The fintech company Block Inc., focused on Bitcoin, has launched a new cryptocurrency mining system designed to extend the lifespan of mining equipment and reduce operational costs—this is a potential boon for miners facing high capital expenditures to maintain facilities.
The core of this release is the Proto Rig, a modular system that Block announced on Thursday, which replaces the traditional three to five-year lifecycle of mining equipment with hardware that can sustainably last ten years or more.
Miners do not need to discard the entire device but can replace individual hash boards as technology improves, with upgrade costs potentially reduced by up to 20% per cycle.
Block also introduced Proto Fleet, an open-source fleet management platform aimed at large-scale mining operations.
This announcement builds on Block's recent foray into the mining hardware sector. In April 2024, the company developed a 3-nanometer Bitcoin mining chip and signed a supply agreement with Core Scientific later that year.
According to Cointelegraph, Bitcoin mining remains a capital-intensive industry, with professional-grade equipment typically costing over $10,000—this does not include the substantial power required to operate them.
At current prices, mining companies produce over $50 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC) daily, although profitability ultimately depends on variables such as power costs, mining difficulty, and hardware efficiency.
The industry's initial response to Proto Rig has been largely positive. Kadan Stadelmann, Chief Technology Officer of Komodo Platform, told Cointelegraph that Block's "open-source approach aligns with Bitcoin's original decentralized ethos."
"Traditional mining equipment is used for three to five years and then thrown into landfills. Miners are forced to pay ongoing upgrade fees to monopolistic hardware manufacturers like Bitmain," Stadelmann said, adding:
Several mining companies are seeking to increase revenue by repurposing their infrastructure for other workloads, including high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence. Other companies choose to hold the mined Bitcoin, anticipating further price increases.
Before its acquisition, Core Scientific exemplified how a struggling Bitcoin miner turned to AI to revitalize its business. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy during the 2022 bear market and then received $3.5 billion in rescue funding from CoreWeave less than two years later.
In July, CoreWeave acquired Core Scientific in an $8.9 billion deal.
Meanwhile, cryptocurrency miner Hive Digital began shifting towards high-performance computing and AI in 2022, with HPC revenue appearing on its income statement the following year. Since then, the company has accelerated its entry into these fields while remaining optimistic about its Bitcoin mining business.
Related: Trump-backed American Bitcoin orders 16,000 Bitmain ASIC miners amid trade war
Original article: “Jack Dorsey's Block aims for a 10-year lifecycle for Bitcoin (BTC) mining equipment”
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
