The Chinese manufacturer of ASIC-miners Bitmain has released routers with the cryptocurrency mining function: AntRouter R3-DASH and AntRouter R3-SIA. The devices mine Dash and Siacoin.

We are pleased to announce the #antrouter R3-DASH & R3-SIA, new miners from the R3 series that is also dual-function WiFi Router and Crypto Miner that can mine #dashcoin & #siacoin. Order here Dash: (https://t.co/bT7VM9FWUT) & Sia: (https://t.co/4WvlkK62Zc) now while stock lasts! pic.twitter.com/j7WhkShgJi — Antminer_main (@Antminer_main) August 6, 2018

The AntRouter R3-DASH provides a hash rate of 300 M/s with a power consumption of 24.37 watts, and the AntRouter R3-SIA has a 11.54 G/s hash rate with a power consumption of 22.6 watts.

All that users need after the purchase is to connect the device to the network. Once the router is connected, it will start mining the cryptocurrency, using the Bitmain user account (created when the device is purchased on the site) in the Antpool mining pool.

Let’s check the profitability of such a device:

AntRouter R3-SIA

Calculations of the profit at whattomine.com website show that, at the moment of writing, you will be able to lose $11.81 per year, not considering the price of the hardware and expecting the electricity costs to be 0.1 $/kWh, ignoring the pool fee.

AntRouter R3-DASH

DASH seems to be a slightly better option as you will lose a bit less – only $9.24 per year, not considering the price of the hardware and expecting the electricity costs to be 0.1 $/kWh, ignoring the pool fee.

Conclusion

Miners today are not having the best times or even good times, so don’t expect any profit from such a device. One the other hand, let’s hope that the router part is decent and stable and you will get a Wi-Fi router that will keep the cryptocurrency world evolving and prices of the coins that you mine will go up one day.

The power consumption of these devices is close (I do believe so) to the usual Wi-Fi router, so you should think about buying this device as the router, first of all. The usual router with some funny function that might make you smile one day when you will be able to get a coffee or even a steak for the coins that it mined for you (around 0.06 DASH or 1060 SC).