to support the chain.

Mining and Exchange Support

“We continue to remain committed to supporting the Segwit2x proposal, which has received broad support from Bitcoin industry and community alike — However, due to significant demand from our users, the Bitcoin.com Pool will give mining customers the option of supporting the Bitcoin Cash chain (BCC) with their hashrate, but otherwise Bitcoin.com Pool will by default remain pointed at the chain supporting Segwit2x (BTC).”

Bitcoin.com previously reported on Viabtc adding a BCC futures market to their exchange’s listed coins. The token has been trading at roughly $450-550 over the past 24-hours and reached an all time high of $900 when first released. Two other exchanges, Okcoin via the ‘OKEX’ platform and Livecoin have also announced they will also be listing BCC on their trading platforms. Bitcoin Cash supporters expect more exchanges to follow shortly after the fork is complete.

What Can I do to Obtain Bitcoin Cash?

Again, regardless of Segwit2x’s progress this fork most likely will happen and bitcoiners should be prepared. There are a few days left until August 1 and those looking to acquire Bitcoin Cash should remove their coins from third parties into a wallet they control.

For more information on Bitcoin Cash check out the official announcement here, and the BCC website here.

UPDATE, 28 July 2017: According to bitcoincash.org, a change (fix) has been introduced to make “New Transaction Type” to “New Sighash Type”. Following is more info on this new feature:

New SigHash Type – As part of the replay protection technology, Bitcoin Cash introduces a new way of signing transactions. This also brings additional benefits such as input value signing for improved hardware wallet security, and elimination of the quadratic hashing problem.

Written by Jamie Redman for Bitcoin.com | Original article: https://news.bitcoin.com….---------------------
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BitPay Says Alternatives Not as Compelling as the Bitcoin Blockchain

March 25, 2017 / ADMIN / 0 Comments

BitPay co-founders Stephen Pair and Tony Gallippi have been around Bitcoin for about as long as anyone else in the industry. The company was founded in 2011, and their actions generally indicate the future direction of the industry.

“When we started in 2011, we would be excited to get five or six transactions through BitPay in a day.” said Pair in a fireside chat with Gallippi, held during the recent Distributed: Markets 2017 conference in Atlanta.

BitPay would go on to cut deals with the likes of Microsoft, Newegg, Expedia and other major corporate customers to provide payment processing services.

Challenges for Bitcoin’s Use in Consumer Payments

While many early Bitcoin adopters claimed the P2P digital cash system was going to replace the use of credit cards and completely overthrow the banking system in 2013, things haven’t exactly panned out that way — at least not yet.

Bitcoin is currently dealing with some issues as a consumer payments platform, mainly because the system is experiencing growth at a rate faster than it can safely scale.

“We have seen an increase in customer service inquiries because of transaction confirmation delays for bitcoin purchasers,” Pair told Bitcoin Magazine in an interview. “We’re also seeing substantially higher transaction fees on our own settlement transactions.”

Recently, BitPay decided to stop covering Bitcoin network fees on invoice payments.

“This friction is making us get more creative in how we do user experience design for delayed payment states on the BitPay platform,” said Pair. “Often delays are an educational opportunity to explain how the Bitcoin network works and point people to wallets that use dynamic transaction fees. Copay and BitPay wallet users have been largely immune from transaction delays because their wallets calculate transaction fees dynamically.

“Our designers and engineers are constantly attuned to how we can make using Bitcoin intuitive,” Pair added.

The lightning network is a proposed method of dealing with the issues related to transaction delays and higher transaction fees on the Bitcoin network. The transaction caching layer would effectively enable potentially improved versions of many of the features people have associated with Bitcoin in the past, such as instant transactions at nearly no cost.

“We’re exploring all possible solutions for scalability,” Pair said. “It’s not a surprise to us that Bitcoin needs to scale — scalability is something we’ve been thinking about for years. The only surprise is that while we anticipated short-term bumps in the throughput, we thought that changes for more on-chain throughput would have happened a couple of years ago. This slow movement to increase network throughput is something we did not foresee. At some point we’re going to reach an actual scalability limit that will only be overcome through solutions like these.”

Some have wondered whether companies like BitPay may turn away from Bitcoin and toward alternative options, such as altcoins or permissioned blockchains, due to the historically high U.S.-dollar-denominated fees and general congestion on the network.

“We have carefully studied the most significant alternatives to the Bitcoin blockchain and have concluded that none of them are compelling,” Pair responded.

Bitcoin’s Use in Consumer Payments Is Still Growing

Although Pair admitted Bitcoin has some issues with scaling right now, BitPay is still seeing growth in the use of the technology among consumers.

“Bitcoin is the fastest, most secure and most cost-effective means of doing value transfer on the internet,” said Pair. “We think of ourselves as a payment innovator, and from a functional perspective, consumer payments and B2B payments are no different on the Bitcoin network and on BitPay’s platform.”

At the Distributed: Markets fireside chat, Gallippi claimed that their transaction count has more than doubled over the past year. Much of that growth, he said, has been seen in the areas of digital goods and video games. Specifically, he pointed to digital distribution platform Steam’s acceptance of bitcoin through BitPay as a source of this growth, and pointed out that there is a lot of overlap between the Bitcoin and gamer communities;

Growth for Bitcoin Outside of Consumer Payments

In addition to continued growth in the area of consumer payments, Pair noted that BitPay is also seeing growth in the use of Bitcoin for B2B money transfers.

“We’re seeing significant interest and transaction volume growth from businesses that need to transfer value to other businesses,” said Pair. “Bitcoin is a fantastic solution for these business-to-business transfers, especially when it comes to international payments, where bank transfers are still slow and inefficient.

“They’re using our platform for billing and settling internationally with a lot of their suppliers,” Pair stated during the fireside chat.

Gallippi added that there has been an uptick in the use of Bitcoin for payment disbursements.

“It’s not that easy to pay people on a regular basis to the majority of the world. Eastern Europe, Israel, Africa, India [and] the Middle East — where a lot of these apps are being [developed] — it’s very difficult to pay them,” said Gallippi, as he explained how app stores pay developers who sell apps on their store.

Gallippi noted that for the app store example or digital marketing companies, BitPay can receive one payment from the business and then disburse payments in bitcoin at all of the endpoints.

“We built that product originally because we had our own needs to pay our own employees in bitcoin,” added Pair. “We’ve got a lot of Fortune 500 companies coming to us now every day asking us to solve these kinds of payments problems.”

Written by Kyle Torpey for Bitcoin Magazine | Original article: www.bitcoinmaga….---------------------
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