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Heavy rainfall in Sichuan province during late June 2019 destroyed tens of thousands of mining rigs and disrupted up to 20 percent of the global Bitcoin hashrate, prompting miners to relocate operations to Xinjiang.
Bitmain Technologies has filed for Hong Kong stock exchange listing, seeking to raise as much as $3 billion in an initial public offering that would value the mining hardware manufacturer as one of the world's largest semiconductor producers.
Cloud mining provider Genesis Mining announced in August 2018 that it would terminate unprofitable bitcoin contracts after miners' daily outputs fell below maintenance fee requirements during an extended cryptocurrency market downturn.
Leaked financial documents revealed that cryptocurrency mining giant Bitmain generated $1.1 billion in net profit during the first quarter of 2018, with some sources reporting figures as high as $1.2 billion for the quarter.
Samsung confirmed in January 2018 that it had begun mass production of ASIC chips for bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining, entering the specialized hardware sector previously dominated by Bitmain and Canaan Creative.
The NiceHash mining marketplace suffered a major security breach in December 2017, with attackers stealing approximately 4,700 bitcoins worth $64 million through a sophisticated spear phishing attack that compromised company systems.
Bitcoin's second halving event reduced the block reward from 25 bitcoins to 12.5, occurring at block 420,000 on July 9, 2016.
Bitfury began deploying its 16nm ASIC mining chip in mid-2016 with efficiency of 0.06 joules per gigahash and 40 gigahashes per second per chip, advancing mining hardware into a new generation of performance.
Swedish bitcoin mining company KnCMiner filed for bankruptcy after raising $32 million, citing high energy taxes, rising competition from Chinese miners, and the impending July 2016 bitcoin halving.
21 Inc unveiled the Bitcoin Computer, a Raspberry Pi-based device with an integrated mining chip, priced at $399 and designed to let developers earn bitcoin while selling digital services.
