Block Buys Mining Chips From Intel, Enters Hardware Market

Block, Jack Dorsey's fintech firm, recently purchased a large number of Bitcoin mining chips from Intel as the latter winds manufacturing down. This will speed up its plans to enter the mining hardware market, CoinDesk reported.

Intel is discontinuing chip production

The purchase will help Block focus on developing its state-of-the-art 3 nm chips and bring mining machines to the market at the same time. Intel will discontinue production of BTC mining-specific integrated circuits in April next year.

Change of plans

Previously, Block had not intended to buy so many chips from Intel. They were planning to finish their design of a 5 nm chip this quarter and build mining hardware based on that. The purchase will allow them to focus on the 3 nm design according to a blog post.

In chip design, nm (nanometers) refers to transistor size. Millions of transistors are packed together to create a chip. The size is inversely proportional to the output – the more transistors can fit on a chip, the more powerful it will be.

Reducing centralization in mining

According to Block, their main goal is to improve the decentralization of the Bitcoin network. The main issue is with supply chain and production diversity when it comes to mining. At the moment, MicroBT and Bitmain dominate the mining manufacturing industry.

Block is open-sourcing mining technology

In March 2023, the fintech firm announced it was working on a Bitcoin mining kit, which would enable professionals to develop products using their chips. The firm added that this would give developers a suite of tools to leverage technological innovation in BTC mining hardware.

Block announced the mining kit because they are open-sourcing the technology and aim for the community to contribute to developments in the field.