Bitmain rolled out its next-generation Antminer S21 and S21 Hydro ASIC miners on the World Digital Mining Summit (WDMS) in Hong Kong on Sept. 22, revealing the essential efficiency stats your complete trade has been ready for. The S21 has a hash price of 200 terahashes per second (TH/s) and an effectivity of 17.5 joules per terahash (J/T), whereas the S21 hydro hashes at 335 TH/s and 16 J/T, which is notable on condition that till lately, most Bitcoin ASICS have been working above the 20 J/T stage.
With electrical energy prices persevering with to rise year-over-year and the Bitcoin halving projected to happen in April 2024, ASIC effectivity is rapidly turning into the paramount focus of miners, and lots of are additionally pivoting towards folding in renewable vitality sources as a core part of their operations.
Bitcoin miners concentrate on effectivity and renewable vitality
Sustainable growth within the mining trade was a core theme mentioned in a majority of the panels on the WDMS. Within the opening roundtable, staff members from Terrawulf, Core Scientific, CleanSpark and Iris Power shared their views on how additional integration of renewable vitality sources will grow to be a essential technique to implement for a lot of miners after the April 2024 Bitcoin provide halving.
In accordance with Nazar Khan, Terrawulf’s chief working officer:
“There’s a big transition occurring within the provide facet of the era course of; there’s a concerted effort to decarbonize your complete provide stack, and so after we discuss Bitcoin miners consuming extra renewable vitality, that’s a part of a broader theme that’s taking place throughout the US with out Bitcoin mining as properly. The position that we play is finding our Bitcoin mining masses in locations the place that’s taking place and the way can we facilitate that decarbonization course of.“
One affect of the upcoming provide halving is that miners will keep the identical capital and operational prices, plus the necessity to pay down any revolving money owed, whereas primarily seeing their block reward distribution reduce in half.
Because of this, miners will both want to extend the proportion of their hash price derived from sustainable vitality sources or make effectivity changes to their ASIC fleet to take care of or enhance their profitability.
Concerning the rollout of the Antminer XP 21 and its potential affect on the mining trade, BMC founder Justin Kramer mentioned:
“The S21, if dependable, pretty priced and available — and sure, that’s lots of ifs with Bitmain’s historical past — may revolutionize the crypto mining panorama with its effectivity. It’s mainly packing the facility of two S19 100T miners into one unit. Regardless of this, the burgeoning aftermarket firmware market, coupled with hydro/immersion techniques, give miners extra instruments to maintain older era miners, such because the S19, worthwhile additionally. Thus, whereas the S21 represents a notable development, it could not render sub 110 TH/s miners totally out of date.”
When requested concerning the extra thrilling elements of the brand new S19 XP, Kramer famous that:
“I like that Bitmain is rewarding environmentally pleasant mining farms with higher pricing and superior supply with their new Carbon Impartial Certificates. However, I’ll add that, it was a little bit stunning after I observed that each new S21 fashions provide 33% extra hash price (S21 200T versus 151T on S19j XP; S21 hydro is 335T versus the S19 XP Hydro at 257T). Is that this a coincidence? I’m uncertain, and it possible alerts extra of the identical systematic mannequin releases from Bitmain the place a slight tweak to the firmware and possibly a number of different gadgets which might be adjusted leads to a average enhance in hash price and a brand-new miner.”
Bitcoin is en path to turning into an ESG asset
A theme of the previous few years has been a rise in Bitcoin miners and BTC advocates pushing again towards the assertion that Bitcoin mining is dangerous for the atmosphere, and that the trade’s reliance on carbon-based vitality manufacturing accelerates emissions.
Countering this angle, Hong Kong Sustaintech Basis professor in accounting and finance, Haitian Lu, bluntly introduced that:
“Bitcoin mining is selling renewable vitality adoption in lots of areas.”
Lu defined that “over time, Bitcoin mining has grow to be extra environment friendly and can also be utilizing cleaner vitality. Historical past tells us that human growth from an agricultural society to industrialization to the way forward for a digitalized financial system goes with each rising vitality consumption per capita. What makes the distinction is human’s means to make use of renewable vitality will increase, thus reaching sustainable growth.”
Just like the views shared by different panelists, Lu mentioned that Bitcoin miners’ participation in demand response agreements with energy producers and distributors results in vitality grid effectivity, they usually “present an financial incentive for the event of renewable vitality “promotion and growth of renewable vitality initiatives.”
Along with Bitcoin mining tapping into stranded vitality, encouraging the event of renewable vitality initiatives and serving to to steadiness electrical grids, the effectivity developments of next-generation ASICs just like the Antminer S21 scale back miners’ vitality consumption whereas additionally permitting them to spice up their income.
