Bitcoin Mining Chips, a High-Tech Arms Race
Faster processors will give digital-currency miners an edge
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The easiest way to get a Bitcoin is to buy one. You can join drug dealers, speculators, and the curious by hopping onto an online exchange and purchasing one unit of the digital currency for, as of Nov. 11, about $340. But you can get Bitcoins for free by mining them, and a new breed of chips will soon make doing that a lot faster. “You would need 70,000 Intel chips to equal what one of ours can do,” says Eduardo de Castro, co-founder of Bitcoin chipmaker HashFast Technologies.