Intel will no longer make chips for bitcoin miners

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Forex in this article

• Intel wants to cut costs and focus on its core business
• Intel ends production of Bitcoin mining chips
• However, customers of the Blockscale ASICs should continue to receive support

It was only in April 2022 that Intel announced details of its new bitcoin mining hardware chip. The so-called “Application-Specific Integrated Circuit” (ASIC) is designed for Proof-of-Work blockchains (PoW) with SHA-256 encryption. Compared to the competition, the new mining processor scored with an exceptionally strong performance. The company also advertised that it was significantly more energy-efficient and thus improved sustainability when mining cryptocurrencies.

Off for mining chip Blockscale

But now “Reuters” reported, citing company information, that the chip manufacturer wants to end the production of its Bitcoin mining chips for cost reasons. Accordingly, orders for Bitcoin mining ASICs of the Blockscale 1000 series should only be accepted until October 20th. Deliveries should then be made by April 20, 2024.

However, owners of such Blockscale ASICs will continue to receive customer support. Customers include the mining companies Argo Blockchain, Block Inc, HIVE Blockchain Technologies and GRIID Infrastructure.

costs at a glance

According to the news agency, Intel decided to stop production in order to save costs. The semiconductor veteran intends to primarily outsource the production of certain chips in order to concentrate on smaller and faster chips. In connection with this so-called IDM 2.0 strategy, other product categories that are not part of Intel’s main business – including 5G hardware, servers and network switches – were also discontinued. The exit from the mining business is just one of many measures intended to reduce overall costs.

Maybe not a final farewell from the mining business after all?

But even if Intel is initially leaving the crypto industry and shifting its focus to other projects, at least for the time being, the group still wants to keep an eye on the “market opportunities” there. Finally, the retreat from bitcoin mining seems less due to a lack of confidence in the industry and more to do with the macroeconomic environment. According to Bitcoin2Go, Intel has stated that its 2022 results were “impacted by an uncertain macroeconomic environment due to inflation, the war in Ukraine and COVID-19 supply chain disruptions in China.”

NVIDIA ends crypto commitment

On the other hand, NVIDIA does not have a particularly good relationship with cryptocurrencies, although the semiconductor manufacturer has been able to sell thousands of graphics cards to miners. This is due to the fact that mining has come into violent conflict with the core gaming business in recent years. Because of the strong demand on the part of the miners, the hardware for gamers was only available to a very limited extent and was also very expensive.

But then, in 2022, an upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain made graphics cards superfluous for ETH miners. And because the gaming business has also developed poorly in the meantime, NVIDIA is now focusing on artificial intelligence (AI). In contrast, crypto is pointless, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Michael Kagan said in an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian: “I never thought of it as something that would do humanity any good,” he said in a very derogatory way to cryptocurrencies.

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