Bitmain posted on social media this week that it will be launching two Wi-Fi routers which will be able to mine cryptocurrencies. The devices, Antrouter R3-DASH and Antrouter R3-SIA, will produce Dash (DASH) and Siacoin (SC).
The mining routers are models from the manufacturer’s R3 series of products. They are available for purchase with the following crypto coins: Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC). The first models to be made available on the market will be priced at $58 USD.
The ordered machines will be shipped within 10 working days after the payment has been finalized, according to the company’s statement. The routers will start mining cryptocurrencies in Bitmain’s Antpool immediately after it connects to the internet. Each router owner will have a personal Bitmain account set up when they made the buy so they can verify their mining status.
Antrouter R3-DASH’s product page states that it has been developed and tested to mine only dash coins. It is, however, possible to use the router to mine other X11 coins, but with these coins, it is unknown what performance and efficiency they have for them. R3-DASH has a hashrate of 300M/s ± 5% and has an electricity consumption of 24.37W.
The R3-SIA router was developed for efficiently mining Siacoin but can be employed to mine other blake2b coins, again having the same disclaimer as Antrouter. It features a hashrate of 11.54G/s ± 5% and a power usage of 22.6W. The two devices have a weight of 0.6kg.
Bitmain is the leading mining company and producer of mining hardware in the crypto market, producing ASIC chips employed in bitcoin mining. The company has an estimated value of $14 billion and reportedly had a profit of $1.1 billion USD in the first quarter of this year.