I hope everyone who gives a darn about Bitcoin avoids doing business with Bitmain in the future. Bitmain has been a long standing bad actor in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. We shouldn't forget this just because they replaced their CEO. As far as I know they have done nothing to undo the damage they've caused or otherwise make amends. We can see by their continued open source license violations in their products that they haven't changed.
I will award merit to every post that makes a compelling statement against buying from bitmain.
They tried (and failed) to block access to the S11/S15 (if i recall correctly) via SSH, i think they didn't like someone making a
full open source firmware replacement for the S9, that uses actual cgminer instead of bmminer...
I have also been following the products released by
MicroBT, and have been rooting for them. Their 16nm part (the M10) was already nearly as efficient as Bitmain's 7nm part. Now they have a 12nm product, the M20, which is looking seriously efficient already. Can you imagine what they can do at 7nm?
Lets not forget about Jihan Wu's attempt to seize Bitcoin, by rejecting Segwit and promoting giant blocks which ended in the creation of two altcoins nobody wanted, but hurt the market (and ironically his company)...
And then there are the pools. It was bad already that they had one large pool, but why 3? or is it 4? Antpool, btc.com, viabtc... when you use those pools you are benefiting Bitmain one way or the other, yet there is way too much people who don't seem to care. Could it be because its the default in their miners?
Does anyone remember the
covert asicboost drama? and the rumors of them using it indoors? They always denied it, until overt asicboost became real, somehow their S9 models could do it, but not their previous models. So the rumor was proven correct after months of denial...
Of course there are several reasons not to pick a Bitmain product, more importantly the Asic market is weakened by that behemoth. I understand that a former Bitmain employee went to MicroBT, the Asic designer? Somehow i think both Bitmain and Canaan copied the PSU driving things at 20v with metal rails directly attached to the boards from MicroBT, but that's just my speculation...
For me, MicroBT should be the preferred choice, but keep an eye to Canaan Creative, which needs to lower prices to be more attractive.
Many people are now angry with Bitmain for the sudden release of slightly improved versions, and then removing the "old" ones from their shop, making their investment sound pointless. Ie: the S11, the S15, now the S17. Is there a slightly improved S19 lurking around the corner? Will you commit 2k or more USD just to find out you bought an already obsolete model? Well we should be nearing the peak efficiency for 7nm parts, but i think MicroBT will win once they release something at 7nm.
Bitmain also has a strange business with those coupons. Not happy with making an alt (or two), they also instigated a parallel market of coupons. Why are they issuing those coupons in such quantities, that people are now more interested in trading than using?
I also remember
their ability to disable miners remotely, there was a little scandal about this "feature", which was later "removed" (upgraded?).
Another one is the fact that the miners are set to mine to a Bitmain Antpool account by default, so any "tests" give extra profit for them. Wasn't there a class suit action going on because of it? Of course if you reset the settings, this returns.
In the end its just like the pools. If you keep using (their) large pools, you are weakening the whole thing. So by buying their products you also weaken their competitors. If competition disappears, and they consolidate a monopoly, we are going to be in trouble. They would ask outrageous prices, and give very poor customer satisfaction, because once you are the last one standing you can dictate your terms to others.
Oh almost forgot, why the heck does Bitmain owns not one, but TWO cloud mining services? I don't think i need to talk here about cloud mining, they are pure money waste, if not outright scam. Stay away from them...
