Jack Dorsey block grabs BTC mining chip as Intel cuts production

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Jack Dorsey’s fintech payments company Block (SQ) recently bought a slew of Bitcoin mining chips from Intel, which will accelerate its plans to enter the mining hardware market just as the chipmaker shuts down its output.

The purchase will help it bring mining machines to market as it focuses on developing its cutting-edge 3-nanometer chips. Intel has set a final date for production of its bitcoin mining application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) of April 2024 as it discontinues the chip, announced in February 2022.

Block recently jumped at the chance to buy a large quantity of these ASICs from Intel, he said in a blog post on Friday. The company planned to finalize its design for a 5-nanometer chip for bitcoin mining this quarter and build machines based on it. The purchase means the team can focus exclusively on 3-nanometer design, the post said.

Nanometers in chip design refer to the size of each transistor, millions of which are lumped together to make up a chip. The smaller the transistors, the more they can fit on a chip, so it can perform more calculations, making it a more powerful chip.

Block’s proprietary products will arrive early next year, Block’s chief hardware officer Thomas Templeton said in an interview with CoinDesk. Asked about the amount of chips they purchased, he said it was enough to bridge the time until they could design and produce their own 3-nanometer chips.

Block said it aims to improve the decentralization of the Bitcoin network. When it comes to mining, “the biggest issue” is “diversity in manufacturing and the supply chain,” Templeton said. “We want to create more tools so that more people can build and use them. When you dig into mining, ASIC is at the center of mining.”

The mining industry is dominated by two players: Bitmain and MicroBT.

In March, Block announced it was working on a mining development kit, which will allow other engineers to create products using Block’s chips. This will provide developers with a suite of tools to unlock innovation in bitcoin mining hardware, the company said. Block offers the technology open source and wants the community to contribute to its development, which is why it announced the kit, Templeton said.

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