Cryptocurrency analyst and investor Tuur Demeester says that the era of Bitmain, the Beijing-based mining manufacturer that once enjoyed a near-monopoly on the market, is ‘truly over.’
He also doesn’t expect any other Bitcoin mining company to match its level of dominance in the future:
Due to the commoditization of chips and machines, it's unlikely that any other Bitcoin mining company will ever again dominate (and threaten) the market like Bitmain did.
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The fall of crypto’s biggest company
In July 2018, everything was going the right way for the Bitcoin mining manufacturer that accounted for more than 80 percent of the whole market.
Back then, Bitmain occupied a 20,000-square-foot office in San Jose, the heart of Silicon Valley that boasts glittery glass high-rise buildings and has the highest number of billionaires per capita in the U.S. Bitmain was reportedly prepping for going public in the U.S, which would make its valuation skyrocket to $40 bln.
The Beijing-based company decided to go for an IPO in Hong Kong but things took a rather controversial turn when high-profile backers in the likes of SoftBank Group started to deny their involvement.
This snowballed into a complete fallout with bitter corporate infighting and massive losses in Q3 2018 due to sinking BTC prices, which eventually forced Bitmain to give up on its IPO plan.
Keeping up with competitors
Fast forward to 2020, Bitmain is no longer the monopolistic mining behemoth that it used to be, and another Chinese mining hardware producer MicroBT is now breathing down its neck.
For now, Bitmain’s Antminer S9 remains the most widely used ASIC miner, but the recent reward halving is already making devices pretty much obsolete, which explains why Bitcoin’s hashrate has so far dropped more than 30 percent.
Thomas Heller, global business director at F2Pool, says that MicroTB has already overtaken Bitmain:
IMO MicroBT has overtaken Bitmain (product quality, ability to ship large quantities, customer support)
He predicts that Canaan, another Chinese miner maker, is next in line to challenge the biggest cryptocurrency company.
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team
