Computing power base is booming, while the capacity of chip supply is limited. The computing power will have a 200% growth ceiling as crypto price, technology and chip supply decide together jointly decide, according to Kong Jianping, co-founder of Canaan, a China-based leading ASIC miner manufacturer.

Kong estimated that the chip provided by TSMC and Samsung for crypto miners will be far from satisfactory the next year. If prices grow too much, the number of reserves will not be enough. If crypto prices exceed the increase of computing power, mining returns can be high. Kong talk a lot about Chinese crypto mining and miners in the New Era Mining Summit.

7nm chips are not necessary for mainstream miners

Kong think it has nothing to do with the chip technology. Ultimately, it depends on the power consumption, computing power and price of the chip. These three indicators above jointly determine the cost-performance of the miners. In fact, the yield rate of 7nm last year is extremely low and the cost is very high. So even if 7nm can achieve low power consumption, the high cost does not meet the market demand. Kong revealed that large-scale production of the iterated version of the 7nm chips will be on the market next year by Canaan.

What miners care about is payback period, if you can produce a high-computing power with low-power consumption crypto miner, the miners will still be willing to buy it. At present, most of the miners are old-fashioned that consume about 100 watts of power. Bitcoin halving will affect the old machines, not the new ones. But old-fashioned Canaan miners can still make profit if crypto price surges.

Chip manufacturers schedule a produce volume of about 10-15% for crypto miners. The reason why TSMC doesn’t increase production is the cost of adding a production line is very large as the crypto’s price is fluctuating. Some domestic memory chip manufacturers may have some capacity for Grin chips, but it is not yet mature.

About market share

As Bitmain accounts for the largest proportion in the market share of crypto manufacture, Canaan is now hoping to be the first in the industry in 2020 by improving chip design, supply chain, production cycle . At present Canaan has no plan to filed IPO for Sci-Tech innovation board (STAR Market).