Recently, such a parameter of protection of the bitcoin blockchain as computing power has again exceeded record values. So, BTC.com cites the data: the average hash rate of mining the most popular currency (data taken for two weeks) reached the level of 71.43 EH / s (for comparison: this figure as of July 23 of this year was 64.49 EH / s). On Monday, this threshold shifted, and the difficulty of mining the most popular virtual currency was adjusted by 586 672 blocks, which is 6.94EH / s or 10.78% since the beginning of July.

What is the difficulty of mining cryptocurrency?

The complexity of mining digital currency number 1 should be understood as how difficult it is for miners to fight for bitcoin mining, and for the software to generate blocks, the correction of which is carried out approximately every 2 weeks (every 2016 blocks). This ensures that there is about 10 minutes left for a new block to be created on the next cycle.

Miners are such equipment or even a whole center that is technically equipped for the production of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. They arose because the mining process is constantly becoming more complicated and requires a large number of technical, energy, and financial resources. When mining bitcoins, miners solve technically complex problems. Initially, when the bitcoin network was just developing, it was possible to mine cryptocurrency on home computers, but now it is within the power of large mining farms. It should also be emphasized that the emission volume of the most popular digital coin is regulated by time, and only a certain amount of cryptocurrency is mined per unit of time.

So, lets say that powerful ASIC miners, for example, Bitmain AntMiner S17 or MicroBT WhatsMiner M20S, the mining speed of each of them is about 55TH / s, gave additional computing power, which amounted to 6.9EH / s or 6.9 million. TH / s. They are on the market recently.

Thus, over the past two weeks, more than 100 thousand high-end ASIC miners could turn on. Also, we must not forget that these products were sold for at least $ 2,000 each, which gave about $ 200 million in profit that large manufacturers of mining equipment received.

Growth factors of interest in mining

Interest in mining the most popular virtual currency in the world is growing rapidly, especially when its price starts to rise. Interest also increases when the rainy season begins in the southwestern region of the country. At this time, the cost of electricity (hydropower) is significantly cheaper. It should be noted that it is in this place in the world that about half of all mining in the world is located.

The Chinese miners recently carried out calculations, which showed that in the summer period the bitcoin hash rate will be above 70EH / s. And this was really confirmed, because in June, at some time periods, the hashrate already reached this mark, and on August 1, it was at 80EH / s.

Today, the average computing power for two weeks is kept above 70EH / s. It follows that a new record for the difficulty of bitcoin mining was about 10 trillion, which is a new all-time high.

How has the mining market changed?

The significant interest in the mining of virtual currency and its constant increase has caused significant changes that are observed in the market today. Today, the largest manufacturers are working to offer the most powerful equipment possible. So, for example, Bitmain, as the market leader, owns 70% of the total.

Today, there can be serious competition in the market, because the leading manufacturers are able to offer top-end products that provide a higher amount of profit.

Miners market leaders

As former cryptocurrency mining analyst Michael Jeong, who is now the manager of mining farms in The Force Mining project, told CoinDesk, the list of leaders in terms of production capacity among flagship models of famous brands has changed significantly.

So, he explained that the Bitmain company during 2017-2018. is the market leader with AntMiner mining hardware (S9 series). The second place belongs to the equipment Canaan Avalon 8. And the three leaders are completed by InnoSilicon, Ebang.

During the first half of 2019, the list of leaders in the mining market has changed significantly. Now the position of the leader belongs to the WhatsMiner M20 equipment of the MicroBT brand, the second place belongs to Bitmain with the S17 series miners, and the third position belongs to InnoSilicon, Canaan and Ebang.

The best hardware for Bitcoin mining

According to the information provided by the F2pool mining profit tracker, in terms of profitability from mining cryptocurrency, BitMinT AntMiner S17 Pro is in third place, behind BitFury Tardis and MicroBT WhatsMiner.

It should also be noted that the WhatsMiner M20S equipment will cost 3 thousand dollars, and the AntMiner S17 Pro - approximately 4 thousand dollars (information from the official websites of the companies).

Despite the fact that orders for the specified equipment were until the end of this year, as Tsuoxing Yang (founder of MicroBT) told CoinDesk, chip suppliers do not always have chips on hand, which is really a problem for production facilities.

So, for the M20 MicroBT series, 10nm chips are used, which are more affordable if you compare them with 7nm chips in the AntMiner S17 equipment of the Bitmain brand.

In their flagship models of MicroBT equipment, from 2019, they began to use Samsung microcircuits, and before that they used TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) microcircuits.

TSMC and Samsung have calculated that the demand for chips for cryptocurrency mining will resume in the 3-4 quarters of 2019.