Samsung Partners with a Cryptocurrency Mining Hardware Manufacturer to Make Its Own ASIC Chips

It is not just blockchain technology that is being adopted by corporations all over the world, but the crypto fever is also getting to them by the looks of it.

As per local news sources, South Korean tech giant Samsung will be manufacturing ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) chips that are used for mining cryptocurrencies.

This move came not long after Samsung surpassed Intel to claim the spot as the world’s largest seller of chipsets.

Details on the development

It is important that Samsung has partnered with a cryptocurrency mining hardware manufacturer in China to start making its own ASIC chips.

While more details were not provided by the company on the development, a source from Samsung confirmed to local news platforms that the company’s foundry was indeed carrying out manufacturing processes for cryptocurrency mining chips.

However, the official stated that they would not be able to disclose further details regarding the operations, at least for now.

Samsung already manufactures GPU chips that are an integral part of gaming computers, which are also used by miners for small cryptocurrency operations.

Effects this might have on the current mining operations

Samsung currently has one of the largest and advanced semiconductor manufacturing plants in the world, which has not only helped its own products, such as its line of cellphones – but has the company supply manufacturing elements to its counterparts and competitors.

Samsung is currently the sole supplier for Apple’s iPhone X OLED screens, mostly because it is the only company that can meet such a high demand while also maintaining the quality desired from these high-end cellphones.

It is likely that Samsung will leverage from these operations to establish itself as the primary provider for ASIC chips as well.

This would also bring Samsung in direct competition to TSMC, a Taiwan based semiconductor manufacturer which works in collaboration with Bitmain, a Chinese company that runs one of the most significant cryptocurrency mining operations in the world.

However, Samsung is not the only big corporation to have expanded into ASIC mining chip manufacturing to increase the competition for the aforementioned companies.  

In December 2017, Japanese conglomerate GMO Internet had announced that it would be launching its own ASIC chip manufacturing and cryptocurrency mining operations. The company has already secured a location in Europe and plans to have its full-fledged operations start very soon.

With corporations such as Samsung joining in the cryptocurrency industry – even indirectly – this could lead to initiate a whole new industry segment in its own right.

At the moment, individual miners have to spend a large amount of money without any earnings to ensure that they can run a mining computer on their own, as most of the time, these miners only get paid for the work that they perform and not for the equipment that they need to execute these operations.

While ASIC chips or the related equipment would still not come cheap, with bigger corporations churning them out on a commercial or retail level, there could be a significant difference in their price which would make owning a mining machine somewhat affordable for individual miners.

Whereas, for mining corporations, it would make a massive difference in equipment costs as compared to generated revenue.

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HitBTC Is the Second Exchange to List Electroneum

HitBTC is now going to be the second exchange to list Electroneum, announced Electroneum’s founder and director, Richard Ells.

“We are happy to announce that Electroneum will soon be listed on the exchange HitBTC,” Ells wrote in a Facebook post. “We have listened to our community and recognized that more exchanges are necessary as we continue to grow and aim become the first cryptocurrency to achieve real-world mass adoption.”

Ells’ plans about Electroneum’s adoption by masses all over the world might sound farfetched even for a cryptocurrency, but if you have been following how Electroneum works, you would know that it might well be very achievable by this digital currency.

What’s so special about Electroneum?

This one of a kind cryptocurrency has been making waves ever since it was announced and ran a successful initial coin offering (ICO) of $40 million.

The success of the initial coin offering did not come about because of an endorsement by a celebrity or association with other cryptocurrencies. Instead, it has been getting attention because it is the first truly mobile-based cryptocurrency.

Even though it is based on a decentralized, blockchain-based network, the way that Electroneum functions is vastly different from its counterparts, especially when it comes to its accessibility and mining processes.

The Electroneum token is completely accessible through its mobile app, which is a highly secured but at the same time easily available way of managing the cryptocurrency.

Through the app, Electroneum holders can send and receive payments right from their phone by using a QR code scanning functionality. This makes it very easy for everyday use as compared to the more conventional cryptocurrencies.

Another functionality that sets Electroneum apart from its competition is the way that its mining works.

Using the app, any ordinary cellphone user can take part in “mining” the cryptocurrency. All they have to do is to simply have the app run in the background, which will keep mining and will earn the cellphone’s owner mining rewards in the form of new Electroneum coins.

These features make Electroneum a strong contender for its goal of mass adoption throughout the world. The very notion of earning new tokens just by downloading an app is very enticing for the everyday user. This enthusiasm is evidenced by large numbers of registered users, the app has registered more than 700,000 users since its launch in late 2017.

It was also reported by Ells that despite only listing on one exchange, Cryptopia, over $513 million of Electroneum has been traded so far in just around three months.

During Electroneum’s launch, Ells had expressed his intention of creating a cryptocurrency that would be easily accessible by the everyday user.

“I realized that what the world needs is a cryptocurrency that is genuinely easy to access and use” he had said at the time. “We’ve developed Electroneum with the ordinary mobile user in mind.”

It seems that the objective of keeping this in mind has started paying off for Electroneum and the community associated with it. This will be one of the cryptocurrencies to watch this year to determine how fast it gets adopted by its target audience.

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