For those who do not know; Bitmain is a Chinese company that is known to produce cutting edge ASIC chips for mining Cryptocurrencies. They have a wide range of ASIC miners capable of mining Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dash, Zcash, Monero (formerly) and many others. Among them coins that remained GPU friendly for a long time are Ethereum (Ethash), Monero (CryptoNight) and Zcash (Equihash). All three has been dominated by ASICs lately and out of these three Monero forked and secured its network from ASIC miners. However the one that seem to be largely affected right now is Equihash algorithm and its coins.
First came Antminer Z9 Mini with 10k Sol/s, then Innosilicon A9 ZMaster with 50K Sol/s and now Antminer Z9 non mini version powering 40k Sol/s. While the other two has been discussed widely Antminer Z9 Equihash ASIC is new to the market. Not many miners knows this as there was no public announcement or tweet from Bitmain. But it is in stock and available for purchase at their official website. Here let’s see what this Antminer Z9 Equihash ASIC miner is capable of, its features, specifications, price and mining profitability.
Antminer Z9 (non mini) overview:
During the launch of Antminer Z9 Mini it became evident that Bitmain also had a non mini version of this ASIC miner and the company has been using it for a long time before releasing it to the public.
Antminer Z9 mini was priced around $2000 during its launch and after the announcement of Innosilicon A9 ZMaster they dropped its price to $850. Now after they’ve sold several units of Z9 Mini they released this Antminer Z9 non mini Equihash ASIC miner which is currently priced at $3319. The first batch of this miner is expected to be shipped on 1st week of September. Also according to the specifications it seem to be the most profitable ASIC currently.
Antminer Z9 specifications:
Manufacturer: Bitmain
Model: Antminer Z9
Hashing Algorithm: Equihash
Power Consumption: 1150W ± 10%
Hash Rate: 40.8k Sol/s ± 5%
Weight: 9 KG
Power cord: Not included
Profitability:
While the Antminer Z9 mini is equivalent to 12 GTX 1080TIs, this Antminer Z9 non mini version is equivalent to 50+ GTX 1080TIs. Antminer Z9 is said to produce 40.8k Sol/s ± 5% @ 1150W ± 10%. It is the most powerful Equihash ASIC miner from Bitmain, but is it profitable than Z9 Mini?
In terms of sols/watt this thing is similar to z9 mini version ASIC miner. However the Innosilicon A9 ZMaster stays ahead of these two in terms of performance. At current difficulty this miner is capable of mining .37 ZEC a day with a profit of around $55. It sounds good! However by the time when this miner gets in to public hands the mining scene will be completely different. With a limited warranty period and coins forking to disrupt ASICs you must think before you make an order. Also at currently market trend it is cheaper to buy coins directly than investing in expensive mining machines like this.
Final thoughts:
Recently ASICs dominating and controlling large part of shares is killing the overall mining scene. With z9 mini and A9 Zmaster there is already a hashrate spike on Zcash and ZenCash networks. Now when this new z9 gets in to public hands the network difficulty will further increase. ASIC miners are not only dominating the network but cutting GPU miners out of the game.
However on the bright side there are coins like Bitcoin Gold which has forked recently in order to remain GPU friendly. So GPU mining won’t be dead anytime soon. There are several coins and algorithms that are solely focused on being ASIC resistant. There are many projects ready to support small to medium sized miners. Anyways Equihash is totally done in terms of GPU mining.
