Bitmain Launches Low-Cost Special Edition Antminer S9

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On Monday, June 17, the Chinese mining rig manufacturer Bitmain Technologies announced the launch of a low-cost miner called the Antminer S9 version SE. The new 16 terahash per second (16TH/s) S9 SE is $350 per unit and the launch celebrates the company’s most popular product, the original S9.

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Special Edition S9 With 16 Terahash per Second

Bitmain has launched yet another product for solo miners and large operations, but this particular Antminer is a low-cost mining rig. The company announced the latest Antminer S9 Special Edition (SE) on Monday and the first batch went on sale the following day. The new S9 SE specifications detail that the miner processes the SHA-256 algorithm (BTC and BCH) at 16 terahash per second (16TH/s). The miner takes 1280W from the wall which leads to delivering a power efficiency of 80 joules per terahash (J/TH).

“The legacy that forever left its mark in the mining industry — Introducing a Special Edition miner, the Antminer S9 SE which continues that very same legacy,” Bitmain announced on Monday.

The S9 SE is selling for $350 per mining rig and in order to prevent hoarding the company has limited order to 10 miners per order. The first batch of rigs is expected to ship between July 21-31 on first-paid-first-ship basis. Of course, U.S. residents will have to pay more than the rest of the world because of the current trade war tariffs initiated by Donald Trump. People shipping miners to the U.S. will pay an additional 2.6% tax and an additional 25% import duty tax. The new S9 SE weighs about 4.5kg and when operating the unit puts out around 76 decibels (dB) of sound which is a touch louder than traditional dB outputs. According to the specifications, there are three hash boards with approximately 180 Bitmain-designed chips. However, the S9 SE documentation does not reveal what type of semiconductors are used with the hash boards.

Second Market, Old and Low-Hashrate Mining Rigs

Bitmain’s latest low-cost miner release follows the slew of next-generation miners the company released over the last few months. This includes the Bitmain Antminer S17 Pro (53TH/s), S17 (56TH/s), T17 (40TH/s), S15 (28TH/s), T15 (23TH/s), and the S11 (20.5TH/s). The latest S9 SE version is more comparable to the Antminer S9 Hydro (18TH/s), but without the water functionality.

The low-cost S9 SE comes at a time when mining revenues have been so good that older and low-hashrate devices are profiting. For instance, the 2016 S9 version with 11.5 terahash per second is still profiting by at least $0.75 per day at current prices and at $0.13 per kilowatt-hour (KWh). Coinshare’s latest mining report notes that older S9s are still being sold on the secondary market for “700 or 800 yuan” or “as low as $150 USD.” Even the older Antminer S7s could still be profiting as the June 2019 mining report notes:

With Bitcoin prices where they are at the time of writing it is assumed some people have turned at least a few of these units [S7s] back on.

Moreover, mining has become extremely competitive over the last few months and both BTC and BCH hash rates have been steadily climbing. For example, according to the analytical data from Charts.Bitcoin.com, there’s a total of 56.5 exahash per second (EH/s) with BTC capturing 54 EH/s while BCH has 2.5 EH/s. The Antminer S9 SE release shows Bitmain is taking a stab at trying to capture buyers looking for older or low-cost machines. With BCH above the $400 price zone per coin and BTC beyond the $9K region, any mining rigs processing 11 TH/s or more are profiting with $0.13 per KWh. Of course, many countries such as China ($0.04 to 0.01 per kWh in Sichuan) and Iran ($0.006 per KWh) have far lower electric costs than $0.13 per KWh which would make even lower hashrate producing models profitable.

What do you think about the latest S9 SE mining rigs from Bitmain? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Charts.Bitcoin.com, and Bitmain.

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