IceRiver Entering Solo Bitcoin Mining (BT1 Miner)

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]So, in today's video, we are going to be talking about the new Ice River miner that is coming for Bitcoin. So, I'll be popping a picture up on screen, but we'll see it in the video when we head over to the computer. But, this minor is going to be their first pass of silicon.

[00:00:15]So, it's going to be their first kind of Bitax miner design. I believe that this is just a commemorative to kind of mirror the Bit Axe design and show a smaller scale miner. And they're actually probably going to go into the home mining variations. Not necessarily as small as something like a Pitex or a Bitax Gamma Turbo. Probably something along the lines of an Avalon Nano. So maybe 12 chips, 20 chips for the Avalon Mini or a couple more than that for an Avalon Q type of deal. So Ice River have been in the game for quite a bit in terms of the ASIC miners. They haven't yet produced a Bitcoin miner, but they have produced a Casper one and a Lethium one and a Radiant one and they were competing with Bitmain on the Casper side in terms of efficiency. So, it's good to see that they're coming out with a Bitcoin chip and also putting it into miners, see if they can get down to the efficiency that they were rivaling Bitmain with in terms of Caspercoin. So, let's head over to the computer and let's check out this new Casper ASIC miner and I'll give you my thoughts kind of what's happening in the future in terms of the home mining/solo mining space for Bitcoin. But before all that, I'd like to thank the sponsor of this video, Cryptominer Bros. Since 2018, Cryptominer Bros.com has been the premier site for top tier crypto mining hardware, earning the trust of miners across the globe. The prices displayed on their site cover shipping and DDP straight to your doorstep, ensuring no unexpected costs at checkout. They deliver to over 100 countries and even provide lower invoicing options to help you cut down on customs fees. Payment is a breeze with options like direct bank transfer or cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, USDT, or Ethereum.

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[00:02:23]Check out cryptominerros.com today. Link in the description. So, I thought we'd cover this today because I like to see new manufacturers for chips and this is kind of the solo mining space, I guess.

[00:02:34]But they do have an Ice River new first pass of the silicon chips. So, this isn't their kind of dedicated main one.

[00:02:42]This was made commemoratively and given out at the Bitcoin conference. I know I'm a little bit late on the news, but I thought we'd explore it. Kind of compare it to a bit axe in terms of like where they are in terms of the chip.

[00:02:55]Underneath here is just one chip. Kind of the same architecture as a Bitax, but that's kind of the standard. It doesn't really get much different than that, and we've talked about that in previous videos. So, LCD, ESP, and then you have the heat sink there with a fan and a bunch of other components here to run the chip. So, this is called the Ice River brand of BGIN blockchain limited, which we'll look at in a minute. And this is the BTC Genesis commemorative edition. So I believe that this is not going to be like their best chip that they actually make. This is just the first pass. So you can see them giving it out here. Ice River and there's a bunch of other things coming down here.

[00:03:38]So make crypto miners accessible to all.

[00:03:41]It's kind of what the whole Bitax movement is about obviously being open source. cuz I don't think Ice River will open sourced it. But we'll have a look on this next page now at the manufacturers of the Bitcoin chips. So there's not really many of them. So there's only a couple of manufacturers that actually have their own chips and that is Bitmain, uh, Bit Deer, MicroBT, Canon Avalon. I think that's it. Ice River obviously coming on very soon, but there's not really any more as I go down. Oh, Proto Rig. So that's the other one as well. And then the flu miner T3.

[00:04:16]I don't know if that is actually through their own chips. So there's not that many people actually producing their own chips. And the front runners obviously are going to be Bitmain. And then Bitier actually looks like a frontr runner as well, but I don't know where they're getting their chips from. Notoriously Micro BT has also been up there. and then Canon Avalon, which kind of capitalized on this whole smaller miners type of thing with the Nano or the Home series of miners. You know, not many of these people have actually gone into the smaller miners and tried to produce their own one, which I think Ice River are going to potentially do. If you look at their website, they notoriously have smaller miners for different algorithms.

