Bitmain announces its next generation, 7 nm BM1391 ASIC to power its cryptocurrency miners
Daniel Palmer / CoinDesk :
Context & Ripple Effects
This announcement lands four weeks after coverage arguing that Bitmain, at core a chip company, had failed to ship a next-generation chip since 2016 — so the 7 nm BM1391 is the company's public answer to that criticism, and its first advanced-node silicon claim in over two years.
The competitive backdrop matters: Bitmain controls roughly 29% of Bitcoin hash rate per Quartz's 2017 profile, but Samsung confirmed in January that it is manufacturing mining ASICs itself, threatening to break the Bitmain–Canaan duopoly on process technology.
First-order effects
- Bitmain's mining-rig customers get a claimed path to 7 nm efficiency, directly rebutting the narrative that the company's chip pipeline had stalled since 2016.
- Canaan Creative, the other half of the China-dominated ASIC duopoly, now faces Bitmain competing at the same leading-edge node rather than resting on older designs.
Second-order effects
- Samsung's entry into ASIC manufacturing gives Bitmain's rivals a foundry alternative outside Bitmain's traditional supply chain, turning process-node access into the pricing battleground for miners.
- If the BM1391 ships at scale, Bitmain's already large share of Bitcoin hash rate grows, sharpening decentralization concerns among the network's users and developers.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points to mining hardware becoming a semiconductor-design race that pulls in deep-pocketed entrants — a trajectory later borne out by Intel's 2022 Bonanza Mine bitcoin ASICs.
- Sustained chip leadership funds diversification beyond bitcoin: Bitmain was already moving into deep-learning ASICs by 2017, and by 2025 was planning US assembly capacity, suggesting mining silicon profits underwrite a broader infrastructure business.
The trend: Cryptocurrency mining is consolidating around advanced-node ASIC design as the decisive moat, drawing foundries and chip giants into what was a two-company Chinese duopoly.