In mid-October 2021, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey revealed the payments firm Block Inc. (formally Square) was considering joining the bitcoin mining industry. Three months later, Dorsey tweeted that his firm was “officially building an open bitcoin mining system.”
The Block’s Chief Hardware Officer: “We view Bitcoin mining as a long-term need for a fully decentralized, permissionless future”
Jack Dorsey and Block’s Chief Hardware Officer, Tom Templeton discussed the company’s focus on bitcoin mining this week. Templeton Explain that three months ago the Block hinted at building a bitcoin mining system and that the company finally decided to step in on the ground.
Templeton insists the goal is to make mining “more distributed and efficient in every way” and this includes maintenance, purchases, and setting up. “We’re interested because mining goes far beyond creating new bitcoin. We see it as a long-term need for a future that is fully decentralized and permissionless,” Templeton tweeted.
Some of the problematic issues they have faced in bitcoin mining include things like mining rig availability, machine reliability, and performance. “Some mining rigs generate unwanted harmonics in the power grid,” Templeton said. “They are also very loud, which makes them too loud for home use.”
Templeton further added that the company has evaluated a number of “IP blocks, open-source miner firmware, and other system software offerings.”
Additionally, Block’s hardware team is building a team of application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) and software designers. Along with that, Templeton noted that the company is also hiring electrical engineers, analog designers, and layout engineers.
Data on January 16, 2022, shows there’s only a handful of ASIC bitcoin mining rig manufacturers today including Bitmain, Ebang, Canaan, Microbt, Innosilicon, Ipollo, and Strongu. Today’s top machines, in terms of profit per day and SHA256 terahash performance, are made by Bitmain, Ipollo, Microbt, and Canaan.
A single Bitmain Antminer S19 Pro (100 TH/s) can cost between $10,000 and $15,000 per unit. This machine, in particular, using current BTC exchange rates and $0.12 per kilowatt hour of electricity will generate about $16.23 per day in profit.
