Topic: Bitmain Caught in ASIC Chip Maker Bind. Poaching TSMC Tawain. Poll! (Read 248 times)

Yes, I believe 100k give or take is "doable" in this cycle.


The article is outdated, or perhaps the data falls out of context and loses a bit of its accuracy given the time it was written, I do follow on-chain data very closely and this is one interesting chart on look into bitcoin which I follow.



It's called the 1Y+ HODL Wave >  https://www.lookintobitcoin.com/charts/1-year-hodl-wave/

I believe the chart is self-explanatory so I won't explain what it does, but the time the analysis you posted were made was (June 18, 2020) the 1Y hodl was at a new ATH which is normal, the Hodl percentage is at its lowest when the market is at it's highest, so form 2018 all the way to when it was published, yes, it seems like people were hodling strong, but you can see that starting from Nov 2020 the hodl value started to drop in a 45-degree angle, which is exactly what happed back in June 2017 and  March 2013 ( a few months before the end of the bull phase of 2013 and 2017).

Here is another on-chain metric called the RHODL ratio.



In this cycle, just like every other cycle, people will take profit, and the price will fall, I learned the hard way that "this time is NOT different", it never is, markets grow larger, they move faster/slower, the improve, they fail, in short, 'they change' but the human psychology never changes, and it's what drives the economy, am I certain that we will dip a 70-80% from the ATH we make? I am not, do I think this time is any different from 2013 / 2017t? I sure don't.

Going back to the Bitmain story, I am pretty sure the guys at Bitmain understand the implications of market cycles, they know very well that all the clients who are now willing to kill for mining gears will not want to buy them when the bull phase becomes history, which means, even if they managed to buy all the chips they wished for by the end of the year, they simply won't be buying them because they won't be able to sell them.

If you are correct this indeed will put BTC over 100k IMHO, as people that have BTC seem to be 'rock solid' and continuing to HODL.

The article below says this back last year...IMHO..it is even more so now....so 'essentially' IMHO newbies selling and miner mining are the avenues of getting BTC now...and as people continue to HODL and accumulate this IMHO is lessening the amount of BTC available for 'newbs' and corporations jumping on the train with the rest of us...thus, the price will 'maybe' go even more nuts in the current economic climate of banks being too big to fail and pandemic economic and 'maybe' inflation down the road 'woes'

https://news.bitcoin.com/only-3-5-million-bitcoin-is-traded-worldwide-majority-of-btc-held-long-term-as-digital-gold-says-chainalysis/

I mean the above was from June 20th, 2020 how much more 'apt' is it now with BTC price at 5.5 times the price it was then? The spring of BTC is being wound, tighter and tighter again, IMHO, before it 'again' jumps out of the 'jack in the box' to 'scare' all the traditional wealth/power in the world. You'd think they'd have gone f*ck it! and jumped on the BTC train by now...but it is soooooooo scary!

anyway, wtf do I know, I got into BTC in 2013, instead of putting up my old bbs/game server out of 'boredom' (it was huge, lost gonzo bbs) and burning $60 a month in electricity on the puppy. At least this 'new fangled' BTC miner would pay its own electricity and 'maybe' pay for itself someday at 2x the price of setting up the huge BBS again. Also, I could help with that 'new fangled' micro-loans and decentralized money thing that was big in 2013 for the poor of the world. So I'm on a 'way' different wavelength than folks watching Bloomberg t.v. today grinding teeth with angst on getting in. yeah, BTC chips may be hard to get and difficulty may flatten out due to such at just the right time with the economic recovery and inflation fears after the pandemic. Indeed we could be looking at 'another' black swan event in price beyond even my frigging HODL view of what BTC can become. 100k could be peanuts if people really are HODL'ing on to this 'virtual land' with both hands and adding to such month by month....dare to dream! Sh*t happens, but you can bet if we are 'riding the wave, Bitmain will be also.

(Bitmain: Evil Never Rests!) (tm Bitmain)

Brad.

