Demand in secondary market grows amid delay in ASIC miners
Secondary markets for ASIC miners intensified amid growing demand from miners. Shipping delays by major equipment manufacturers led to this.
Bitmain’s Director of International Marketing Nathaniel Yu confirmed that all stocks and production lines of ASIC miners have sold out before May 2021. According to Yu, the increase in the BTC price for 166% since the beginning of the year has become a key factor in increasing demand for new ASIC miners, especially for the 19th Bitmain series. Vincent Zhang, vice president of MicroBT sales, declined to comment on the company’s current inventory, but noted that demand for ASIC miners is high.
“When the price jumped, all the devices sold out,” said Kevin Zhang, vice president of business development at Foundry, a New York mining company.
Producing enough new devices to meet demand is a particularly challenging task because of competition for mining chips, Zhang said. The same 7-nm and 8-nm chips that miner manufacturers need are in great demand among other tech giants, such as Apple and Nvidia. When competing for supply with these firms, mining companies often lose.
Unable to receive new ASIC miners from manufacturers that face difficulties in supplying components, miners turn to secondary markets. According to Guzmán Pintos, co-founder of Luxor Technologies, trading activity in these markets has grown significantly. An even more serious imbalance between supply and demand is noted by HASHR8 Thomas Heller, Operations Director. He said that activity in the secondary markets of ASIC miners is now even higher than at the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018.
“No one wants to sell. Everyone wants to buy, ASIC miners “said Pintos.
High demand for any available ASIС miners is reflected in high volatility and higher device prices – the cost per unit “can easily change by 10-20% weekly,” Pintos said. Heller added that often the volatility in the prices of used ASIC miners exceeds the volatility of BTC itself.
According to Mason Jappa, CEO of Blockware Solutions, prices for used ASIC miners of past generations have risen by 40-50% in recent months. At the same time, prices for newer devices, for example, Bitmain S19 Pro, increased by about 25% in secondary markets. Blockware expects the current trend of high demand and limited supply to intensify as “more and more miners are trying to buy equipment in the secondary market with the fastest delivery times possible,” Japa said. According to him, the timing of the release of future batches of “Asiks” from Bitmain and MicroBT will continue to increase, and prices in secondary markets will continue to grow.
