Bitdeer Leverages TSMC for $60M Proprietary Bitcoin Miners

Singapore-based bitcoin mining firm Bitdeer said it had placed wafer orders from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to manufacture its proprietary SEAL01 bitcoin mining ASIC chips.

Bitdeer said on Thursday that it had placed the orders during Q1 and expected the chips to be assembled into full SEALMIER A1 rigs by Q3. The firm added that the cost of the miners was estimated to be around $60 million, subject to further adjustments based on the actual manufacturing expenditures.

As previously reported, Bitdeer plans to install 4.8 EH/s worth of A1 miners at its mining facilities in Rockdale, Texas and in Norway during the second half of the year. The firm did not specify which chip fabrication foundry it was working with when it announced the launch of the SEAL01 ASIC.

Bitdeer was founded by Jihan Wu, the co-founder of Bitmain who spinned off Bitdeer after reaching a settlement with his fellow Bitmain co-founder, Ketuan Zhan, in 2021. TSMC is also the chip fabrication foundry for Bitmain.

As of the end of March, Bitdeer was operating at 8.1 EH/s of hashrate, which is splits between proprietary mining and cloud mining. In March, it mined 294 BTC with 6.7 EH/s being allocated to proprietary mining.

Taiwan was recently hit by the biggest earthquake in 25 years. But according to a Fortune report, TSMC shrugged off the impact of the earthquake on its facilities as employees gradually returned to work.