Stories · as read on the Mining station
Bitmain's Ecosystem Play: Beyond the Hardware
Bitmain's Irene Gao on three ways to raise mining efficiency in 2019: power-tunable hardware, trained repair staff and local repair, and shared industry news.
Electricity is the bill that never stops. That was where Irene Gao of Bitmain started at Mining Disrupt Miami, held July twenty-third to twenty-fifth, twenty nineteen.
Gao was then VP of Mining at Bitmain, the maker of Antminer equipment and the operator of two of the largest mining pools. Bitcoin traded at nine thousand, seven hundred seventy dollars that week. Today it is eighty-two thousand, nine hundred twenty-one dollars. She gave miners three ways to improve their efficiency.
The first was the equipment. Bitmain's most popular machine was the Antminer S17, released that March. Its new chips improved power efficiency to between thirty-nine and a half and forty-five joules per terahash. The S17 also kept the switchable power modes Bitmain introduced on the S15, so miners could pick a standard or low-power mode to suit their site. As she put it, "the electricity is the major recurring expenses for our industry such efficiency is the key to have a decent profitable mining." Bitmain also offered machines for other algorithms and a movable mining farm built for faster deployment.
The second was operation and maintenance. A survey, she said, showed the industry was short of trained repair staff. In her words, "lack of very professional mattina stuff in your mining firm is a really big pain for our industry right now." So Bitmain opened a training academy. Its teachers came from Bitmain's own mining farms and knew how to repair machines quickly. Courses ran at different levels, both practical and theoretical, and ended with an assessment and a certificate. Students who did well earned the right to buy repair materials and a lower training fee. For clients in North and South America, Bitmain also ran repair centers, so machines no longer had to be shipped overseas. That, she said, "really reduced the repairing period and saving some shipping cost."
The third was information. Bitmain was building a platform to share industry insights, investment opportunities and product roadmaps. Gao pointed to the World Digital Mining Summit in Germany that October, and to an annual boutique meetup in Santa Clara, California, where miners could meet Bitmain's own team.
She closed by introducing Bitmain's North and South American team and asking miners to talk with them about all three.
The S17 has long since been replaced. But her starting point still holds: power is the recurring cost, and a machine waiting for repair earns nothing.
The full story is on Mining Disrupt at miningdisrupt dot com, and the conversation continues at Mining Disrupt twenty twenty-seven, March twenty-second to twenty-fourth in Irving, Texas.