Bitcoin Miners Face Major Setback As Intel Axes Year-Old Crypto Chip

The cryptocurrency spaces, particularly the broader crypto mining sector, are currently facing a major setback after chipmaker and tech giant Intel announced this week its plan to dump the production of its Bitcoin mining chip series just over a year after it debuted in the market.

Intel expects to stop getting orders for the crypto mining chip, dubbed Blockscale, by Oct. 20, 2023, and terminate shipping of the said product line by April 20, 2024, revealed a document on the company's official website, seen by Reuters.

Intel said it will still continue support to its Blockcsale customers while it gives priority to its investments in IDM 2.0 and discontinues the Blockscale 1000 Series.

"As we prioritize our investments in IDM 2.0, we have end-of-lifed the Intel Blockscale 1000 Series ASIC while we continue to support our Blockscale customers," the company's spokesperson said.

IDM 2.0 is the company's strategy to outsource its chip-making operation to outside customers, while it increases its own production of smaller and faster chips.

The tech giant launched the crypto mining chip series in April last year, noting that the ASIC hardware boasts a hash rate of up to 580 gigahash per second.

Intel said at the time that each of its Blockscale chips could be merged into a single unit.

Blockchain technologies, Hive, Argo Blockchain, Block and GRIID Infrastructure were among the first companies to support and use Intel's chips in their operations.

The plummet in the price of Bitcoin, the world's first-ever crypto asset and the world's largest digital coin by market capitalization, along with the prolonged crypto winter contributed to the issues Intel clients in the cryptocurrency space face.

Aside from its latest announcement, Intel also appeared to have scrubbed almost all of the landing and product pages of the Blockscale 1000 Series from its website.

The tech giant's decision came after a series of cost-cutting measures it made of late, which includes selling off its server-building business a week ago, killing off its networking switch business, ending its 5G modems, winding down its Optane Memory production and selling off its SSD storage unit.

Statistics showing Bitcoin mining activities in March revealed that miners saw a decent month with revenues not seen since last June.

Last month, Bitcoin miners earned $734.78 million in revenue.