What is an ASIC Miner?
How to mine crypto using an ASIC Miner
Top Cryptocurrencies for ASIC Miners
ASIC vs GPU Mining
ASIC Miner Price
To mine or not to mine?
In the early days, mining crypto assets was comparatively straightforward. But today, whether you’re mining Bitcoin, Litecoin, or any other coin, you’ll need a special type of hardware known as ‘ASIC miners’ to get ahead.
So, what is an ASIC Miner, how do you use it in cryptocurrency mining and the pros and cons of such a system? Read on to find out. PS Stay ’till the end for how to calculate your ASIC Miner’s profitability potential.
What is an ASIC Miner?
Short answer: A device that’s solely used for crypto asset mining.
ASIC stands for Application-Specific Integrated Circuit. So, in this case, an ASIC Miner is a computerized device that’s wired solely for crypto asset mining.
Generally, each ASIC miner is created only to mine a specific type of crypto assets; so, ASIC Bitcoin miners can only mine Bitcoins.
Building an ASIC miner is costly and complicated. However, since they’re optimized to mine cryptocurrency, they can do so comparatively faster than a normal computer. For context, the latest models use an average of 29.5 joules to solve a Terahash (Th) – that’s 1 trillion complex equations.
Quick note: Hash rates refer to the number of complex equations a compute can solve in a given amount of time.
The ASIC miner was first introduced by a Chinese private enterprise, Bitmain Technologies Ltd. With its Antminer product line, the firm also leads the ASIC miner industry.
Nowadays, Bitmain’s rivalry arises from the entrants of new crypto mining firms, including Canaan, Bitfury, and KnCMiner. And in 2018, Halong Mining released Dragonmint T1 ASIC-based blockchain miner device, minimizing Bitmain Antminer’s monopoly in terms of equalized efficiency.
What is Antminer?
Antminer is an ASIC miner developed by Bitmain.
The first series launched in 2013 as the single-purpose hardware for mining crypto assets. Since then, the Antminer has risen to the top of the cryptocurrency and blockchain miner product lists.
Antminer has evolved along with the blockchain mining industry from its S1-series inception, delivering higher hash rates and power efficiency. Currently, the latest series of Antminer are S19, S19 pro, and T19.
The price of Antminer is influenced by a number of criteria, including the model and hash rate which is an indicator of computational power. The higher the hash rate the better, but also the more expensive the device.
Context: The Antminer S19 retails for 1,890 USD.
Advantages of ASIC Miner
Even while ASIC miners tend to be more pricey than typical crypto mining hardware, they tend to have a lot of premium benefits. For example,
- Ease of Use: Due to its solely-purpose design for crypto mining, ASIC miners have plug and mine capabilities that help miners set up their devices with relative simplicity.
- Higher Mining efficiency: ASIC miners clearly outperform GPUs and CPUs, in terms of computing power and mining efficiency.
- Relatively high-profit opportunities: ASIC miners tend to work faster, thereby increasing the chances of you being the first computer to solve the hash – and of course, be rewarded in crypto.
- More environmentally friendly: To address the high-energy consumption of Bitcoin mining, ASICs are designed to consume less electrical energy.
How to mine crypto using an ASIC Miner
Although ASICs have plug-and-mine capabilities, they’re actually a bit more complicated than buying hardware and pressing “start”.
Let’s say you’re interested in mining Bitcoin with an ASIC Miner as an example. Below is how to mine Bitcoin using ASIC miner:
1. Choosing an ASIC Miner Rig
To choose the best ASIC miner rig, it’s suggested to select the one with your desired budget and computational power.
When purchasing a new ASIC miner, the most current model is the ideal option. However, there are also secondhand models that can be acquired on Amazon and eBay, as well as other local and foreign markets.
You’d also need to consider how much physical space you’re willing to allocate to your rig. The free space in the garage may be ideal for some miners, while a mini ASIC mining farm may be more appealing to others.
Whatever the choice, there are a number of aspects of ASIC miners’ to consider before buying, such as:
- Hardware: Your mining rig is made up of multiple ASIC devices – the “hardware” that are all networked together. In hardware, speed, efficiency, and electrical optimization must be taken into account
- Motherboards: The motherboard is the most important component since it connects all of the other pieces of hardware. The motherboard you choose depends on the gear you want to use.
- Power Supply: Power is required to run the ASIC miner. The size of the power supply you’d need is determined by the number of devices you’re looking to supply power to.
