The bitcoin mining industry has reached a milestone today as it celebrates ten years since the launch of the first Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC). These specialized BTC miners forever changed how the blockchain and its actors interact and spawned a new industry.
According to Bitcoin mining expert and guru “TheCoinDad,” Jeff Garzik, one of the first developers and core developers of BTC, was among the first owners of the ASIC. This new device is launched by Canaan, “the world’s leading provider of supercomputing solutions”.
Fun fact
It’s the 10th anniversary of the founding of Bitcoin ASIC Miners. January/February 2013 was when @tweet with @tweet interview @tweet With the first ASIC miner brought to market by @tweet Avalon1, and he was making 12 bitcoins a day! 😱💪🔥 https://t.co/mkKoPR6Hng pic.twitter.com/80JbBQBf3F– TheCoinDad (TheCoinDad) February 22, 2023
Bitcoin mining industry through a decade
As noted by TheCoinDad, Vitalik Buterin, the inventor of Ethereum, was one of the first to cover the launch of the BTC ASIC. In February 2013, Buterin interviewed Garzik for Bitcoin Magazine, of which he was a co-founder.
Until the launch of this specialized equipment, bitcoin miners were making money using less powerful computers. ASIC has changed and continues to influence that dynamic by forcing miners to become more efficient at solving mathematical puzzles to validate blocks and earn BTC rewards, supported by the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism.
In 201, when Buterin was writing his article on the new hardware, there was skepticism in the bitcoin community. However, Canaan introduced its first generation Avalon ASIC models, capable of producing an average of 68,000 megahashes/s (MH/s) when the network hashes totaled 22,000GHz/s.
“The long-awaited ASIC cards are really real,” Buterin wrote. As shown in the image below, the first ASIC devices were similar to desktop computers and, as Garzik revealed, were made in China and could generate $240 in BTC per day, about 1 BTC in 2013 or $23,700 today.
According to Buterin, Garzik made the following additional notes about ASIC functions:
(…) Once the mining started, it was very loud. Full blast of fans, when initially turned on. The fans blow down, and the noise disappears.
Avalon V13 modelsy redundancy and can generate over 130 TH/s with an energy efficiency of 25 joules per TH. Since the launch of these machines, the BTC mining industry has expanded into new geographies and markets.
Now, there are Bitcoin mining companies that are publicly traded on the American Stock Exchange, with most operations using thousands of ASICs to scale and stay profitable. The proliferation of these specialized machines has coincided with the expansion of bitcoin as a global asset, and the cryptocurrency industry has a sector dominated by speculators to attract some of the most important companies in the world.
It can be shown that attention to BTC would have been slower without ASIC. These devices brought attention and increased incentives for people to secure the Bitcoin blockchain to launch the “Gold Rush” 2.0, but on the blockchain.
As of this writing, BTC is trading at $23,700 with a 3% loss in the last 24 hours.
