Bitcoin mining rigs are becoming more powerful despite environmental concerns

• Big mining rig makers are raising the stakes with higher hash rates.
• Upcoming crypto mining rigs will provide upwards of 200 terahash per second.
• Microbt and Bitmain are two of the largest mining rig makers in the world.

Even as environmental concerns loom large over the crypto industry, mining hardware makers are raising the hash rates on their machines significantly. Hash rates show the total computing power that is being used for mining cryptocurrencies. Mining rigs for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) machines that are produced specifically to mine these digital currencies.

At the Bitcoin 22 conference held in Miami earlier this month, bitcoin mining rig manufacturer Microbt unveiled a new rig that offers a mining rate of 126 terahash per second (TH/s). The miner, called Whatsminer M50 series, will be shipped from the third quarter of 2022 and is supposed to be significantly more powerful than existing rigs offered by Microbt.

But Microbt, which was founded in Beijing, China, isn’t the only company looking to raise the stakes in terms of mining hash rates. The company’s new rig isn’t even as powerful as new devices from fellow Chinese competitor Bitmain, whose Antiminer S19XP and Antiminer S19 Pro+ Hyd, which were unveiled in November last year, offer hash rates of 140 TH/z and 198 TH/s, respectively.

Bitmain and Microbt together own the lion’s share of the crypto mining industry. Bitmain accounted for 75% of the crypto mining market back in 2018, according to a report by research firm Frost & Sullivan. The company had also sought to list on public stock exchanges back in 2019 but let its application on the Hong Kong stock exchange lapse at the time.

In March this year, Coindesk reported that BitFuFu and BitDeer, two cloud mining platforms that were spun out of Bitmain, were planning to list on US stock exchanges later this year.

Bitmain and Microbt are both looking to enhance hash rates well beyond what their current devices can achieve as well. Bitmain had unveiled a device called Antiminer S19 XP Hyd back in January, which provided 255 TH/s worth of computing power, while Microbt suggested during its announcement at the Bitcoin 22 conference that it would also produce mining rigs with 240 TH/s of computing power.

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