- Central Processing Unit (CPU): The CPU is in charge of coordinating the ASIC and other components of the rig as a whole. As a result, a sound processor is critical to ensure the system’s proper operation.
- Frames: When building a compact system, the frame serves as the linchpin. More durable frames often need fewer repairs. The size, on the other hand, also depends on how many miners you want to install.
2. Choose a mining software
Mining software refers to a computer program specifically designed to link mining hardware to the blockchain as well as mining pools.
If you choose the wrong BTC mining software, you will not be able to connect to the pool or even the Bitcoin network itself.
The finest software is defined by the target operating system and the level of mining expertise you have. MultiMiner(for beginners) CGMiner (for experienced users) and BitMiner (for quick setup) are the most popular Bitcoin mining software.
Some mining software can be used for free, but most of them require payments. Some of these premium versions are subscription-based, while others charge depending on the hash power of the rig you are using.
3. Join a trusted mining pool
Even if being a solo ASIC miner sounds like an exciting idea, you may have to break the bank in order to acquire enough mining equipment and successfully add new blocks to the blockchain for reward.
Joining a mining pool is another option. ASIC mining rigs allow miners to harness the combined computing power of several machines, direct it to the Bitcoin network, and share the rewards for each block that is successfully mined.
Though the benefits are noteworthy, it’s also important to be safe when mining cryptocurrencies, especially collaboratively.
To avoid being a victim of fraud, here are some things you need to pay attention to when joining a mining pool:
Reputation
Unfortunately, there are mining pools that do not compensate their members, while also charging expensive fees in the crypto mining industry.
To decrease the likelihood of joining one, do your research. Perusing other miners’ views on social media, such as Reddit and Twitter, is a good way to evaluate the trust level of each crypto mining pool.
However, be aware of praises that seem too good to be true. Several crypto-industry actors have been caught using fictitious internet personas to post inauthentic customer reviews.
Size
Another way to tell whether a mining pool is trustworthy and reputable is by looking at the size of the pool.
If you’re looking for a greater hash rate, a bigger pool may be the best option. As a result, big pool members have greater hash rates, which can be translated to a greater chance to win rewards on a regular basis.
Payment rules
How often does the pool release the rewards to miners? Is there a minimum payment?
When looking for an ASIC mining pool, it’s critical to consider these aspects. Like the minimum payment, for example, small miners may have to wait longer to get their rewards if the pool has a large minimum payment.
Indeed, the cost pool and payment options you have are defined by the payment rules.
DGM (Double Geometric Method), ESMPPS (Equalized Shared Maximum Pay Per Share), and CPPSRB are some of the payment options available (Capped Pay Per Share including Recent Backpay).
Other factors: Latency, customer service, and efficiency are also key factors when looking into joining a Bitcoin mining pool.
4. Calculate mining profitability
ASIC mining is a lot like doing business, in which profit planning should be taken into account.
Prior to buying your ASIC mining rig, you may want to use the mining profitability calculator to assess your return on investment (ROI).
Key parameters like the hash rate of mining rigs, current BTC prices, rig power consumption, and energy costs will all be factored in by the calculator. These parameters will then be used to calculate the profitability per day, month, and year.
CryptoCompare is one of the mining profitability calculators available. It offers a robust mining profitability calculator, including powerful features to help your profit planning.
Top Cryptocurrencies for ASIC Miners
1. Bitcoin (BTC)
Bitcoin (BTC) has always been seen as the king of the crypto market. The token’s phenomenal price growth over the past few years has made it an undeniable option for long-term crypto investment.
Even if the value of Bitcoin mining incentives halves every four years, there are still lots of benefits to mine. Bitcoin’s rising value means that any earnings you make are still very valuable.
As a PoW-powered network, all Bitcoin mining rewards are awarded directly to miners.
However, Bitcoin’s popularity also makes it one of the more competitive coming to mine.
See more: How hard is it to mine Bitcoin?
Best Bitcoin Mining Rigs
To expedite your BTC mining proficiency, the latest or the most powerful ASIC miners are key.
ASIC miners with the top hash rates for Bitcoin mining are as follows:
- Antminer S19: 95 Terahashes per second (TH/s)
- Antminer S19 Pro: 110 TH/s
- Antminer T19: 84 TH/s
- WhatsMiner M30S++: 112 TH/s
- Canaan AvalonMiner 1246: 90 TH/s
If you’re not interested in mining Bitcoin but aren’t trying to break the bank, check out these free Bitcoin mining websites.
2. Litecoin (LTC)
Litecoin (LTC) is a great option for people who want assets with a lower mining difficulty than Bitcoin.
