Between China and the United States, the hatchet was never buried. The trade war started by the two superpowers in 2018 changed its face a year later. Since 2019, analysts have renamed this Sino-American antagonism as “ technological war “. This first took the form of a decree banning Chinese technologies intended to equip American companies with 5G. Sanctions packages also followed this restriction. Unfortunately, this created a boomerang effect. Electronic giants specializing in bitcoin mining chips like Intel and Nvidia are in the red.
Nvidia and Intel abandon bitcoin mining
Nvidia, which shared the market for chips intended for bitcoin mining with Bitmain and MicroBT, had to throw in the towel after observing a drop in sales in the first quarter of 2022.
In a article published on TechCrunch in September 2022, we learned that the Artificial Intelligence chip manufacturer Nvidia reportedly lost up to $400 million in the third quarter of 2022 due to new restrictions on the export of its electronic components to China. Note in passing that AI chips represented 26% of its revenues in 2021.
The same export controls also forced Nvidia to suspend sales of A100 and H100 chips to Russia. The latter is currently claiming the status of a new heavyweight in BTC mining. Washington has only one goal: to deprive the Russians of integrated circuits. In this way, they will no longer be able to strengthen their military power and why not lose their war against Ukraine.
The definitive cessation of production of certain Nvidia cards intended for bitcoin mining was announced at the beginning of 2023. And yet, its bitcoin mining graphics cards Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090, RTX 4080, CMP 170HX amaze the miners. All of them indeed display better, exceptional crypto mining performance. Find out more about bitcoin mining in this article.
Also, Intel, which recently entered the market for bitcoin mining chips, will put an end to its adventure. Problems of vague regulation and costs would have pushed it to refuse any order from Blockscale from this October 20. The end of BTC mining chip shipments is set for April 20, 2024.
“ As we prioritize our investments in IDM 2.0, we have ended the life of the ASICS Intel Blockscale 1000 Series while continuing to support our Blockscale customers », we can read in the columns of Reuters.
The United States is the victim of its multiple attacks against China
On October 7, the South China Morning Post mentioned a new round of US sanctions imposed on 42 Chinese companies. The United States, through its Department of Commerce, believes that this initiative would definitively put an end to recurring practices of importing integrated circuits of American origin into Russia. Thus provided, Vladimir Putin’s country could optimize its precision guidance systems for missiles and drones.
“ No matter how complicated the trail may be or how many hands pass through, if items of American origin reach the Russian military, we will work tirelessly to stop it “, said Alan Estevez, Undersecretary for Industry and Security.
However, sanctioning China in this way only fuels the ambition ofself-sufficiency in chips from the Chinese Communist Party. His plan ” Made in China 2025 » is in fact aiming for an emancipation of 70% of supplies of integrated circuits. The thesis of a technological supremacy of the Middle Kingdom cannot be ruled out in the near future.
At the same time, American chip suppliers find themselves in a difficult situation. To which country should stocks from Nvidia, Intel, Micron Technology and others be sent? Embargoes will only strengthen the position of other semiconductor manufacturers. Among them are Taiwan, South Korea, even China.
We will nevertheless agree to cite the efforts of Nvidia and Intel Corp to circumvent US export restrictions. Thanks to their A100 and Gaudi2 GPU AI chipsfor the moment off the United States blacklist, these two giants hope fill the void left by previous restrictions.
Is this the reason that pushed Tether to develop Moria, its bitcoin mining platform based on Artificial Intelligence?
Receive a summary of the news in the world of cryptocurrencies by subscribing to our new service daily and weekly so you don’t miss anything of the Tremplin.io essentials!
