MicroBT: the company, its chips and Whatsminer miners

MicroBT is a Chinese company from Shenzhen that designs and sells ASIC miners under the Whatsminer brand. It was founded in July 2016, and its story starts inside Bitmain. The founder, Yang Zuoxing, a PhD from Tsinghua University, worked there as chief chip designer and drew the dies for the Antminer S7 and S9. He left in 2016 after a dispute over his stake in the company and launched a competitor in July of the same year.

That explains the character of the brand. Whatsminer has one narrow bet: SHA-256, meaning bitcoin and its forks. All 48 models in our catalog mine that and nothing else. The only known exception in the entire history of the company is the Whatsminer D1 of 2018 for Decred, and the line ended there.

The other thing the company is known for is aggressive engineering. In July 2023 an independent teardown by TechInsights found a three nanometer Samsung SF3E process with GAA transistors inside the chip of the M56S++ miner, and it turned out to be the first commercial product in the world on that node. Not a smartphone and not a server processor, but a miner.

In market share MicroBT sits steadily in second place behind Bitmain. The Cambridge industry report for April 2025 counted the installed base among surveyed miners: Bitmain around 82 percent, MicroBT around 15, Canaan around 2, together over 99 percent of the market. Earlier sales estimates put MicroBT as high as 30 percent, but those figures come from the early twenties.

For ten years MicroBT has trailed Bitmain by half a step on flagship efficiency and led it by half a step on individual engineering decisions. These dates are a handy way to work out the age of an ASIC on the secondary market.

• 2016Yang Zuoxing leaves Bitmain and founds MicroBT in Shenzhen in July.
• 2017The first production miners, the M1 and the M3. The M3 does around 12 TH/s at 2000 W, which is roughly 167 J/TH. The release year drifts between 2017 and 2018 depending on the source.
• 2018The Whatsminer D1 for Decred on the Blake256R14 algorithm, the only miner the company built that is not on SHA-256. In the autumn the M10 arrives at 33 TH/s, around 65 J/TH.
• 2019M20S: 68 TH/s at 3360 W, 49 J/TH. A breakthrough year in volume, roughly 600 thousand miners of the M20 series sold. In the autumn the founder is summoned for questioning, in November he is detained by the Shenzhen police, in December an arrest follows on suspicion of misappropriating funds.
• 2020The M30S series: the base version at 86 TH/s and 38 J/TH, the Plus version at 100 TH/s and 34 J/TH, the Plus Plus version at 112 TH/s and 31 J/TH. In September the first plant outside China opens, in Southeast Asia.
• 2021The founder runs the company again, the exact release date was never published. Reports appear about preparations for an IPO in the USA, but the listing never happened. In April Bitmain files a trade secret theft claim.
• 2022The M50 series on 5 nm: 114 TH/s at 3306 W, 29 J/TH. In October assembly starts in the USA through a partner.
• 2023The M50S++, M53S++ and M56S++ are shown with the same efficiency of 22 J/TH. In July it emerges that the M56S++ chip is built on Samsung SF3E 3 nm, the first commercial product in the world on such a process node. In October the M60 series arrives: air, hydro and immersion all at once, 19.9 and 18.5 J/TH.
• 2024The M60S++ at 226 TH/s and 15.5 J/TH. In the summer the M6XS Plus series is shown, including the M63S+ hydro miners rated at up to 450 TH/s.
• 2025In December the whole M70 series is shown in Abu Dhabi: air, hydro, immersion and rack miners. Efficiency is 14.5 on the base units, 13.5 on the S versions and 12.5 J/TH on the S Plus versions. The M79S flagship comes close to a petahash in a single chassis. In the autumn a US online store with its own warehouse opens, with a stated output of more than ten thousand ASICs a month and three repair hubs in the USA.
• 2026In March the M7D series is announced: 2U format rack hydro miners running on 380 to 480 volts, from 17 to 13.5 J/TH. In April Luxor releases its own firmware for Whatsminer, MicroBT backs it publicly and agrees on mutual investment.

MicroBT publishes no official key to its model numbering, so the scheme below is a reconstruction from specifications and releases, not the position of the manufacturer. It works like this: the first digit is the generation, the second is the form factor and cooling, the letter S means a better selection of dies, and the Plus and Plus Plus suffixes are successive revisions.

The table lists every Whatsminer model that has its own page with a profitability calculator on asic.es. Every row leads to that page, where you can enter your own electricity rate and see what the miner would bring in your case.

All 48 ASICs run SHA-256, so there is a single table, sorted by efficiency from best to worst. At the top, the miners worth buying new. At the bottom, the ones that only survive on very cheap power.

Here MicroBT keeps things simple, and that is a deliberate choice by the company: one algorithm, one coin and its forks. No product lines for Kaspa, Litecoin or Alephium, unlike the main competitor.

The list is short for the same reason: Whatsminer hardware computes SHA-256, and that algorithm runs bitcoin and its forks. Being able to mine something and having a reason to mine it are different things, bitcoin forks are rarely interesting at current rates.