Litecoin also employs the PoW protocol. However, its hashing algorithm varies from Bitcoin’s since LTC uses Scrypt, and therefore requires a Litecoin-specific ASIC miner.
Best Litecoin Mining Rig
Here are the most popular ASIC miners for Scrypt-based crypto assets.
- Antminer L3++: 596 Mega hashes per second (MH/s)
- Innosilicon A4+: 620 MH/s
- Innosilicon A6 LTCMaster: 1.2 Giga hashes per second (GH/s)
3. Ethereum (ETH)
As the Ethereum (ETH) network attempts to shift to a Proof of Stake (PoS) mechanism, you may wonder whether ETH mining is still viable.
The work of Ethereum 2.0, Ethereum’s PoS upgrade, is still ongoing, hence Ethereum will continue to support PoW for a period of time.
ETH’s ASIC miners are also less costly than Bitcoin’s. Consequently, you may benefit from mining the second-largest cryptocurrency, which is less aggressive than Bitcoin mining.
Best Ethereum Mining Rigs
Ethereum uses the Ethash hash algorithm.
Here are some of the best ETH Mining Rigs right now.
- Antminer E9: 3 GH/s (specifically created for mining Ethereum)
- Antminer E3: 190 MH/s
- InnoSilicon A10 ETHMaster: 750MH/s
The prospect of receiving these highly coveted tokens through “mining” is very alluring. That’s probably why mining is a huge industry. Though, it also comes with a huge set of risks.
The best way to mitigate yourself and your assets would be to do thorough research before buying an entire setup. You can learn more about mining, as well as other interesting topics on Zipmex Learn.
However, if you’ve already decided against mining and are ready to trade instead, register for Zipmex for the best price and lowest spread.
If you’re still interested in mining, then read on to find the difference between ASIC and GPU Mining as well as a price comparison of different ASIC Miners.
ASIC vs GPU Mining
Most cryptocurrencies are built on blockchains that leverage the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism to reward miners.
Before there were ASIC Miners, miners primarily used Graphics Processing Units (GPU) to solve as many of these complex equations as quickly as possible.
- System purpose
GPU mining uses a gaming computer’s Graphics Processing Unit to decode complex cryptographic codes to verify electronic transactions on the blockchain.
On the other hand, ASIC miners were built exclusively for the purpose of mining cryptocurrencies.
So, GPUs have additional uses like gaming and other computing functions.
- Mining Efficacy
ASIC Miners only focus on mining, so tend to be faster at mining cryptocurrencies and use less energy than GPUs.
- Cost
GPU mining setups tend to be more cost-effective than ASIC miners since GPUs like those made by NVIDIA or AMD can be purchased for less money.
Context: A Graphics card from NVIDIA starts at 299 USD while an ASIC Miner from Bitmain starts at 1,890 USD.
ASIC Miner Price
Bitmain’s Antminer series is one of the most productive in the ASIC miners market. With a power consumption of 3,250 watts, the S19 Pro can produce 110 trillion hashes per second. Yet, this ASIC miner costs 2,400 USD. A price that beginner miners can find to be prohibitive.
The Antminer S19’s base model costs roughly 1,785 USD and can produce 95 trillion hashes per second – a slightly lower hash rate at a substantially cheaper cost than the previous series.
Another option is the AntminerT17+, which is capable of processing 58 trillion hashes per second for a little over 800 USD.
To be compared, one GTX 1070 card may be purchased for only 430 USD, with a hash rate of 30 million per second. However, even with eight cards that’ll end up costing more than 3,000 USD, the hash rate barely reaches 240 million per second.
In addition, you also have to buy a chassis, motherboard, and power supply. Each GTX1070 card requires more than 150 watts of energy, so your monthly electricity bill will be exponentially higher.
Meanwhile, ASIC miners have prices that range from 800 USD to 5,000 USD and are easily found on online marketplaces.
From the above review, it is evident that although ASIC miners can be very profitable, there are several factors you need to consider before deciding to mine crypto using ASICs.
To mine or not to mine?
As previously noted, cryptocurrency values and hardware costs play a significant role in your potential profitability. If a coin’s price drops too much, you will receive less monetary value for your mining rewards.
Bitcoin’s price fell during the crypto winter of 2018 and many mining businesses, like Bitmain, were forced to the ground. Crypto winters are unpredictable and can wreak havoc on the market.
So, as we said above, it’s important to do your research and decide which course of action is the best for you. Also, don’t forget to consider your finances as well as the market.
