ASIC server arms race keeps rising as Core Scientific binges on servers

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Washington-based Core Scientific has announced that they plan to increase their current capacity by threefold by purchasing over 58,000 ASIC hardware miners from Bitmain Technologies.

The block reward mining giant bought a mix of the S19 and S19 Pro Antminers from Bitmain. Once deployed, the company’s total computational power will be 7.26 exahash per second (EH/s) while using approximately 250MW of electricity. The purchase agreement brings the total amount of new machines bought over the past 16 months to 76,024.

The company will deploy the new units across its existing facilities in North Carolina, Georgia, and Kentucky. Core Scientific hopes that it will surpass all its competitors outside of China with this latest binge purchase. One of its closest U.S. rivals, Nasdaq-listed Marathon Patent Group (NASDAQ: MARA), earlier announced it was buying some 10,000 Antminers to bring the firm’s total hashrate to 2.56 EH/s.

The purchase also marks a deepening of the Core Scientific-Bitmain relationship. Earlier this year, Bitmain named Core Scientific its only cooperative and in-warranty repair center in North America. This could also indicate that Bitmain, which is struggling to keep up with the surge in demand for the latest Antminers, will prioritize Core Scientific over its competitors.

Details on the financing of the deal were not announced. Earlier this month, Core Scientific also announced that it had partnered with Foundry to receive up to $23 million in financing for blockchain mining equipment.

As BTC’s price continues rising and setting new all-time highs, there is no sign that this race to stockpile ASIC servers will soon cool off. The demand for next-generation ASIC miners is rising alongside the BTC token price and pumping BTC network hashrate.

Companies should be very wary of overextending themselves through bad financing deals to bulk order purchase ASIC servers. Opportunities may only occur once, but history has a nasty habit of repeating itself. It has shown that the current bull market will not last forever.

Once the BTC market manipulators have reaped additional profits from naïve BTC zealots or new entrants FOMOing in for the “windfall” profits, the token’s price will drop. Then, many of these companies will be back to hovering around the mining breakeven point operationally, yet still on the hook for massive loan payments and a mountain of debt to pay off.

See also: TAAL’s Jerry Chan presentation at CoinGeek Live, The Shift from Bitcoin “Miners” to “Transaction Processors”