6 September  2024 · Block Height 860144 · Bitcoin Price $56K

Welcome back to the Blockspace Newsletter!

For today’s roundup, we dig into how Bitmain’s surplus of S21 models is weighing on ASIC prices. We also cover how Marathon’s latest board member appointments could point toward AI aspirations, Starkware’s latest breakthrough for STARK proofs, Fractal Bitcoin’s first mining pool, and updates to Stratum.work.

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What caught our eye this week

Bitmain ASIC production bloats supply

ASIC prices have plummeted over 2024 as post-halving hashprice continues to decline. But a glut in supply from over manufacturing could also be affecting demand and pushing down prices.

“We are seeing more buyers and also wholesalers holding up their purchase post-halving. This is mainly driven by too much supply in the market, and also there’s greater uncertainty in machine prices and mining economics,” the head of an ASIC brokerage firm, who asked to remain anonymous, told Blockspace. 

Bitmain, which accounts for roughly 80% of ASIC miners currently operating according to CoinMetrics data, is “releasing models more quickly than ever before,” says our source. One driver of this unrelenting ASIC production could be Bitmain buying more TSMC chips to maintain its seat at the table in the increasingly-competitive foundry space. Is more pain in store for Bitcoin miners?

News roundup

Marathon gets new board members and looks to AI

$MARA has tapped two board members from Intel and Siemens with expertise in “AI, data centers, and energy.” With so many bitcoin miners riding the AI hype waving, it looks like Marathon is ready to hang ten with the rest of them.

Starkware validates first execution of Bitcoin transaction with “Shinigami”

This week, Starkware finished what Robin Linus of ZeroSync started: Simple Payment Verification of Bitcoin Script Execution. In layman’s terms, this allows for more expressive programming on top of Bitcoin than prior.

Unisat launches Fractal Bitcoin mining pool on Testnet

The Unisat team has unveiled Fairpool, a so-called “developer-maintained” mining pool for its merged-mined sidechain Fractal Bitcoin, which is slated to launch on September 9. In a space this week, Spiderpool also confirmed participation in the Fractal Bitcoin network.

Stratum.work gets a feature upgrade

A popular website for auditing mining pool activity in real time just got better. Now, you can also monitor pool payout addresses in addition to block templates.

Chart of the week

If you ever wondered how complex Coinbase’s custodial services web is, this chart is for you. 

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