Why It’s Important That Monero Rejects Compatibility With Bitmain’s New Antminer
Published in
4 min readMar 18, 2018
Disclaimer: This is not financial advice. I am not a financial advisor. What follows is my personal, subjective, biased opinion.The News
Bitmain, one of the largest cryptocurrency mining equipment manufacturers located in Beijing, announced the release of their latest mining gear on 15th of March, 2018. Coming in four batches, the Antminer X3 costs $12,000, $7,600, $3,000 or $1,900, depending on when customers want to have it shipped: May, June, or thereafter.
Upon release, the company received instant criticism from the community at large for selling a ‘useless miner.’ The cryptographic algorithm it is designed for, CryptoNight, is mainly used by coins focused on privacy. Monero, the most widely used privacy coin based on CryptoNight, has already proclaimed it will tweak its technology to avoid being minable via the Antminer X3, hence the debate.
