It has become evident that a lot can change in the world of cryptocurrency. Many people assume certain algorithms are safe from ASIC mining, but things often turn out in a surprising manner. CryptoNight currencies, for example, may soon be subject to a “mega” miner developed by Baikal. Assuming, that is, that the information disseminated on social media can be trusted.
What is the Baikal Giant N?
Many readers may have already heard of Baikal, as the company got involved with Dash mining a while ago. Since that time, things have become relatively quiet on the Baikal front, although this may soon change. That’s because Baikal claims it will be bringing a new CryptoNight “mega” miner to market in the near future. At the same time, a lot of the information surrounding this unit leaves a lot to be desired.
To be more specific, the Baikal Giant N can be found on the Baikal website, even though the page seems to disappear quite regularly. Even so, someone managed to take a screenshot of what this unit will allegedly be capable of in the near future. It seems this device is designed solely to mine cryptocurrencies using the CryptoNight and CryptoNight-lite algorithms.
Despite what most people would assume, this does not mean one can mine Monero with this new unit, assuming it even exists in the first place. That doesn’t mean things will turn out the same for the currencies which do use the CryptoNight algorithm. More specifically, the currencies subject to mining are Bytecoin, Electroneum, Graftcoin, IPBCCoin, Sumokoin, and AEON. All of these currencies are trying to do things somewhat similar to Monero, yet none of them have even gained a quarter of its traction.
For the time being, it remains a bit unclear what this means for the currencies listed above. Considering that the Baikal Giant N is capable of mining at a speed of 20 KH/s, the impact may be rather minimal. If a few hundred of these machines were to come to market at the same time, things might look very different. For now, there is no reason to think this miner will make any impact, as there are still a lot of questions as to whether or not this unit is even legitimate.
With a price tag of US$3,600, users will expect this mining unit to deliver on its promise and more. Considering that no one knows the exact technical specifications of this mining unit, it remains to be seen how the unit will achieve these goals. It is certainly possible this is all just a joke by the Baikal team, although there could be sufficient genuine interest in a product like this to make it worthwhile.
Moreover, it seems Baikal is intent on selling these units only to those people who order at least five at a time. That in itself is rather worrisome, as it requires a massive upfront investment for a product that will potentially fail to achieve any significant ROI. All of the mineable currencies for this miner have relatively low market caps, and cashing out a lot of mined currencies would crash these markets with relative ease. It will be interesting to see how that scenario plays out.
It seems there are also two other units available, known as the Giant-B and Giant-X10. No real specifications are known, other than that the Giant-B will mine Blake 256/Lbry/Pascal currencies. The Baikal Giant X-10 is suited for X11, Quark, and Qubit currencies, with a fourth algorithm set to be added in the next few weeks. It’s a very interesting batch of miners, although it is unclear how much interest there will be in all of these units moving forward.
