Bitmain, one of the largest Bitcoin miner and hardware manufacturer has made around an estimated $4 billion in operating profits.
The price of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies have increased exponentially in the last year creating a great demand for GPU’S and ASIC based hardware miners.
To have a comparison in terms of revenues, big companies like Goldman Sachs or chip making companies which are in business for multiple decades usually made around the 200% of the kind of operating profits.
Bitmain is located in Beijing, China and was founded by Jihan Wu. The company has been created in 2013 when Bitcoin is still relatively unpopular. The company apart from selling the famous Antminers which gets sold out in minutes now also does mining itself and keeps or sells the Bitcoin.
The increased demand for special hardware like GPU’s and ASIC based systems has created a black market where hoarders buy the hardware in the market and sell for exorbitant prices on websites like E-Bay.
This also made it difficult for gamers and other scientific organizations like SETI to obtain the hardware. Nvidia, the largest maker of the GPU’s seems to resolve this by making Cryptocurrency mining specific hardware soon.
Altcoin Mining is a thing in 2018 since it became increasingly difficult to mine any Bitcoin unless you have large scale equipment. The fluctuation in the Cryptocurrency prices also makes it hard for the new miners to break even considering the relatively high prices of the Antminers.
Ethereum, Vertcoin and other Cryptocurrencies seem to be getting a lot of traction from the new miners entering the market.
Bitmain at the moment makes 10nm ASIC chips and is planning to introduce a more sophisticated chip in 2018.
Analysts believe that the demand for the miners will increase when Bitcoin reaches it’s previous All-Time High and it seems Nvidia would be fighting for the niche hardware equipment sales to rake in some extra billions of dollars.
Edit - The article has been updated with the links to Goldman and Nvidia revenues for 2017.