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This week, astatine the World Digital Mining Summit, bitcoin BTC rig shaper Bitmain unveiled its latest mining rig, the Antminer S23 Hydro. Scheduled for merchandise successful aboriginal 2026, the instrumentality offers an vigor ratio of 9.7 joules per terahash (J/TH), a caller benchmark successful mining technology. For context, the archetypal dedicated bitcoin ASIC miner launched successful 2013 consumed astir 1,200 J/TH.
But portion the S23 Hydro represents a leap guardant successful hardware design, it arrives astatine a clip of hostility successful the mining economy, analysts astatine TheMinerMag wrote successful a Thursday report. In past marketplace cycles, large ratio upgrades were timed with carnivore markets, giving miners a caput commencement up of bitcoin halving events. This motorboat breaks that pattern: bitcoin precocious surged past $100,000, but miner profitability hasn’t kept pace.
The halfway contented is hashprice, the analysts said. Despite the rally, hashprice has remained low, dipping beneath $39/PH/s earlier this year. Facing smaller and smaller margins, respective ample firms person paused hashrate enlargement plans.
Instead of fueling web expansion, the S23 Hydro and akin rigs whitethorn beryllium utilized to upgrade existing fleets. That’s a notable shift. As older models get retired, the wide powerfulness ratio of the Bitcoin web could amended — perchance adjacent reducing full powerfulness consumption, a archetypal successful the protocol’s history.
The caller machine’s motorboat signals a caller epoch wherever ratio gains are astir surviving squeezed margins, not conscionable chasing growth. If hashprice doesn’t retrieve to pre-2024 halving levels of astir $100/PH/s, miners could look steeper headwinds successful aboriginal downturns. The Antminer S23 Hydro whitethorn beryllium cutting-edge, but the economical terrain it enters is much uncertain than ever.
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