MicroBT, like the main competitor, designs its own chips. But it does not publish specifications. The die designations are known mostly from the spare parts market: the KF series, for example KF1921 in the M20 generation and KF1930 in the M30 generation. The company has never issued an official list, so the table is a guide, not a datasheet.

The key silicon supplier for MicroBT is Samsung, which interviews with the head of the company have confirmed. The brand's main technical record is tied to Samsung as well.

Control boards

Power supplies. Own brand WhatsPower, series P21, P221 and P222. The main difference from the competitor: the unit is built into the case instead of hanging outside as a separate brick. The plus is compactness and the absence of extra connectors, the minus is repair: a failed unit takes the whole miner down, and a replacement costs more. The M70S uses P221B and P222B, input 220 to 240 volts, current no less than 16 amps.

Control and monitoring. The in house WhatsMinerTool utility can do batch configuration, firmware updates, overclocking, temperature control and data export. The firmware itself is called btminer, it has an officially documented API, so Whatsminer is picked up properly by third party monitoring systems.

Tolerance to conditions. The rated range for air cooled miners is usually from minus five to plus 35 degrees, humidity up to 95 percent without condensation. The upper limit for Whatsminer is lower than for comparable ASICs from the competitor, where up to 40 degrees is normally stated. The claim you sometimes meet, that Whatsminer runs at 80 degrees, refers to the coolant temperature in the hydro loop, not to the air in the room.

At MicroBT all three cooling schemes appear in every generation at once. At the competitor hydro and immersion often caught up with air only later. Our catalog holds 19 air ASICs, 17 hydro and 12 immersion.

Whatsminer ships with the factory btminer firmware, and a fleet is managed with the in house WhatsMinerTool utility: batch updates, power modes, overclocking within factory limits, temperature control and data export. The firmware has an officially documented API, so the ASICs slot into third party monitoring systems without trouble.

Straight to the point about custom builds: our AsicBoost firmware is made only for Antminer and does not install on Whatsminer. If you came to this page looking for it, see the Bitmain section.

Third party firmware for Whatsminer does exist on the market, it gives per chip tuning of frequencies and voltages, autotuning, power reduction modes and control of the developer fee. In April 2026 the company Luxor released its LuxOS firmware for Whatsminer, at launch covering part of the M50 series. MicroBT backed it publicly and agreed on mutual investment and a large hardware order. For this market it is a rare case where a manufacturer does not fight third party firmware but invests in its developer.

The warranty is the messier part. Before 2026 the manufacturer terms named unofficial firmware directly as grounds for refusal, and the press release carried no public clarification of whether the partnership with Luxor changes anything. For now assume that any third party build voids the warranty, and check with the seller before installing.

Spare parts for Whatsminer are harder to find than for Antminer, and that follows directly from the smaller installed base: fewer miners were produced, so there are fewer donors on the secondary market. There is a difference in money too: by the price lists of European service centers, replacing the power supply costs one and a half to two times more than an external unit from the competitor.

In repairability Whatsminer is behind Antminer, and the main reason is architectural: the built in power supply. Everything else can be fixed, but it takes longer and costs more, and spare parts are harder to source in Europe. Diagnostics, as everywhere, starts with the log: the error codes name the guilty unit before you open the case.

The brand has a good reputation, and it rests on two things. First: the power supplies tolerate a dirty grid, so Whatsminer is often installed where the voltage wanders. Second: the miners themselves take heat more calmly than is usually assumed about the competitor. Individual service centers talk about M30S++ ASICs that ran for years without a hash board replacement, but that is feedback, not manufacturer statistics.

The other side of the same architecture has already been named: the power supply is built in. While it is alive everything is fine, when it dies the whole miner stops, and the repair costs more. Across a fleet this means a different logic for spares: power supplies sit on the shelf next to the fans.

According to service center feedback the control board is sensitive to humidity. A damp basement is worse for Whatsminer than a hot shed.

The warranty under the official terms of the manufacturer shop is one year. It is counted from the date of manufacture or shipment, not from the date of purchase from a dealer. On an ASIC that has sat in a warehouse, part of the term is already spent. Within the year the term is split by unit: usually 180 days for hash boards, the power supply and fans, and 365 days for the control board.

Efficiency is measured in joules per terahash, J/TH: how much energy the miner spends per unit of useful work. Lower is better. This is the main figure when buying, because it decides the tariff at which the ASIC still stays in profit.

The path of MicroBT from 49 J/TH in 2019 to 12.5 J/TH in 2026 is roughly a fourfold improvement over seven years. For comparison, the best flagship of the competitor on the same date is rated at 9.5 J/TH, so on peak efficiency MicroBT lags by three joules.

The manufacturer states a simple rule: the base miner, the version with the letter S and the S Plus version differ by about one joule. In the M70 generation that is 14.5, 13.5 and 12.5 J/TH. In practice, across our catalog the rule holds only in this generation, in the Hydro and Immersion series the spread inside the letter S is noticeably wider.

