Bitcoin mining firm Hive to buy Intel’s new chip

Bitcoin mining firm Hive announced plans to buy Intel’s new ASIC chip. 

The deal, coupled with a manufacturing agreement with an original design manufacturer (ODM), is expected to increase Hive’s aggregate Bitcoin mining hashrate by up to 95%, from 1.9 exahashes per second (EH/s), according to a statement from the company issued Monday. 

Hive, a publicly-traded company based in Vancouver, Canada, also laid out its plans to host 100 megawatts of mining capacity in one of Compute North’s Texas renewable energy data center facilities. This will be their first foray into the U.S.

Last year, Hive ordered a total of 4,000 machines from Canaan, a China-based publicly listed bitcoin mining hardware manufacturer.

As The Block has documented, companies in North America have ramped up investments in bitcoin mining equipment, in a race to scale up, ever since China’s crackdown on the multi-billion industry in May 2021.

Intel’s new bitcoin mining ASIC chips will be incorporated into mining equipment custom-built for HIVE, according to the company. The tech giant has previously described its much-anticipated blockchain accelerator as ultra-low voltage and energy-efficient.

While expanding its mining operations, Hive said it is also prioritizing the use of clean energy.

“Intel’s energy-efficient and high performance blockchain accelerator is expected to reduce our power consumption over current ASIC miners on the market,” said president and COO of Hive Aydin Kilic.

Intel revealed that its new chip — nicknamed Bonanza Mine — provided more energy efficiency than other models currently available in the market, during the 2022 edition of the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) last month.

The new technology has drawn interest from other industry players, including Block (formerly known as Square), Argo Blockchain and bitcoin mining company GRIID, which have all signed up to purchase Intel’s new mining hardware. The company will start shipping the chip later this year.