New crypto mining machines launched in Dubai

Yesterday, MicroBT unveiled its latest range of crypto mining machines in Dubai during the Blockchain Life 2023 event. 

These are the Whatsminer M60s, which are new ASICs with an efficiency of 18.5 joules per terahash (J/T).

The new Whatsminer for crypto mining in Dubai

MicroBT’s new WhatsMiner M60 series miners include hydro, immersion and air-cooled models and feature Dr Yang’s fully customised cryptography.

This new series has been specifically designed to meet industry demands and trends, as well as the company’s ESG-friendly goals by being able to be powered by renewable energy sources. 

The M66S and M66 models achieve an efficiency of 18.5 J/T in the range of 298 TH /s to 270 TH /s and 19.9 J/T in the range of 276 TH /s to 240 TH /s respectively. 

In contrast, the hydraulically cooled M63S models offer a range of 390 TH /s to 360 TH /s at 18.5 J/H and 366 TH /s to 334 TH /s at 19.9 J/T. 

Finally, the air-cooled M60S and M60 models offer a production range from 186 TH /s to 170 TH /s at 18.5 J/T and from 172 TH /s to 150 TH /s at 19.9 J/T.

Miners who choose the M60 Series can optimise their operations, as the hardware performs well at 80°C, and combine it with renewable energy to remain competitive.

The MicroBT Company 

MicroBT is a technology company based on blockchain and artificial intelligence, with a precise focus on the research, development, production and sale of chips and integrated circuit products. 

It is a Chinese company founded in 2016 in Shenzhen, with research and development centres also in Beijing and Shanghai. 

The first WhatsMiner M3 series was launched the following year, and since then its performance has improved significantly. 

MicroBT’s M3 WhatsMiners had a maximum hashrate of 12 Th/s, while the new M60 series models achieve up to 390 Th/s, or 32 times more. All in just six years. 

The M3s had a power output of 2,000 W, while the M60s go up to 6,660 W. So for 32 times the processing power, the consumption has only just more than tripled. In other words, efficiency has increased enormously, by about a factor of ten. 

Dubai: the importance of efficiency in crypto mining

The biggest competitive advantage for a crypto-mining machine is not just power, but efficiency. 

In fact, payouts are made on the basis of the computing power used and are actually quite fixed in the medium/short term. This means that you get more or less the same BTC for the same amount of power, so the only way to increase revenue is to reduce costs. 

Since the main cost is the electricity consumed, reducing costs means reducing energy consumption, and this is achieved by increasing efficiency. 

Efficiency in this case is nothing more than the energy used to do the same work, so it increases precisely when less energy is used to do the same work. 

In recent years, the efficiency of crypto miners has increased significantly, so much so that much of the global increase in hash rates in recent years can be attributed to this.

The Hashrate

In general, since Bitcoin miners’ earnings are always in BTC, when the market value of bitcoin falls, miners have to cut costs, and they do this by shutting down the less efficient machines. 

So during 2022, we should have expected a sharp drop in the hashrate, but instead it continued to rise. 

There was a sharp drop in May 2021, when China banned mining, but then it continued to rise until May 2022. 

With the collapse of the markets due to the implosion of the Earth/Moon ecosystem, the hashrate fell again, but only for a few months, and then rose again in August. 

It then fell again after the further collapse in November due to the FTX bankruptcy, but rose again in January this year. It is now at an all-time high. 

Suffice it to say that the estimated average weekly global hashrate was 180 Eh/s in May 2021, rising to 230 in May 2022. 

By July 2022 it had fallen to 190 Eh/s, and by the end of the year it had risen to 240 Eh/s. 

Before mid-October 2023, it peaks at around 457 Eh/s, which is 90% higher than at the beginning of the year and 150% higher than in May 2021.