HIVE Blockchain to buy Bitcoin miners from Intel

HIVE Blockchain Technologies concluded an agreement with Intel to purchase Bitcoin-mining equipment based on an ASIC chip developed by the company.

The batch of miners will be manufactured to order for HIVE.

Deliveries are expected to begin in the second half of 2022 and be completed within 12 months. The company did not disclose the size of the batch, but noted that after the full deployment of the new installations its Bitcoin hash rate would rise by 95% from the current 1.9 EH/s.

According to HIVE president Aydin Kilic, the ‘highly efficient blockchain accelerator’ from Intel is expected to deliver lower energy consumption compared with existing market ASIC miners.

Intel introduced the Bonanza Mine chip and a miner prototype based on it at the ISSCC international conference in February. The efficiency metrics of the products lagged significantly behind market leaders.

Among the first customers of the equipment the company named competitors HIVE, Argo Blockchain and GRIID Infrastructure, as well as Block (formerly Square) led by Jack Dorsey.

In Argo’s filings with the SEC, journalists uncovered information about a future delivery of miners with much higher technical specifications than those previously announced by Intel. With a high degree of probability, this refers to a new generation of Bonanza Mine, which is 15% more energy-efficient than Bitmain’s flagship, according to media.

Concurrently with the chipmaker agreement, HIVE also signed a letter of intent with blockchain-hosting provider Compute North to deploy 100 MW of mining equipment. The installations are expected to be deployed at one of the company’s new data centers in Texas, which uses renewable energy.

If the deals go ahead, HIVE will for the first time begin mining operations in the United States, the firm emphasised.

In August 2021, the United States led the share of Bitcoin’s hash rate.

However, according to researchers, the mining ban in China did not reduce the network’s carbon emissions, but increased by 17%, contrary to experts’ expectations.