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ASIC Maker Canaan Diversifies Into Bitcoin Mining in Kazakhstan

Canaan has begun deploying its latest Avalon Miner units. The firm will also be attempting to expand its business scope and customer base.

Updated Sep 14, 2021, 1:15 p.m. Published Jun 23, 2021, 6:30 a.m.

Canaan, one of the industry's largest manufacturers of bitcoin mining machines, has decided to join in on the crypto dig and has set up a base of operations in Kazakhstan.

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In a press release on Wednesday, the company said it was diversifying its operations into bitcoin mining as well as continuing to sell mining rigs in a bid to help lift its financial performance.

The company has already begun deploying its latest Avalon Miner units. Canaan will also be attempting to expand its business scope and customer base, according to CEO Nangeng Zhang.

"As we integrate more industry resources into our operations, we believe this business segment will enable us to revitalize our mining machine inventory, shield us from bitcoin volatility and ensure our inventory sufficiency during market upturns," said Zhang.

The Nasdaq-listed Chinese manufacturer is best known for its massive sales of ASIC mining machines, which during boom times has seen demand skyrocket as more mining businesses attempt to capitalize on bitcoin's rising price.

But a single revenue stream from only selling the picks and shovels is something the company is hoping to avoid as bitcoin's price takes a turn for the worse, the company said.

"Undue fluctuations in the price of bitcoin, for instance, can have the adverse impact of inducing undue volatility in the revenue streams of mining hardware providers," the maker said in its release.

"During a period of lull, the mining business will benefit from taking full advantage of the availability of ... in-stock mining machines to be actively deployed in ... mining operations at low electricity rates."

Bitcoin Mining Kazakhstan Canaan

Sebastian Sinclair

Sebastian Sinclair is the market and news reporter for CoinDesk operating in the South East Asia timezone. He has experience trading in the cryptocurrency markets, providing technical analysis and covering news developments affecting the movements on bitcoin and the industry as a whole. He currently holds no cryptocurrencies.

Greg Ahlstrand

Originally from California, I've been Asia-based since 1999, headquartered in Hong Kong and Jakarta and traveling throughout the Asean countries, Japan, Korea, the Chinese mainland and Taiwan for stories. Made Australia a couple of times, too. I started my journalism career as a news assistant at the Fresno Bee in Central California while studying the subject in school after the Navy. I went from launching and recovering helicopters on flight decks at sea to recovering papers fresh off the printer in the Bee's basement and launching them onto the editors' desks, whose editors had long since gone home for the night. Eventually, they let me stop delivering the paper and start writing stuff in it. My first beat was night cops: liquor store robberies, gang shootings, fatal car crashes (almost always alcohol related). It was an education. I am, as implied above, a U.S. Navy veteran. I served in seagoing helicopter squadrons as an aviation anti-submarine warfare technician throughout the Asia Pacific region and the Indian Ocean. I have a significant number of sailor stories to tell. I have no significant crypto holdings. Among my hobbies are welding, building stuff, home remodelling, (or knocking a house down and starting from scratch if it's too far gone to fix), riding horses and rebuilding old tractors. So far I've done a Ford 8N and a Ford 9N. It's slow going, because I live in Hong Kong and the tractors are in California, so I only get to work on them once or twice a year, for a week or two at a time - and that was before covid. I love my Lab, Cooper, whom my neighbors asked me to adopt two years ago when they moved back to Shanghai from Hong Kong. Cooper and I actually planned the whole thing -- we've known each other almost his whole life -- but his first parents are unaware of the conspiracy; and they send him Christmas presents every year.