Bitcoin ASIC miners rendered CPU and GPU mining all but worthless if you want to make money mining bitcoin. And, it didn’t take long for the bitcoin ASIC market to dwindle down to a single provider. That provider, Bitmain, has enjoyed a complete monopoly on high performance bitcoin mining hardware for years. Their latest bitcoin miner, the Antminer S9 boats of speeds up-to 14 TH/s, the most powerful production bitcoin ASIC miner to-date. But, if you’re considering an Antminer S9 purchase you might want to hold off. There’s a new bitcoin miner in town and it’s called the DragonMint 16T, and the specs are intriguing.

Halong Mining’s DragonMint 16T

At long last, competition has returned to the bitcoin ASIC mining landscape. And, if everything goes as planned, this first rival will prove a compelling one. It’s called the DragonMint 16T by Halong Mining. The 16T probably needs no explanation, but we’ll give one anyway. It means this is a 16 TH/s bitcoin mining rig. It means that it’s significantly faster than the S9.

An all-new SHA256 ASIC mining chip

At the heart of the 16T is an all new ASIC mining chip. Called the DM8575 ASIC, it runs at 85 GH per chip while sipping on electricity to the tune of .075 J/GH. Before you go look it up, yes, that means the DragonMint 16T will be bot only hashing at a higher rate than an S9, but will be consuming less power while doing so. Oh, and did we mention it is claimed to also run 30% cooler than the S9.

The DragonMint 16T mining bitcoin (video)

In the video the new ASIC bitcoin miner is pushing more than 16 TH/s while consuming around 1,470 watts (on average).

The DragonMint 16T looks like… an Antminer S9

One thing that isn’t all new is the form factor. The DragonMint 16T looks just like an Antminer S9, sharing the same square-tube design with fans at each end for airflow.

It may just be that the square-tube design is the best form factor there is, or just as likely, that the similar chassis design will make the DragonMint 16T fit right in at large-scale, already-built bitcoin mining operations.

Bitmain Antminer S9 vs. DragonMint 16T

Here’s a comparison of the Antminer S9 and the DragonMint 16T by the numbers:

Antminer S9 DragonMint 16T Algorithm SHA256 SHA256 ASIC BM1387 DM8575 Hasrate 14 TH/s 16 TH/s Power Consumption 1432W @ 25° C 1205W 25° C Power Efficiency 0.098 J/GH 0.075 J/GH Front Fan 6000 RPM 6000 RPM Rear Fan 4300 RPM 6000 RPM

For more information and up-to-date pricing and availability visit Bitmain or Halong Mining.

When, where, why and how?

The Halong Mining site does a good job of explaining their creation and what went into it, saying

The DragonMint miner is the first step in a long strategy, which started in December 2016, to bring much needed competition and innovation to the Bitcoin mining arena. Over 100 world class experts and leaders in their respective fields have been contributing to and working on the project, including chip designers, electronics hardware specialists, and software designers. The project is motivated by, and driven to help facilitate greater decentralisation in Bitcoin mining at all levels, and make sha256 great again. – Halong Mining

Pre-orders being accepted now

Important: Until there has been solid confirmation about the ownership of Halong Mining and the specifications of the product itself we aren’t recommending or endorsing their products. There has been a prominent endorsement from a member of the Bitcoin community, but we’d recommend being sensibly cautious and doing your homework before sending anyone BTC. It’s very possible that Halong Mining is completely legitimate; we’re just exercising caution at this time.

The 16T is listed with a price of $1,595 for the bitcoin miner itself and $125 for the 1600W DragonMint PSU. Both are marked down with the DragonMint 16T priced at $1,350 and the PSU priced at $115. Note that these prices are for preorders with the production units expected to ship in March of 2018.

Payment for either items is currently only accepted in BTC on the DragonMint site.