The History of Bitcoin Mining, Machine by Machine

1. 1

   A conference hall that holds the whole time line

   Every year at the Mining Disrupt conference, the Bitcoin Mining Museum lines up the machines that defined each era of bitcoin mining. The collection is short in years but dense in change: within a single decade, mining hardware went from home computers to purpose-built terahash monsters. Walking the tables in order is the fastest way to feel how fast the race moved.

   

2. 2

   2010: the phone that mined bitcoin

   The Nokia N900 was a smartphone with a real terminal — and a bitcoin client wallet. Its placard credits it with about 150 KH/s of hash power and records that it mined and sent 0.42 BTC to another N900 user over the phone network. In 2010 that was ordinary mining; today it is one of the museum's most charming exhibits.

   

3. 3

   2015: a USB stick for developers

   The 21.co Bitcoin PC paired a tiny ASIC USB module with a Raspberry Pi and was marketed almost entirely to developers. At 50 GH/s and just 15 watts, it mined bitcoin and could transact peer to peer — less a money-maker than a programmable introduction to mining. It marks the last moment a general-purpose gadget still counted as mining hardware.

   

1. 4

   May 2013: the card that started the race

   The museum's ASUS GeForce GTX 780 placard reads "common yet historic" — under 1 MH per card, 28 nanometers, 250 watts. This exact card class was used for bitcoin mining by OG BitsBeTrippin, which the placard calls the first-ever YouTube channel for bitcoin mining back in 2013. When gamers and miners started bidding for the same cards, the mining race got its first consumer-market casualty.

   

2. 5

   What one graphics card actually looked like

   A single dual-fan GPU like this ASUS card is all it took to join the network in the GPU era. Compared with the phone before it, a card delivered orders of magnitude more hash rate — but compared with what came next, it was a candle next to a floodlight. Its short reign ended the day the first ASICs shipped.

   

1. 6

   The $25 million pre-order

   Butterfly Labs' Jalapeno (April 2013, 5 GH/s on a 65nm chip at 30 watts) is the museum's reminder that demand ran far ahead of delivery. Its placard records that BFL took $25 million in pre-orders from 20,000 customers — and that over a year later only a select few ever got one. The ASIC era began with the industry's first great shipping scandal.

   

2. 7

   Avalon 1: the world's first ASIC

   Released in January 2013 with an Avalon A3256 chip, 60 GH/s and 620 watts, the Avalon 1 is labeled on its placard as the world's first ASIC — the first dedicated bitcoin miner ever released to market. Collectors consider it the Mona Lisa of mining. From this point on, mining belonged to machines that could do nothing but hash.

   

3. 8

   ASICMINER's stackable blades

   The Blade V2, made by ASICMINER in May 2013, delivered 10.7 GH/s per blade at 80 watts on a 130nm chip, and could run individually or ten to a back plate. Its ultra-rare placard marks one of the era's strangest experiments: a mining company that sold shares and hardware at the same time. Blades like these turned mining from a desk setup into rack infrastructure.

   

4. 9

   KnC Neptune: a Swedish rarity

   KnC's Neptune arrived in May 2014 at 3 TH/s on a 20nm chip drawing 2,100 watts — and this particular unit is ultra rare. Its placard notes it was autographed in Sweden by KnC founder Sam Cole, one of only five miners he ever signed. Within a year of the first ASIC, a single machine was already hashing like thousands of GPUs.

   

1. 10

   Butterfly Labs gets shut down

   The Monarch was Butterfly Labs' flagship: 700 GH/s on a 28nm chip, 650 watts, priced at $5,000. Its placard tells the ending plainly — the government shut BFL down after 20,000 pre-orders never shipped. The company that opened the ASIC era with undelivered Jalapenos closed it as mining's first cautionary tale.

   

2. 11

   2015: the S7 density monster

   Bitmain's Antminer S7 (September 2015, 4.7 TH/s on the BM1385 chip at 1,293 watts) earned its placard's nickname by jamming 162 chips into a shoebox-sized rig — versus just 60 in the S3 — quadrupling hash power per square inch. Density became the new battleground: more hashing in the same footprint meant more revenue per warehouse rack.

   

3. 12

   The S9: the most legendary miner of all time

   Released in May 2017 at 13.5 TH/s on the BM1387 chip, the Antminer S9 is described on its placard as the most legendary miner of all time — it ran like a tank through mud, slides, rain, freezing temperatures and hot weather. Ruggedness, not just raw speed, is what let mining scale into basements, farms and warehouses worldwide. Many S9s kept hashing years after newer machines arrived.

   

1. 13

   M1: the first Whatsminer, signed

   The Whatsminer M1 (March 2018, 12 TH/s at 2,000 watts) is placarded as the first Whatsminer model ever made and a historic piece of bitcoin mining history. This unit was signed by founder Zuoxing Yang, who had worked at Bitmain — the company behind the legendary S9 — before founding MicroBT. A Bitmain alum building Bitmain's toughest competitor is the subplot that defined late-era mining.

   

2. 14

   M60S: a million times Apollo

   The Whatsminer M60S, released in January 2024, hashes 186 TH/s on Samsung 5nm silicon at 3,441 watts. Its placard's fun fact makes the scale vivid: that hash power is one million times greater than all the computers used for NASA's Apollo moon landings combined. Machines like this are why individual hobbyist rigs no longer register on the network's radar.

   

3. 15

   Antminer S21: out-mining bitcoin's first decade

   Bitmain's answer, the Antminer S21 (January 2024), delivers 200 TH/s on a 5nm chip at 3,500 watts. Its placard puts the number in perspective: a single unit passes more bitcoin-mining power than every computer on the planet combined during bitcoin's early days of 2009-2010, when mining was done with basic CPUs. The whole network's original hash rate now fits in one shoebox.

   

4. 16

   Teraflux AT1500: made in the USA

   Auradine's Teraflux AT1500, released in January 2024, hashes 150 TH/s on a 4nm chip — and its placard records two firsts: the first bitcoin mining company to manufacture miners in the USA, and a unit donated to the museum by Marathon Digital Holdings. After years of Asia-centered manufacturing, the industry's geography is diversifying again. The museum's newest shelf, like mining itself, keeps moving.

   

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