Samsung Electronics, the conglomerate business that accounts for around 20% of South \u200eKorea\u2019s entire economy, is making a move into the mining hardware industry.<\/p>\n
The tech giant \u200ehas set up its ASIC chip manufacturing unit over the past year and produced an initial batch of \u200emining hardware to supply to an unnamed Chinese equipment provider, with plans to \u200eexpand its venture to other regions like South Korea and Japan.\u200e<\/p>\n
Bitcoiners on social media have lots of questions about the company\u2019s \u200eplans to get a foothold in the mining \u200eindustry, the process of winning digital coins by \u200ecrunching complex equations.<\/p>\n
ASIC (short for \u2018application-specific integrated \u200ecircuit\u2019) is a microchip designed for special applications.\u200e<\/p>\n
Local media outlets reported that that the tech titan is ready to start mass production \u200eduring this week. Samsung also intends to manufacture GPU miners for \u200eminers targeting small cryptocurrencies. \u200e<\/p>\n
Hwang Min-seong, an analyst at Samsung Securities, told the Korean portal The Bell:\u200e<\/p>\n
\u200e\u201cSamsung Electronics could increase its revenues through ASIC chip manufacturing \u200ebut because the foundry only accounts for a small portion of the company\u2019s semi-\u200econductor manufacturing plant, it is difficult to predict that the firm\u2019s mining venture \u200ewill have a significant impact on the company\u2019s revenues.\u201d\u200e<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
TSMC has generated $350 million to $400 million of revenue from \u200ecrypto-mining in the Q3 2017. That\u2019s about 4 to 5 percent \u200eof the period\u2019s revenue.<\/p>\n
With the introduction of Samsung miners, Bitmain and its partner \u200ecompany TSMC\u2019s tight grip on the mining market may be shaken up. The technology firm, which operates a large-scale and sophisticated semi-conductor manufacturing \u200eplant, should offer an alternative for Bitmain\u2019s mining hardware, \u200ewhich has dominated the market for the past few years. \u200e<\/p>\n
The ASIC mining hardware manufacturing industry has so far largely been dominated by \u200ethe Chinese manufacturer, which has sold equipment equivalent to nearly \u200e\u200e70 percent or more of the hash power on the network. What\u2019s \u200emore, half of all hash power produced by Bitmain\u2019s machines is \u200epointed to mining pools that are either owned by or closely \u200eaffiliated with the company. \u200e<\/p>\n
Samsung stands to benefit big-time from a boom in cryptocurrency mining driven by \u200eBitcoin\u2019s leap last year. That\u2019s a timely boost, as expectations for \u200esmartphones shipments dwindle as global demand tapers off.<\/p>\n
Although some investors are bullish that \u200edemand on cryptocurrency-related chipset could offset soft smartphone sales in 2018, there\u2019s no \u200eguarantee crypto-mania will persist as regulators around the globe have been \u200eclamping down on virtual currency to curb financial risk. Miners themselves \u200eface disruption, forced to shift their operations as scrutiny over immense power \u200eusage tightens. \u200e<\/p>\n
Additionally, the coin\u2019s inherent scarcity, since its supply is capped at 21 \u200emillion, also imposes an upper limit on chip demand in the long term. Once the \u200emajority of that amount is mined, chip demand will disappear. As such, Samsung\u2019s investors may treat cryptocurrency like a \u200epotential bonus that could be magnified in the near term.\u200e<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Samsung Electronics, the conglomerate business that accounts for around 20% of South \u200eKorea\u2019s entire economy, is making a move into the mining hardware industry. The tech giant \u200ehas set up its ASIC chip manufacturing unit over the past year and produced an initial batch of \u200emining hardware to supply to an unnamed Chinese equipment provider, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-classic-boxed.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4,5,37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timestampmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timestampmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timestampmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timestampmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timestampmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timestampmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timestampmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timestampmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timestampmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timestampmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}