Quantum Blockchain shares slide on crypto mining method update

15th Aug 2024 12:04

(Sharecast News) - Quantum Blockchain Technologies shares were sliding on Thursday, after it updated the market on its recent activities aimed at developing disruptive bitcoin mining technologies.

The AIM-traded firm said that over the last four months, it had concentrated its efforts on refining three AI-driven bitcoin mining methods - methods A, B, and C - and integrating them into existing commercial mining hardware.

It said its short-term strategic goal was to achieve real-time bitcoin mining through collaboration with leading bitcoin miners.

Despite challenges in adapting the methods to current ASIC-based mining hardware, QBT said it had made a strategic decision to transition from using CGMiner to ESP-miner, an operating system developed by Open Source Miners United.

The switch was expected to improve the reliability and efficiency of the mining methods when integrated with the new BM1366 ASIC chips.

Looking at method A, QBT daid the focus had been on real-time measurement of hashing times during mining operations.

The transition to ESP-miner was expected to enhance the accuracy of these measurements, improving overall mining efficiency.

QBT said it was meanwhile porting method B to the new ESP-miner platform, which was expected to offer more stable and efficient control over the BM1366 chips.

The company said it was also developing a new tool for real-time mining testing and has introduced a new performance improvement technique, which has shown promising results in lab tests.

At the same time, continued laboratory testing had confirmed the effectiveness of method C, with the research and development team working to further optimise the underlying AI model.

Given the current difficulty level of bitcoin mining, QBT said it was adapting method C to demonstrate its advantages using historical blockchain data for potential partners.

On the intellectual property front, QBT said it was actively working on securing international patents for its innovations.

The company said it had filed its first international patent application with the European Patent Office, covering the UK, and had also applied in the US, Canada, Australia and South Korea.

Work was continuing on drafting additional patent applications, including a quantum version of SHA-256 and a new application related to method C.

QBT had meanwhile made significant strides in its discussions with major bitcoin sector companies, primarily in North America.

It said it planned to demonstrate its mining methods in live tests once real-time mining capabilities were achieved, potentially unlocking partnerships with companies that had developed their proprietary mining software.

"Most of the current and recent efforts of the company are focused on the porting of the Methods on to commercial hardware mining platforms," said executive chairman and chief executive officer Francesco Gardin.

"The skill set for the porting projects is completely different from AI know-how used in the design and development of the three methods by our research and development teams.

"A very experienced software engineer from Milan University joined the core software engineers' group nine months ago, and we feel this group now has all the necessary skills to successfully undertake the porting task to a real-time bitcoin mining environment."

Gardin said the complex technical step of the process was the precondition for deploying QBT's technology and entering into "pragmatic partnership and commercial discussions" with the sector's major players, all of which were "very aware" of QBT's technology and were apparently waiting for real-time.

"The decision to switch to the ESP-miner operating system, running on ESP32-S3 Espressif MCU and using Bm1366 ASIC chips, will definitely accelerate moving in this direction."

At 1058 BST, shares in Quantum Blockchain Technologies were down 22.58% at 0.6p.

Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.