How to turn efficiency into money. Multiply the draw in watts by 24 and divide by 1000, and you get kilowatt hours per day. Multiply by your own tariff and you get the daily bill. For the M70S at 3375 W that is 81 kWh per day, at a Spanish tariff of about 0.155 euro per kilowatt hour it works out to roughly 12.6 euro per day, that is about 377 euro per month for electricity alone.

Calculate the profitability of a specific model →

The comparison with the main competitor is the whole point of the choice: both brands build ASICs for the same algorithm, and the site decides. Third in this table comes Canaan, noticeably cheaper and noticeably weaker on service.

The short conclusion. If the site sits in a hot climate, the power is unstable and you handle servicing yourself, Whatsminer often turns out to be the more practical choice: the miners are more forgiving, and Hydro has traditionally been strong on this brand. If peak efficiency, cheap repair and a choice of eleven algorithms matter, Antminer wins.

Separately about money: the efficiency gap between the best miners of the two brands as of 2026 is about three joules per terahash. On cheap energy that gap may never pay back the difference in purchase price, on expensive energy it pays back fast. Put your own tariff into the calculator and compare two specific models in money.

Failure of the built in power supply. The main weak spot of the brand. Prevention is simple and boring: stable power, proper breakers, no phase overload. Keep a spare unit on site, because without it the whole ASIC stands idle.

Humidity. The Whatsminer control board does not like it and dies before anything else. The dangerous cases are a damp basement, condensation on temperature swings and a cold miner carried into a warm room in winter, so let it warm up before you switch it on.

Overheating at the intake. The miner throttles the frequency by itself, and if that does not help, it stops. Usually the room is to blame, not the miner: hot air comes back to the intake and the extraction cannot cope. Separate the airflows physically.

Dust. It works like a blanket over the heatsink. On a dusty site clean once a quarter, filters on the intake cost less than any repair.

Water loop problems. A drop in flow or pressure, air pockets, water quality. For rack ASICs this is a separate system that needs the same watching as the miners themselves.

Immersion outside the spec sheet. Submerging a model that was not meant for it voids the warranty for certain and often kills the miner. Check the series index before you pour the fluid in.

Overclocking beyond the factory modes. The extra percent of hashrate is paid for with service life, and on this brand with the warranty as well. With a high intake temperature overclocking turns into accelerated wear.

Buying with the warranty in fact expired. The count runs from the production date, so an ASIC out of a warehouse can arrive with half of the term already spent. Ask for the production date before you pay.

The order of steps that saves more over the distance than any frequency tuning. For this brand the points about power and humidity matter more than for the competitor.

1. Check the electrics before buyingA dedicated line, a breaker with headroom, proper grounding, balanced phases. Sags and spikes in the grid hit the built in power supply first.
2. Prepare the roomSeparate streams of cold and hot air, extraction with headroom, a filter on the intake. One miner is more than three kilowatts of heat.
3. Watch the humidityA dry room with no condensation, and let a cold ASIC warm up to room temperature before you switch it on.
4. Ask for the production dateThe warranty counts from it, not from the purchase. On warehouse miners that is sometimes half the term.
5. Start on the factory firmware and record the baseline readingsHashrate, board temperatures and fan speeds over the first day, and every later deviation gets measured against those numbers.
6. Keep a stock of power suppliesOn this brand the power supply is a first line consumable, the same as a fan.
7. Clean by the calendarOnce every three months on a dusty site and once every six months in a clean room, with compressed air and only on a miner that is powered off.
8. For Hydro keep a loop logFlow, pressure, inlet and outlet temperature, condition of the coolant. The loop fails more quietly than a miner, and the consequences cost more.
9. Transport it as fragileOriginal packaging, upright. Rack miners weigh about 29.5 kilograms, no longer a one person carry.
10. Keep a fleet logSerial number, production date, start date, repair history. On a fleet of twenty ASICs and up this is the simplest way to understand the cost of ownership.

A summary of the brand in figures, counted from our catalog and from the official specifications of the manufacturer. The catalog figures count only the models that have a page on the site.

• 2016The company was founded by the man who designed the chips of the Antminer S7 and S9, the highest volume ASICs of the competitor.
• 2019About 600 thousand miners of the M20 series sold and more than 30 EH/s of combined capacity, the breakthrough year on volume.
• 2020The first plant outside China. For the European buyer that means less dependence on one jurisdiction and fewer surprises at customs.
• 2023The miner chip of the M56S++ on Samsung 3 nm SF3E turned out to be the world's first commercial product on this process node, ahead of any smartphone or server.
• 2023The M60 series comes out in three versions at once: air, Hydro and Immersion. A site no longer has to wait for the needed form factor to catch up.
• 2025The Whatsminer M79S comes close to a petahash in a single chassis: up to 1040 TH/s by the spec sheet, more when overclocked. For a site that means fewer racks and less wiring for the same hashrate.
• 2025An American warehouse, an online store and three repair hubs. Repair no longer means shipping an ASIC halfway around the world.
• 2026Rack mounted M7D Hydro miners in the 2U format and a partnership with a third party firmware developer. The second one is especially unusual: manufacturers normally fight such firmware.