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The publicly listed Canadian miner will increase its aggregate operating rate by 1600 Gigahash.
Publicly listed Canadian miner Hut 8 announced the purchase of the Nvidia CMPs on March 26. The move helps broaden the company’s mining capacities while maintaining its Bitcoin mining operation. Hut 8 did not specify how many GPUs, or which versions of the CMP, were being purchased.
Why GPUs
Mining rigs built with GPUs such as the Nvidia chips generally rank second to those, such as the Bitmain Antminer series, with dedicated ASICs. The ASIC, or Application Specific Integrated Circuit, is more efficient, as it’s optimized for solving a certain type of equation. GPUs are more versatile, however. Mining different coins, and switching between coins, is possible with a GPU-based mining rig.
Hut 8 pointed to versatility as key to this purchase in a March 26 tweet. If necessary, the rigs these GPUs go into can be pressed into service for Bitcoin mining. However, staking and DeFi possibilities also open with the GPU-based machines.
Miner Diversification Takes off
Miners have their share of problems in the 202-2021 bull run. For example, mining rig producer Bitmain announced on Feb. 27 that its first run of Antminer S19j Bitcoin miners made since the Lunar New Year was sold out already. Filling orders can be difficult.
Bitmain competitor Ebang took a different direction. On Feb. 25, the company announced that it was going to start its own Bitcoin mining operation. For Hut 8, then, diversifying into a GPU-driven rig may get a machine making money sooner rather than later.
Miners themselves diversified. On Feb. 26, Marathon Digital Holdings was born. The company used to be Marathon Patent Group, and was a top Bitmain client. It is still one of the largest mining operations outside of China. However, the company decided to start keeping some of the Bitcoin it mines.
Marathon is not alone. Glassnode, the crypto analytics company, released a chart on Feb. 27 which indicates that miners withheld more Bitcoin than they released to the market. It happens on occasion; Dec. 27, 2020, was another instance of this. With the miners legally changing their business purpose, however, this will certainly become the norm.
Bitcoin miners will also continue to diversify into other coins. BTC is not the only coin facing a shortage. As BeInCrypto pointed out on March 20, LINK is also in short supply.
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