With just two weeks left in the bitcoin reward halving, miners are racing each other to grab as much of the 1800 BTC per day inflow as they can because, after May 12, it will remain just 900 BTC per day.

Miners are trying to get their hands on more powerful machines that will get them more rewards and make them profitable.

However, miners using the Bitmain S17 and T17 Antminer are having a rough time with the failure rates of these rigs spiking to between 20-30% which normally would be about 5%, as per the tweet by Samson Mow, Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) of Blockstream, a blockchain infrastructure firm.

The mining rigs from the world’s largest manufacturer of bitcoin miners are reportedly having technical issues. The heatsinks soldered on the top and bottom of the boards are falling out and shorting out machines. Users are also having issues with the power supply fans. Matt D'Souza, the CEO of Blockware Mining talked about this debacle,

“The first batch of s17+'s from December – the defection rates were high. Later batches have improved. It is why we offer a hardware + hosting package with s17+'s on site in the US. They are lightly run so clients know they are receiving a well functioning machine.”

Now, for these failures, Bitmain CEO Jihan Wu is blaming the fellow co-founder Micree Zhan who was ousted from the company by Wu in October last year “to save (Bitmain) ship (from sinking).”

While users are experiencing failure with the machines of Bitmain, a dominant crypto mining hardware maker, due to the coronavirus outbreak, miners worldwide have also been affected by the delay in manufacturing and supply of mining rigs.

This led Shenzhen-based MicroBT, which sold 600,000 units of its WhatsMiner M20, to capture (35%) the market share of Bitmain. MicroBT’s every unit generates 60 terahashes per second on average and its hardware was responsible for almost half of all bitcoin’s computing power last year.

With Bitmain planning to cut 50% of its workforce and having fired Zhan, the company is having setbacks while MicroBT continues to challenge their AntMiner S17. Bitmain however, still accounted for 65% of the market share as of December.

Both the companies are trying to outdo each other with more powerful mining rigs. Last month, the largest ASIC miner manufacturer sold its first round of domestic Antminer S19 within 24 hours of receiving orders. BTC ASIC manufacturers MicroBT has also revealed its new mining hardware, M30 series, that boasts of 100 Th/s hash rate. This flagshship product will be shipped in June, just after the halving.

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