What is Bitcoin Mining Hardware

 

Bitcoins are mined by special hardware designated just for mining Bitcoins. It is called ASIC, uses less energy and mines Bitcoins much faster.

Bitcoin mining hardware (ASICs) are high specialized computers used to mine bitcoins.

The ASIC industry has become complex and competitive.

Mining hardware is now only located where there is cheap electricity.

When Satoshi released Bitcoin, he intended it to be mined on computer CPUs.

However: Enterprising coders soon discovered they could get more hashing power from graphic cards and wrote mining software to allow this.

 

ASIC Miner

 

ASIC stands for “Application Specific Integrated Circuit”. In plain English, that just means it is a chip designed to do one very specific kind of calculation. In the case of a Bitcoin ASIC miner, the chip in the miner is designed to solve problems using the SHA256 hashing algorithm.

Here is what an ASIC looks like:

 

Nowadays all serious Bitcoin mining is performed on ASICs, usually in thermally-regulated data-centers with access to low-cost electricity.

Economies of scale have thus led to the concentration of mining power into fewer hands than originally intended.