Japanese internet services company GMO Internet Group decided to place itself more firmly in the cryptocurrency market with the release of a new ASIC that might compete directly with Bitmain’s Antminers.
Slated for launch on Wednesday, June 6, the units would be the first ever produced that use 7 nm transistors, packing as much punch as possible into one compact machine.
“Cryptocurrency mining requires high-performance mining machines enabling highly sophisticated and intensive computation. Accordingly, GMO Internet Group has been working on research and development of a cutting-edge 7 nm mining chip since September 2017, and now realized its own high-performance mining machine GMO Miner B2 equipped with 7 nm mining chip,” the company said in its announcement.
GMO Internet Group plans to ship units as early as October 2018.
This is significant, but it might not be a Bitmain killer, as the more reigning ASIC manufacturer has already announced plans to release its own 7-nanometer miner using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s technology this year.
“In the year 2018, Bitmain will likely lead the cryptocurrency ASIC industry and migrate some of its chips to 10nm and the most advanced 7nm. That will make the company one of the top five users of TSMC’s 7nm in 2018, with demand comparable with Qualcomm’s, HiSilicon’s, or AMD’s,” a Bernstein analysis concluded.
Late last year, GMO Internet was getting serious about its involvement in the cryptocurrency space.
Before changing its company name to GMO Coin, it also started a program through which 4,000 of its employees could choose to have a portion of their salaries paid in Bitcoin. This happened in the middle of December, just as Bitcoin was climbing to the towering price of $20,000, only to shed 50% of its value at the beginning of this year.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
