250,000 Intel Chips for ASICs to Bolster Bitcoin’s Decentralization
The non-profit organization 256 Foundation, dedicated to the research and development of open technologies for Bitcoin, reported that it received a total of 250,000 BZM2 chips from Intel from Proto Mining, a company focused on infrastructure and mining solutions.
As explained by the 256 Foundation, those 250,000 chips for Bitcoin mining together are equivalent to “approximately 76 petahashes per second (PH/s)” of processing power (hashrate). That figure is equivalent to a hash rate of 325 Bitmain Antminer S21 Pro ASICs.
A chip is a miniaturized electronic component made of semiconductor material, such as silicon, that contains integrated circuits made up of millions of transistors and other components. Every ASIC made for Bitcoin mining features multiple of those chips.
The donation is part of a previous collaboration between the two entities. In January 2025, Proto Mining and the 256 Foundation announced a partnership aimed at making “mining tools more accessible and empowering the next generation of builders.”
The goal is to foster a decentralized mining ecosystem in which production and access to equipment do not depend exclusively on corporations with large market power, such as Bitmain or Canaan.
With the arrival of these 250,000 BZM2, the 256 Foundation reinforces its strategy of supporting developers working on building open tools, which represents an attempt to balance industry concentration and sustain Bitcoin’s distributed character.
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