History in the Making: The story behind Bitmain Technologies

History in the Making is a series where we take a look at the history of some of the most important companies, projects, and products in the crypto space.

Nothing strikes more fear into the hearts of those in the crypto community than the news of Bitmain Technologies taking an interest in their projects. The firm, often just called Bitmain, is by far the most dominant crypto-mining manufacturer in the young industry. Most recent estimates suggest that Bitmain owns 74.5% of the market for application specific integrated circuit (ASIC)-based cryptocurrency mining hardware — a market that is growing at a compound annual growth rate of ~195%. It is no surprise then just the thought of Bitmain creating ASIC miners for cryptocurrency projects could induce anxiety for developers. Bitmain’s entry into different projects often forces core developers to hard fork their blockchains -- literally breaking them in two -- to prevent the mining giant from monopolizing the mining process.