Siacoin Joins Antpool As Bitmain Launches Miner

Siacoin has officially been added to Antpool which is the currently among the largest cryptocurrency mining pools. The team behind Antpool made the recent announcement revealing that the mining pool now supports the mining of Sia tokens.

The new announcement about Siacoin being supported by Antpool also comes just after China’s mining chip manufacturer Bitmain unveiled a new mining hardware called the AntMiner A3. The addition of Siacoin to the Antcoin pool is a significant move considering the growing popularity of token and this is evident by its rallying prices over the past few weeks. It has been demonstrating the characteristics of the cryptocurrencies that investors look for when establishing trading opportunities and this also includes people who mine cryptocurrency.

Siacoin’s addition to Antpool’s portfolio is also expected to strengthen the mining pool, making it more appealing to miners. Antpool currently covers 18 percent of Bitcoin’s global hashing power. It is no coincidence that the company launched AntMiner A3 at around the same time it announced that Sia was joining Antpool.  Bitmain revealed that the new miner has a hashing power of GH/s and that it is compatible with the "blake2b" hashing algorithm which is the same algorithm used on Sia’s blockchain.

Unfortunately, not everyone seems to be excited about the launch. A Reddit user identified by the username Taek42 who claims to be part of the Sia developer team says that Bitmain made the wrong decision by shifting towards Sia.

Taek42 wrote on Reddit: “Bitmain has no qualms about overselling their units to buyers. They take massive margins on their hardware (>50%) and make more money than the total block reward at the expense of their customers. They oversaturate the market in a way that hurts their buyers. Bitmain will sell more units than the Sia ecosystem can sustain, and many people end up with large losses. Bitmain will not end up with losses because they were paid up-front with non-refundable money.”

His statement seems to be accusing Bitmain of focusing on profit rather than focusing on growing the Sia ecosystem. However, some other people had a positive reaction to the launch of AntMiner A3 as well as the inclusion of Siacoin into Antpool.

The Sia Blockchain which was created by Nebulous, a startup based in Boston, aims to pursue and introduce the concept of decentralized cloud storage into the mainstream. The idea involves renting out unused storage in consumer devices that are already in the market and Siacoin will be the token used as an exchange of value when storage is rented.