Why is Bitmain so dominant?

[BennyAndDeJets]

Sorry for the dumb question, but I am pretty new to the ASIC scene and it seems to me like Bitmain has the best miners with the most efficient chips by a long shot.  How did this happen and where is the legitimate competition?  Any answers or help are greatly appreciated!

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[DimaPechka]

To me, it is all about dominance on the market. No one can get more more reputation than them. They started doing it long before the rivals, so now they get profits for that.

[Thetaj]

From buying ASICs from several manufacturers, I'd say the reason why Bitmain is dominant is because they have a robust company. Ordering from them and using their product is actually very good, and they actually have standards compared to other ASIC manufacturers. Not to mention their products are usually vastly superior to the competition

[philipma1957]

Good question.    

Bitfury  may be just as good  but they only sell to big players.

Avalon  is far more reliable  but is less efficient.

So as a buyer  you get to pick the s-9  which breaks fairly often or the 741 which is less efficient but does not break alot.

Or spend more then 1,000,000 usd to get in with bitfury.

Last  group to try to crack this nut  was sp-tech  with their spondollies  and that did not work well at all.

[Thetaj]

yea.......its hard to compete with established manufacturers like Bitmain. But I do believe there will come a time when a company will eventually give them a run for their money. I might just take several years for that to materialise.

But for the sake of the cryptosphere lets hope thats the case, or else we're looking at a very possible Monopoly

[sidehack]

Bitmain's first real product was a 2J/GH miner, readily available and self-contained, when most everyone else was dealing with 6-10J/GH miners and/or preorder hell. People bought the gear and it was promptly delivered and worked out of the box with better efficiency than just almost everything else, which gave them a huge boost. The fact they don't do pre-orders, they don't take in any money for products that don't already exist (or, worst case, are already designed, tested and slated for manufacture in the very near future) put them ahead of a lot of other outfits with long waiting lists or unreliable gear.

And then when they price-warred Spondoolies out of business with cheaply-built gear it became easier to own the industrial market.

And, as mentioned, they've been able to hang onto their lead because they have the most efficient readily-available chip (I'm sure Bitfury can beat them with an underclock) so people who only care about that, rather than reliability or customer service or much else (so, short-sighted profiteers, or in a word, humans) keep feeding them money in exchange for stuff.

[tubexc]

Bitmain's first real product was a 2J/GH miner, readily available and self-contained, when most everyone else was dealing with 6-10J/GH miners and/or preorder hell. People bought the gear and it was promptly delivered and worked out of the box with better efficiency than just almost everything else, which gave them a huge boost. The fact they don't do pre-orders, they don't take in any money for products that don't already exist (or, worst case, are already designed, tested and slated for manufacture in the very near future) put them ahead of a lot of other outfits with long waiting lists or unreliable gear.

And then when they price-warred Spondoolies out of business with cheaply-built gear it became easier to own the industrial market.

And, as mentioned, they've been able to hang onto their lead because they have the most efficient readily-available chip (I'm sure Bitfury can beat them with an underclock) so people who only care about that, rather than reliability or customer service or much else (so, short-sighted profiteers, or in a word, humans) keep feeding them money in exchange for stuff.

  That was the big problem of Black Arrow and his good engineering parts of clockwork bitcoin miners.
  But with its high quality and innovation for the time (they are the pioneers of the bitcoin mining industry )
they now would be a serious competitors of Bitmain

[sidehack]

The big problems with BlackArrow were overshooting their efficiency target by about 100% and delivering a year behind schedule, if at all.

Avalon and ASICMiner are really pioneers in the industry. ASICMiner had the first chip, Avalon had the first miner available to consumers. Black Arrow was just a blip on the radar in Butterfly Labs' neighborhood of potentially evil abject failures.

[Biffa]

The other miner of note at the time was the LKETC Dragon Miner using the Innosilicon A1 ASIC.

I remember having good results from the ones I bought.

[TheReamer]

it's obvious, they have the most efficient miners so they will always lead. Also first-mover advantage for sure

[mindrust]

In the long term, Canaan Avalon 741's destroy S9's. Canaan miners are more sturdy than the crappy built S9's but sadly Canaan was too late to join the game.

And there is that people who take the numbers on the label more seriously than the build quality of the hardware.

I mean, If you lose 3-4 of 10 S9's in the long term while you got 9/10 741's up and running you actually make more money with the Canaan miners.

**btw 741's are having a discount if I'm not wrong. Its dropped to 714$ which makes it a no brainer deal. Much better choice than s9's now.
https://canaan.io/product/avalonminer-741/

[SA Bitcoin Brothers]

In the long term, Canaan Avalon 741's destroy S9's. Canaan miners are more sturdy than the crappy built S9's but sadly Canaan was too late to join the game.

And there is that people who take the numbers on the label more seriously than the build quality of the hardware.

I mean, If you lose 3-4 of 10 S9's in the long term while you got 9/10 741's up and running you actually make more money with the Canaan miners.

**btw 741's are having a discount if I'm not wrong. Its dropped to 714$ which makes it a no brainer deal. Much better choice than s9's now.
https://canaan.io/product/avalonminer-741/

I hear everyone talk about how unreliable the Antminers is, how many have you guys lost? We have about 20 S9s/T7s/S7s and havent lost one. Are we lucky?

[sidehack]

The las really well-made Bitmain miner was the S3. Right around that point they started realizing people just wanted the cheapest darn thing that they could keep running for at least 6-8 months. The S5 was sorely underbuilt, and then the S7 and S9 really can't be kept alive long with such extreme power density unless you have fairly cold intake air.

Lower heat density means a lot less heat stress on semiconductors and a lot less mechanical stress on fans. Better build quality means a higher cost, but as noted above, anyone looking for any kind of longevity of investment will appreciate reliability over low initial cost. The efficiency/time curve is starting to level off, and as the diff approaches infinity the percent change should taper off, meaning miners now have a substantially longer viable life than a year or two ago.

[leowonderful]

They got into the mining game early and established themselves well enough to provide a good base for future production of miners. Besides that, Antminer S1 hype got people to buy up most S3s, which helped to further boost sales. Today, this means they have more to spend on R&D (probably) than other mining companies, so much so they can afford to expand to X11 and Litecoin. Fun fact, the Antminer L1 was supposed to come out but it never did for unknown reasons. The page is still on the Bitmain site. It was supposed to be a Scrypt miner.