Blockstream is Expanding Bitcoin Mining Operations with Innosilicon Equipment Purchase

One of the largest contributors to Bitcoin Core funding, Blockstream has bought a lot of cryptocurrency mining equipment from the Chinese electronics hardware manufacturer Innosilicon.

Publicly available international shipping data (a bill of lading) reveals that a large amount of Innosilicon mining rigs has been imported from China to the US by Blockstream, the Bitcoin Core company focused on developing sidechains. More specifically, four containers holding 62 pallets marked as “TI” were sent from Hong Kong and arrived on July 26, 2018, at the port of New York/Newark, New Jersey.

“TI” refers to Terminator by Innosilicon, the ASIC manufacturer’s SHA256 miner whose latest version units are sold for $1118 USD each. And with each pallet possibly holding up to 72 units, this would mean that Blockstream could have bought about 4650 Terminators for a total value of almost $5.2 million. The typical hash rate of a Terminator unit reaches 17.2TH/s, giving such a center almost 80PH/s

The company has not announced it is opening a new mining center as of yet, but such a large order would definitely suggest that is an imminent possibility. Innosilicon is a design company offering low cost, high-performance, cross-foundry, fully customizable solutions.

Criticisms For The Move

Many people on social media are calling out Blockstream for their hypocrisy around mining. They demonized miners for years and now they want to be one. People think that this, in part, is for the quest to control and take over Bitcoin Core. Even ASICboost is allowed now, which was demonized sometime earlier by the company. They stopped talking about changing POW at the exact same time Adam Back tweeted about buying a few hundred thousand dollars worth of bitcoin mining equipment from Halong.

However, this shift might be because the Blockstream is smartening up, realizing that without having hashrate they have no real power.