Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), Advanced Micro Devices Inc and other companies have seen more than US$200 million in sales last year for computing components used to create bitcoins, Wedbush Securities Inc said.
The virtual currency, which exists as software, is created by solving complex tasks embedded in the program through a process called mining.
Bitcoins currently trade for about US$875 each on the Mt.Gox exchange, up from about US$13 one year ago.
As their value surged, digital prospectors have rushed to create more of the digital money, boosting the market for high-powered machines, some of which cost more than US$20,000 a piece. TSMC, AMD and GlobalFoundries make many of the chips in these machines, according to Gil Luria, an analyst at Wedbush in Los Angeles.
“Due to the growth of the bitcoin network, mining machines now require powerful application-specific integrated circuits [ASIC] that are designed specifically to mine bitcoins,” Luria said in a report. “We believe the majority of these ASIC chips are fabricated at SMC and GlobalFoundries.”
The report also flagged some potential beneficiaries of the digital boom, such as EBay Inc’s PayPal unit and International Business Machines Corp.
PayPal could make bitcoin one of its payment options, along with credit cards, this year, and benefit from an influx of millions of new users, Luria said in an interview.
IBM could provide software and hardware powering bitcoin and other new digital currencies, he said.
As more consumers adopt bitcoin and other digital currencies for purchases and money transfers, that could adversely impact established financial companies such as Western Union Co, Luria said.
“It’s incredibly easy now to send money with bitcoin from one country to another,” Luria said in an interview.
“But now you need to know how to do it. I expect a flurry of money transmitters to emerge in the next one to three years, and they’ll be able to do this for everybody at a fraction of the cost of Western Union and others,” Luria added.
Jason Gorss, a spokesman for GlobalFoundries, said the manufacturer is working with several companies that design chips for bitcoin mining, such as Butterfly Labs Inc.
“We’re watching digital currencies like bitcoin closely,” Jennifer Hakes, a spokeswoman for PayPal, wrote in an e-mail.
“Many of our consumers prefer cash,” Andrew Silver, a spokesman for Western Union, wrote in an e-mail. “We will continue to track the use of virtual currency in the market, and expect that it should comply with the same regulations and oversight that the rest of the financial services industry must adhere to, to ensure that consumers are protected.”
Bitcoins are not controlled by any country or banking authority, so fees on using the currency to make purchases or transfer money can be much lower. Bitcoins are being used to pay for everything from Gummi bears to smartphones on the Internet.
Retailer Overstock.com Inc said recently it is to begin accepting Bitcoins starting in the middle of the year.
“We think there’s an underserved part of the market that wants to use bitcoins and can’t,” Overstock chief executive officer Patrick Byrne said in an interview last month.
KEEPING UP: The acquisition of a cleanroom in Taiwan would enable Micron to increase production in a market where demand continues to outpace supply, a Micron official said Micron Technology Inc has signed a letter of intent to buy a fabrication site in Taiwan from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion to expand its production of memory chips. Micron would take control of the P5 site in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼) and plans to ramp up DRAM production in phases after the transaction closes in the second quarter, the company said in a statement on Saturday. The acquisition includes an existing 12 inch fab cleanroom of 27,871m2 and would further position Micron to address growing global demand for memory solutions, the company said. Micron expects the transaction to
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land. The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
US actor Matthew McConaughey has filed recordings of his image and voice with US patent authorities to protect them from unauthorized usage by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, a representative said earlier this week. Several video clips and audio recordings were registered by the commercial arm of the Just Keep Livin’ Foundation, a non-profit created by the Oscar-winning actor and his wife, Camila, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office database. Many artists are increasingly concerned about the uncontrolled use of their image via generative AI since the rollout of ChatGPT and other AI-powered tools. Several US states have adopted
A proposed billionaires’ tax in California has ignited a political uproar in Silicon Valley, with tech titans threatening to leave the state while California Governor Gavin Newsom of the Democratic Party maneuvers to defeat a levy that he fears would lead to an exodus of wealth. A technology mecca, California has more billionaires than any other US state — a few hundred, by some estimates. About half its personal income tax revenue, a financial backbone in the nearly US$350 billion budget, comes from the top 1 percent of earners. A large healthcare union is attempting to place a proposal before
RSS