what is an application specific integrated circuit asic miner 
an application specific integrated circuit asic is an integrated circuit chip designed for a specific purpose an asic miner is a device that uses asics for the sole purpose of mining digital currency generally each asic miner is constructed to mine a specific digital currency based on their hashing algorithms one way to think about asics is as specialized computers optimized to solve a cryptographic proof of work puzzle because asics are built especially for mining cryptocurrency they do it much faster than personal computers which might otherwise be considered powerful history of asic minerscryptocurrency mining is required by a proof of work pow blockchain like bitcoin to carry out its operations the mining process involves solving cryptographic puzzle by generating a hash until finding one with a value equal to or below the target difficulty number s value the first miner to find the solution to the puzzle has their block added to the blockchain each winner in the bitcoin mining competition receives a reward a specific amount of bitcoin along with the transaction fees for the transactions in that block in bitcoin s early days any computer with adequate processing power could mine bitcoin however those days are long gone in 2012 the first asic miner was introduced attracting hordes of crypto miners as the network of mining machines grew the mining difficulty increased because the network is designed to increase the difficulty when there is more computational power this led to a race to harness the most hashing power the term used to describe how many hashes per second a miner can generate or the combined hashes per second of a networked mining rig or pool the most powerful bitcoin asics can hash at more than 400 terahashes per second 12 zeros the latest gpus on the other hand hash at about 120 megahashes per second one million 