The talent poaching drama is nothing new between China and Taiwan, given that China spends hundreds of billions of dollars to import chips from Taiwan and the fact that China already has plans related to semiconductor manufacturing, I am not surprised to see Bitmain get involved in this, but I doubt this will have a major impact on how things are or were prior to these findings.

I believe buying chips from TMSC isn't something you do daily, I mean it's not like Bitmain send someone one in a minivan to load up those chips and bring them back to Bitmain, so everything that has to do with 2021 at least has probably been finalized, TMSC has always put mining companies at the bottom of their interset list, not because they are from China but because their demand is far from stable, I am pretty sure that in 2018,2019 Bitmain were not really buying any chips of TMSC, and the latter probably knows that in 2022 Bitmain won't have the same demand it has in 2021, and since they can only make so many chips, they rather focus on their major clients who have more of a static and known demand.


I think by Q4 this year, the mania phase will be over, demand on gears will drop significantly, Bitmain will have just enough chips to sustain the low demand on gears in 2022.

Apparently the employees they have been poaching are meant to work on 'AI chips' (in quotes because I couldn't find what exactly is meant by those in this case):

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/Taiwan-accuses-China-s-crypto-chip-king-of-poaching-100-engineers
https://ec.ltn.com.tw/article/breakingnews/3461755

What china does best? Steal/reverse-engineer those critical parts so they CAN make sub 10nm nodes.  Bitmain is screwed short term, this next year will change Bitcoin mining quite a bit

Well the reality is 3300 watts of power buys you

42 usd worth of btc a day if you mine with a s19pro

and it buys you 200 usd worth of btc a day if you mine with an eth asic at nicehash and convert to btc.

Sooo the last eth miner built buy bitmain was a 28nm

getting an engineer to build a 10nm eth miner sounds like Bitmain's plan.

the eth network is growing by leaps and bounds. since a 10nm eth miner is better than nothing.

So My guess is Bitmain wants a piece of this.

Bitmain headhunting TSMC engineers makes no sense. China has no advanced process foundries (under 10nm nodes) and will not for many years. It is impossible for China to produce needed EUV steppers and other critical parts it takes to produce those chips.

Considering that Bitmain and other mining chip vendors already have in-house custom layout designers as part of the 'Secret Sauce' that makes a successful miner chip perform so well vs one that uses standard layout IP libraries I just do not see what knowledge they are trying to gain.

This is just speculation, but we might have something like:

TSMC pissed off about it, swamped with orders from other manufacturers so it can easily afford to kick Bitmain.
Other chipmakers that can do their chips have also a full waiting list and they would probably not be able to even take the orders.
Cannan laughing while thinking how much they can jack up the prices next semester with no real competition.

The only thing that might save Bitmain right now is the insane profitability from mining, their gear is easily sold at double the price they were asking for before the bull run so they could simply make an offer and pay triple for the chips, passing all that premium to buyers.

Interesting times, people who are now mining or have just received their gear are probably as happy as one can be if indeed there is a break-up between Bitmain and TSMC, goodbye any chance of seeing the difficulty doubling this year. But if I were one that paid for an August delivery I would probably shut down my laptop and go for a walk after reading this.

Bitmain Caught in ASIC Chip Maker Bind. Poaching TSMC Taiwan!

The following article lays out how Bitmain was caught poaching TSMC Engineers for Chip Making. See link: https://wccftech.com/bitmains-aggressive-moves-on-tsmc-will-be-its-undoing/.

A related ASIC Chip Shortage Article From January 2021 also: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crypto-currency-china-mining/global-chip-shortage-hits-chinas-bitcoin-mining-sector-idUSKBN29R1AY.

I am 'unsure' how this applies to the 'actual' manufacturing of the ASIC chips that Bitmain needs itself, but even if this is a side issue...it does not look good for TSMC supplying them with Chip Wafers for their Bitmain ASIC miners, at the very least TSMC IMHO...is 'pissed off' enough to put Bitmain 'last in line' on any ASIC chips it may need in the future. Or so it seems to me anyway.

Others on here, please post on how 'jammed up Bitmain and others may be in the pipeline for ASIC chips in 2021 and beyond.

Thanks!

Brad.