The market has begun to bleed the last couple of days along with many fears in the Cryptocurrency market. These fears include a Bitcoin Death Cross, SEC crackdowns on ICO's, and the one we will talk about in this article, impending fears of ASIC mining Ethereum.
When Ethereum was first created, one of Vitalik Buterin's main goals was to make the Ethereum blockchain resistant to ASIC mining. The reason being that he did not want large, centralized Ethereum mining companies. The other reason is that because of the large amount of money it takes to purchase ASIC miners, it creates a barrier to entry for the average person to get into mining Ethereum. For the past couple years, the Ethereum blockchain had so far remained resistant to ASIC mining. However, that time may be coming to an end.
Bitmain, one of the largest manufacturers of ASIC miners, has been confirmed to have developed an ASIC miner for the Ethereum blockchain. They are not alone either, as Samsung and other manufacturers have stated that they also developed an ASIC miner to be used for Ethereum mining.
Does this spell the end of Ethereum mining for the average person? Not necessarily. In my opinion, ASIC mining is only bad if there is only one manufacturer of ASIC miners in the industry, because they can drive up the prices of their ASIC miners sky high with no competition. With the advent of multiple manufacturers releasing ASIC miners, it creates some market competition and can make ASIC miners much more affordable.
ASIC mining of Ethereum will be an interesting addition in the Cryptocurrency space. I am curious to see where this will lead and if it will speed of the process of releasing the Ethereum proof of stake protocol sooner.
What do you guys think? Comment your opinions and ideas below.
Signing off,
Isaiah Croatt
Chief Research Officer
CoinLion LLC