The "reportedly" has been confirmed today, with Samsung representatives confirming, in no uncertain terms, that the company has entered the mining ASIC manufacturing scene. News of this broke out just last week, citing "an unnamed client from China", who placed a gargantuan order for crypto-coin mining ASICs with Samsung. This news was somewhat confirmed later in the week, as Samsung's latest earnings report did mention higher than expected revenue in it semiconductor business due to "Samsung's acquisition of new China clients". At the time, we speculated this could have something to do with the reported ASIC customer hailing from that same country, and it seems we were correct.

As it stands, Samsung has entered a pretty lucrative, somewhat as-of-yet untapped market from ASIC production. TSMC, another of the world's greatest semiconductor manufacturers, has been shipping ASICs to customers for a while now, joined by some small players such as Bitmain and Canaan Creative - companies that basically create crypto-mining ASIC designs that TSMC then produces. This move could increase competition in the space, thus increasing the number of ASIC systems in usage towards crypto mining, which could, at some point in the future, help ease the pressure on pc hardware enthusiasts' dear, dear graphics cards.

At the same time, as DIY part requirements drop due to the usage of these ASICs, pressure on other components that are facing constrained supplies could also decrease, which would likely reflect in a healthier, saner (price-wise) hardware market. For now, these are all hopes, though. I'd just like to point the fact that this order from the unnamed China-based customer was enough to offset Samsung's expected revenue, by an amount sufficiently significant for it to be specifically called out on the company's earnings reports. Just imagine how high the value of that order likely is. And even as proponents and haters of cryptocurrencies fight it out for supremacy of their points of view, and all kinds of cryptocurrencies shed their value, there's always some news of another significant event that is sure to only garner even more attention - and perhaps even value - for crypto in general.