Bitmain, the Chinese manufacturer of ASIC-miners, has launched the sale of a new batch of Antminer S9 and included Bitcoin Cash in the list of acceptable payment means.

On 19 December, at 09.00 UTC the world's largest producer Bitmain will start the sale of a new batch of ASIC-miners Antiminer S9. The equipment is to be delivered at the end of February 2018.

Good news: We're finally releasing a batch of the Antminer S9 #BitcoinCash #Bitcoin miner today at 5PM (19 Dec, GMT+8) here: https://t.co/cSPb69w0H5

Order then, while the batch lasts! pic.twitter.com/3Mz93wrdRn — BITMAIN (@BITMAINtech) December 19, 2017

The demand for new miners was so great that the site of the Bitmain online store went offline for a while several minutes before the sale launch.

Antminer S9's computational power fluctuates from 12,5 to 14TH/s. Its power consumption is about 1300 watts. The device can be used for the mining of cryptocurrencies, based on the SHA-256 algorithm, such as Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash.

According to the preliminary calculation, without taking into account the increase in network complexity, the daily income from bitcoin mining with Antminer S9 at its current rate will be about $33, the Bitcoin Cash production will bring to its owner $51 per day.

But not only the long-awaited launch of S9 sales attracted the attention of users. They mentioned that the producer had included Bitcoin Cash in the list of payment methods, among bitcoin, US dollars and litecoins.

Bitmain became another big player of the cryptocurrency market, which switches from bitcoin to other cryptocurrencies. In recent weeks, amid the dramatic increase in transactions fees in the bitcoin network, many services announced support for other cryptocurrencies. Thus, the processing service BitPay began to support Bitcoin Cash.

The Bitcoin Cash rate increased sharply by more than 20% per day and exceeded $2,300. Users predict a further growth of the rate due to the Bitmain's solution.