When we talk about mining today, we most often have two ideas in mind. ASIC Miners (proprietary chip mining machine) on one side and GPU Miners on the other (graphics card mining machine).

Today, many people consider GPU mining dead. To the benefit of ASICs whose power is constantly increasing and who manage to break the different algorithms one by one. Others, on the contrary, consider that once an algorithm is attacked for ASICs, there is no longer any interest in undermining it and prefer to look for new currencies for their GPUs.

Many things are being said, some true, some false, let us try to step back and take a rested look at the situation.

The ASICs

Bitmain is the precursor of ASIC Miners. This key player in the mining market has managed to break each algorithm one by one to impose itself on the mining of the main crypto currencies. ASIC Miners are more efficient on the mining of their currencies than a Miner GPU thanks to the use of printed circuits dedicated to the mining algorithm. For the average user, this seems to be the solution to prioritize. But behind the ASICs we can identify some problems.

First, as noted above, the chipsets are dedicated. So there is no flexibility. It is therefore impossible to change the algorithm to be mined without buying the dedicated ASIC Miner.

This leads to a second, deeper problem, that of decentralization. The main feature of the blockchain is that it allows transactions to be made without a third party and without loss of trust. But here it is, today with the development of ASICs and the search for profitability on the mining of mastodons have developed. Actors such as Genesis Mining or Bitmain have such a high mining concentration that, for example, AntPool, the Bitmain mining pool alone represents nearly 15% of Bitcoin's global mining capacity. Even beyond the question of profitability, the major players in mining are questioning one of the major principles of the blockchain.

The GPUs Miner

GPUs Miner are graphics card mining machines (GPUs), these are historically the first machines to appear on the market. A little less efficient on a given algorithm than the ASICs Miner, they still have some significant advantages for them.

First, with a much less tight graphics card market than in the last two years, thanks in particular to the adaptation of GPU manufacturers to demand. The price of graphics cards has decreased and new players have made it possible to have a mining power of nearly 200 MH/S at less than 3000€.

Today an ASIC Miner ethash (to mine ETH) is worth about 2150€ for 180 MH/S while a GPU Miner S0 MINER is worth 2950€ for 184 MH/S at Bitech. The market is therefore less tight when we know that such a power in GPU Miner is worth nearly 3500 € on average among the historical players of the GPU Miner.

However, it is still nearly 30% more expensive than an ASIC Miner. So what would motivate you to buy a Miner GPU today?

Flexibility is the first major advantage of Miners GPUs, as is the case with ASICs Miner where the hardware is designed for a specific algorithm. It is much easier to change mining algorithms with Miners GPUs without a major loss of performance. Thus, with the same machine, you will be able to mine a very large number of crypto-currencies.

Also in the long term, it is much easier to see a GPU Miner as a financial investment, if tomorrow the cryptographic market collapses. You will be able to resell your graphics cards and components and thus recover most of your basic investment.

In conclusion, we can say that this constantly changing market seems to offer solutions for all types of mining. Whether it is the person looking for performance on an algorithm with an ASIC Miner even if it means losing his investment in the event of a crash, or the person looking for more flexibility and security with increasingly high-performance Miner GPUs and an increasingly attractive price/power ratio.