Bitcoin’s Rally Propels Mining Hardware Prices in Sync
The mining hardware arms race is becoming more expensive – at least for now
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The prices of the latest generation of mining hardware seem to have been trending upward over the past few months amidst bitcoin’s market rally.
During October and early November, severalpublic bitcoin mining companies announced preorders for Bitmain’s Antminer S21, boasting an efficiency of 17.5 J/TH, priced at $14/TH/s, with shipments set to begin in January.
Offers observed by TheMinerMag from Chinese miner brokers now indicate that the January batch of S21 is currently being quoted at about $22/TH/s, reflecting a 57% premium compared to three months ago. Throughout this period, bitcoin’s price surged by more than 60%, rising from $27,000 to $45,000.
Similarly, the January batch of the Antminer S19K Pro, a slightly older model from Bitmain with an efficiency of 23 J/TH, is being offered at around $15/TH/s, a noticeable increase from the price of approximately $12/TH/s in early November.
Data compiled by Luxor’s ASIC trading desk, shared with TheMinerMag, shows a similar trend and even suggests that the market’s rally affected not only the USD pricing but also the BTC pricing of ASIC rigs. For instance, the quote for S21 rose from 350 SAT/TH/s in early October to 550 SAT/TH/s at present.
As previously reported, public mining companies committed over $600 million in the past month to acquire the latest equipment ahead of the halving. While more companies have joined this ongoing arms race, it seems the cost has become more expensive for those who did not act fast and early.
Pennsylvania-based Stronghold Digital said on Tuesday that it bought 0.6 EH/s of bitcoin miners with an average efficiency of 25 J/TH, expected to arrive this month, at a total cost of $8.5 million, equivalent to $14.2/TH/s. The order was funded by equity financing it raised recently.
In essence, Stronghold paid for a 25 J/TH fleet the same price as CleanSpark and Iris Energy did three months ago for the more efficient S21 miners. The flipside, though, is that Stronghold gets to plug in the spot stocks and increase its monthly productions soon. The firm said it mined 207 BTC in December.
In addition, the company said it secured an option from Canaan to purchase its newest Avalon A1466 miners, featuring an efficiency of 21.5 J/TH, for $12/TH/s at any time this year. Canaan anticipates shipping the A1466 around the time of the halving in April.
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