Block’s Proto Rig and Proto Fleet aim to reduce upgrade costs and extend rig lifespans, giving miners a potential edge in a capital-intensive, increasingly AI-integrated industry.
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Bitcoin-focused fintech company Block Inc. has introduced a new cryptocurrency mining system designed to extend the lifespan of mining rigs and lower operational costs — a potential boost for miners facing steep capital expenditures to maintain facilities.
At the center of the launch is Proto Rig, a modular system that replaces the traditional three-to-five-year mining rig life cycle with hardware built to last a decade or more, Block Thursday.
Instead of discarding entire units, miners can swap out individual hashboards as technology improves, potentially cutting upgrade costs by up to 20% per cycle.
Block also debuted Proto Fleet, an open-source fleet management platform for large-scale mining operations.
The announcement builds on Block’s recent push into the mining hardware space. In April 2024, the company , and later that year signed a supply agreement with Core Scientific.
, Bitcoin mining remains a capital-intensive industry, with professional-grade rigs often costing more than $10,000 — not including the substantial electricity required to run them.
At current prices, mining companies are producing more than $50 million worth of Bitcoin () each day, though profitability ultimately hinges on variables such as electricity costs, mining difficulty and hardware efficiency.
The initial industry response to Proto Rig has been largely positive, with Komodo Platform’s chief technology officer, Kadan Stadelmann, telling Cointelegraph that Block’s “open-source approach aligns with Bitcoin’s original decentralized ethos.”
“Traditional mining rigs last three to five years, and then get tossed into the landfill. Miners are forced to pay for constant upgrades from monopoly hardware producers like Bitmain,” Stadelmann said, adding:
“Block has offered a modular design for Bitcoin miners. The hardware is designed to last longer, and offers more power per rack foot, which democratizes Bitcoin mining — something the industry has needed for more than a decade.”
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Several mining firms have sought to boost revenue by repurposing their infrastructure for other workloads, including high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence. Others have in anticipation of further price increases.
Before its acquisition, Core Scientific exemplified how a struggling Bitcoin miner could pivot to artificial intelligence to revive its business. The company in 2022 during the bear market, then secured a $3.5 billion lifeline from CoreWeave less than two years later.
In July, Core Scientific in a $9 billion transaction.
Meanwhile, Hive Digital, a cryptocurrency miner, began pivoting into high-performance computing and AI in 2022, with HPC revenues appearing on its income statement the following year. Since then, the company has while remaining bullish on its Bitcoin mining operations.
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