[00:04:58]So you can see here a company previously developed ASIC mining hardware for cryptocurrencies like Cass, Althium and Aloe. BJIN which is I think the owner of Ice River. So services covers ship design, hardware optimization and mining system integration and distribution through Ice River. So potentially they do all of the work and then Ice River sell them. But they just completed the tape out of its first four nanometer BT1 Bitcoin mining chip in March 2026. So that was quite a while ago. But then they released that commemorative miner and I don't expect it to do massive in terms of the hash rate or efficiency, but we will check it out in this video.

[00:05:43]However, for nanometer, I believe the S23 is 3 nanometer currently, and that really does make a difference in terms of the hash rate or how efficient the chip can be. So, you can just see here, I'm just showing you pictures. Next week in Las Vegas, we'll have the first look at portable BTC at Bitcoin 2026 limited prototype that gives you tangible look at the exploration of more accessible consumer orientated Bitcoin miners.

[00:06:10]meaning basically that they're looking to go the Canon Avalon type of route with the smaller miners. For example, the Nano or even the Avalon Q, maybe making it a smaller miner. So, shout out to Greater Good Mining. He's been featured on channel quite a lot, but they have also done videos on this. I don't have one because I wasn't at Bitcoin conference, but this is pulling around 16 watts apparently. So, that's where I'm just getting the wattage figure from. and we'll click like there.

[00:06:40]So, I think they're naming it the BT1 or BT1 first pass silicon success helps reduce development risk and reinforces our confidence in multigeneration Bitcoin mining roadmap. So, they achieved their first pass silicon, but they're looking to kind of improve on that. So, it's only the first pass, which basically means it's like their test run. And we have some figures or stats here. So, this comes from your friend Andy who also got a hold of this.

[00:07:08]This is the OS I believe and the hash rate is around 400 gigahash. In the last minute is actually reporting 247. In the last hour is 246. So it is jumping up and down quite a lot. You can see it even gets up to around one terraash there. Don't really know what the overclocks are. It doesn't display it here. And also the ASIC temperature.

[00:07:29]That's kind of a standard ASIC temperature. And the fan speed by there just showing that it has zero shares rejected. and then the up time by there.

[00:07:37]So it's only been running for an hour.

[00:07:39]So maybe that average is a little bit off, but you can see that it does have varying hash rates. So So if we go based off the 400 gigahash at 440 and then the watts of around 16 watts, that brings you out to a efficiency of around 27 jewels per terahash I believe, which is not great overall compared to even a lot of the miners out there. As we have said at the start of the video, it is first passed. So, I'm assuming they're trying to refine that process a little bit more. So, just as a comparison, the S23 chips or S23 miners that are coming out like the one from Nexus Miner and also the one from Tiny Chip Hub, those are sitting at around 9.5 jewels per terahash, probably around 10 actually.

[00:08:26]But that's a really good jewels per terahash. And it's one of the most important things in solo mining is the efficiency, especially if they're going to go the Avalon route of having multiple chips on the board. For example, the Avalon Nano, I believe that has 12 chips on the board. The efficiency is around 22 jewels per terahash. So, it's actually not a great efficiency. On the lower mode, I believe it's 18. But there is also their other home miners like the Avalon Mini which is around 35 terraash and then the Avalon Q which is around 90 terraash I believe but those have similar in terms of the efficiency because I think they're doing around 18 jewels per terahash. For example, here you have 90 terraash at 18.6 jewels per terahash on the Avalon Q. So that's I don't know what the overclocks are. We're going to try and do a video on this very very soon. So stick around on the channel to watch that. However, when you actually compare one of these Bitcoin miners to the something like the Bit Axe, it's very hard to compare them because the Bit Axe is not actually made out of their own chips. It is made from Bitmain chips and that gives you kind of the best efficiency out there. For example, the gamma is around 15 jewels per terahash by default. and Ice River are going to have to do a lot of work to actually get down to even the S21 efficiency, but they have previously kept up with the efficiency of Bitmain in the mining space. So, a little bit about Ice River if you've never heard of them. They are, I think, the first ASIC miners for Casper, Althium, Aloe, and Radiant. So, they released the first Casper miner. And you can see down here if we just go to what I think they're going to be producing in the future for Bitcoin mining is something like this which has a little bit which has a couple of chips on the board. It's not too much in terms of the wattage and allows you to get a bit of the hash rate. They'll probably try to make it profitable if they really can. And these sold out very very quickly. You can go back maybe a year and a half ago to the whole Casper hype and we were obviously on that trend. But the whole model of Ice River is produce smaller miners. So you can see here. So even things like this, the KS7 light. It's like a smaller miner. So I'm thinking that they're going to be going with that type of deal in terms of the whole Bitcoin mining space. And they use this design repeatedly, this kind of smaller miner design because it has a chip or a board underneath and then a bunch of chips on it. And the whole minor acts as a heat sink there. So they do also produce bigger scale miners. If we keep clicking through this, you can see A3 and then that light version as well.

