A new competitor is advancing on plans to enter the mining hardware market by the end of the year. Canadian company Squire Mining has raised almost $20 million to finance the design, development, and testing of a new ASIC chip and bitcoin mining rig. Squire also wants to set up its own crypto mining facilities.
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$20 Million to Develop New ASIC Chip
Squire Mining Ltd., a Canada-based investment company focused on global resource exploration and tech projects, has closed its non-brokered private placement equity financing of $25,500,000 CAD ($19.5 million USD). The money will be invested in a planned change in business – the firm now wants to enter the crypto space.
Squire intends to use financing proceeds to fund the design, development, testing and mass production test run of the company’s “next generation” ASIC chip and bitcoin mining rig, according to a press release. A portion of the funding will be reserved for further research and development of a second generation chips and rigs, and to cover marketing, promotion and distribution expenses.
The company says it hopes to complete the manufacture and assembly of a pilot production test run of its first bitcoin (BTC) mining ASIC chip and rig by the end of the fourth quarter of 2018. According to a partnership agreement with design and system engineering architecture expert Peter Kim, which was signed in March, the ASICs will be 10nm chips.
The joint venture, in which the company will hold an initial 66 2/3% interest and Kim will hold 33 1/3%, will be based in South Korea. It will be responsible for the design, development and commercialization of the highly specialized hardware. Once the ASIC chip development is completed, the enterprise will also take care with sales of bitcoin and other crypto-mining systems and work to develop its own mining facilities.
Growing Mining Industry Attracts New Competitors
Squire Mining, which is currently filing final listing documents with the Canadian Securities Exchange, notes that the development of the nextgen chips and system architecture is the central foundation for the growing crypto industry. Its entry into the mining sector, currently dominated by the Chinese giant Bitmain which controls about 80% of the market, is expected to increase competition in the space.
Crypto mining is a profitable business and the Beijing-based Bitmain, which also owns some of the largest mining facilities, has reported profits of more than $3 billion dollars in 2017. The mining behemoth is now trying to diversify its product line – it recently launched two new Wi-Fi routers capable of mining x11 and blake2b cryptocurrencies like dash and siacoin.
Bitmain announced the routers days after Canaan Creative, the world’s second largest manufacturer of cryptocurrency mining equipment, said it was planning to sell a TV set that doubles as a mining rig.
Other players, including companies like Samsung, are also trying to take a share of the market. This spring, the South Korean electronics giant reported increasing profits thanks to its production of bitcoin mining chips. In July, Japanese internet giant GMO launched an upgraded version of its bitcoin miner equipped with 7nm ASIC mining chips. The new rig boasts a higher hash rate and is capable of mining both bitcoin core (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCH).
Are you expecting more companies to join the competition in the mining hardware sector? Share your thoughts on the subject in the comments section below.
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