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Technology Stocks : Semi Equipment Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam who wrote (78325)	12/25/2017 9:03:35 PM
From: FJB	Respond to of 95609

It all starts here. TSMC, which makes the chips in your iPhone, is still the dominant player in semiconductor production. While crypto-related sales of up to $400 million were a mere 5 percent of the Taiwanese juggernaut’s third-quarter total, the new demand is promising at a time when the market for smartphones and computers is cooling. Bitmain Technologies Ltd., the Chinese owner of the world’s largest mining pools, has been one of the top users of TSMC’s advanced 16-nanometer capacity, according to a report by Bernstein’s Li. bloomberg.com

To: Sam who wrote (78325)	12/26/2017 5:54:44 AM
From: w0z	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95609

Mining for bitcoin itself (i.e. only the BTC coin) is becoming progressively less profitable. The way bitcoin was set up it takes more hashpower (i.e. computing resources) over time to solve the mathematical puzzle to create one bitcoin as the network is supported. However there are many other coins (e.g. ETH, etc) that will step in to take over miners' hashpower as they allocate resources for the best ROI. Note the growth in number of coins (now 1382 different coins) and the total market cap below. I doubt bitcoin will completely implode but it will continue declining in terms of market cap domination as other coins rise. There are also some coins (e.g. IOTA) which do not require mining since the hashpower comes from individual users (i.e. you mine 2 other transactions locally before executing 1 transaction of your own). coinmarketcap.com (click "Market Cap" at the top and select YTD for an overview. Scroll down to see relative bitcoin dominance declining.) I believe the primary beneficiaries of bitcoin mining have been NVDA and AMD graphics cards, and to a lesser extent INTC, MU, etc. However graphics cards have already been replaced with ASICS which are more efficient, so there has been progressively less impact on these semi companies. Scroll down this ASIC list and you will see companies such as TSMC, UMC, Global Foundries/IBM, SMIC, etc listed under Foundry. en.bitcoin.it