[00:11:15]Kind of like a gold shell design. But they have notoriously held up in terms of the efficiency against stuff like Bitmain on the Casper side. So they could potentially actually get down to Bitmain efficiency very quickly on the Bitcoin mining chips. The only problem is Bitmain have a front runners advantage. So they're probably developing newer chips that also have better efficiency than the S23 currently. But I'd like to see this kind of version of solo Bitcoin mining. We already have it with the Avalon Nano and there's not really much competition. You can get a Nerd Qax, you can get a Nerd Octax, but in terms of just the price per Terraash, you are paying way less for an Avalon Nano than you are for something like a Nerd QX or a Nerd Octax. And then that's probably where Ice River are going to come in, try compete with Avalon, for example. Maybe this one comparable to a mini, this one comparable to a nano, and then they'll try do like an Avalon Q version, which is around 90 terraash, something like that. Avalon have the Q, the mini, which is around, I think you're paying $1,000 for 37 terraash. Up here, you're paying 1,800 for 90. This is probably one of the best in terms of the actual price.

[00:12:31]And then the Avalon Nano3S, but these are actually older model chips that they use in here in terms of efficiency. When you go to stuff like the A16, I believe that they're running at a Yeah. So 12 jewels per terahash or 12.8 Jews per terahash. So Avalon can produce these better efficiency chips. However, for the home miners, they are not using them. They probably had some extra stock and thought this is a good product line that we can go with and we can sell it for a little bit higher because nobody else is in the space competing with them. But I think the Ice River are definitely going to try and compete with them over time on this and hopefully we see it by the end of the year where they actually come out with something that is purchasable and we can get our hands on it. Obviously kind of going for solar mining. The Avalon Q is more of a heat sink or the Avalon Home series is more of a heat sink, but I'm assuming that it's going to be very very similar to kind of what they have produced before in terms of a small miner KS0 and then the KS Lite which is a slightly bigger one and then a full miner for A6. So, as I said, they do have a lot of work to do in terms of the actual chip efficiency, but I think it could be good. And it's always great to see new people actually fabricating chips and trying to get them out there for Bitcoin mining. As we said, we did have Proto back a couple months ago in September 2025 where they came out with their Proto rig. The efficiency obviously wasn't as good as the rest of them, Bit Main being one of them, but they are working on kind of that modular design, swapping in and-out components. So, we'll see how long it takes them to actually speed up in terms of the efficiency up to Bitmain. But for now, Bitmain looks like it's just front running the whole thing. And you can't really compete with that efficiency yet.

[00:14:18]And as the whole solo mining movement goes towards the S23, as we're seeing with all of these miners like the like the ones from Tiny Chip Hub, like the Nexus miner, I think we're going to see that obviously puts Ice River and a lot of these miners by here, especially Canon Avalon. They need to update their home series at some point to give better efficiency to sell more in terms of the price per Terraash compared to the Nerd QX or the Nerd Optax. So, you guys can let me know your thoughts on the new Ice River release, when you think it's going to come in, what the actual efficiency is going to be, and if you are going to be buying one, if they come out with a more home series miner in the future.

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