New Competition Shaping Bitcoin Mining’s Landscape: Bitcoin In Asia

Always a sector to watch, the Bitcoin mining space is host to several narratives that are worth a closer look today, as fresh capital and competition enter the market. Among these are the geographic distribution of hash power, mining hardware hierarchy and mining pool offerings.

On this episode of Bitcoin Magazine’s “Bitcoin In Asia,” Nishant Sharma, a long-time bitcoin mining industry insider in China who is now a founder and partner of BlocksBridge Consulting — a communications strategy and advisory firm focused on the bitcoin mining sector that serves some of its largest companies — helped break down these narratives with some additional historical context.

Sharma explained how the negative news around flooding in Sichuan has been overblown and mining dominance from China is not changing anytime soon. He also discussed why the decentralization of mining geographically is still a real event, with North America and Russia as growing markets. He also laid out the landscape of mining pool competition: how it has developed and experienced incredible turnover over the years and what new competition and products are shaping its future.

The mining hardware space has experienced less turnover, with Bitmain taking a dominant position early, and Sharma handicapped MicroBT’s rise and the factors at play for hardware moving forward, including the significance of Digital Currency Group entity Foundry’s partnership with MicroBT and the entrance of additional institutional capital.

Best moments:

3:30 - ASICS early days, US based HashCash first ASICS, failed, many ASIC manufacturers failed, speed of next gen iterations needed.

5:30 - In 2014 Bitmain is becoming more competitive, 100 employees, insiders knew they were on the rise.

9:00 - Bitmain the most influential company in Bitcoin, unique set of responsibilities as head of communications.

12:16 - Dealing with radically transparent community, open source culture not there in China, challenges for bitmain adapting with communications

14:00 - Founding BlocksBridge Consulting, filling a need of competence + experience in Bitcoin mining communications

19:11 - 21:32 - Bull market for bitcoin mining, order of magnitude growth, geographic shift. “Mining benefited from the bear market in that way, we saw more institutional capital being pumped in from the West, got more industrialized..”

22:30 - 24:23 - Hardware competitive landscape, why it is hard for new competition to emerge

24:44 - 26:16 - MicroBT vs Bitmain MictoBT’s business has certainly benefited..most people despite the headaches...infrastructure adapted to bitmain

27:03 - 29:05 - The difficulties for Chinese miners are overblown; mining in China hasn’t changed. However, the scenario in the US has drastically changed in the last two years.

29:05 - Foundry and MicroBT

31:00 - Russia underrated for mining, lower caped than us, better supply chain with China

36:00 - Mining pool space, shifts in the competitive landscape over time

39:00 - Mining pool services outside of pool coordination tech become more important

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