First ASIC Miners in Bitcoin

I was reading this thread about Mastercard buying CipherTrace and saw something that got me thinking: when did the first ASIC miner prototypes actually start mining the Bitcoin blockchain? If I recall right, Avalon was the first to ship ASIC miners, but it was super limited and that was back in early 2013. I do know that Friedcat / Bitfountain and Bitfury were working on ASICs as early as 2012, but if I’m correct, they didn’t start mining until 2013 either. And then there’s Butterfly Labs… So, does anyone have any info on this? Was Shannon Holland involved in these projects or were early prototype chips somehow available to the community before they went into production? I’m really curious because I feel like that part of mining history is a bit hazy for me, and I remember ASICs making a huge splash once they hit the scene in 2013.

Some links below from the olden days of the forum. There are more but these are the bigger ones. There were a few in 2012, most really came into it in 2013. Even if they were planning in 2012 by the time the chips were made and miners built it was 2013 some into 2014. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91173.0 Or more to the point: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91173.msg1211518#msg1211518 Avalon: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=120184 Bitfury in 2013: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=228677 BTCGarden: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=213172 BFL: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83985.0 Cointerra: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=269093 Gridseed: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=355268.0 IIRC they were the 1st to propose SHA / Scrypt on one chip. And one of only a couple to actually make it. KNC: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=170332.0 They had a really epic implosion in the end IMO. -Dave

Thanks for the links! I'm mostly interested in 2012 and whether the claim of someone mining Bitcoin with ASICs in 2012 is actually plausible, because from my anecdotal experience it was incredibly hard to get your hard on ASIC mining hardware until at least the latter half of 2013. And that is assuming you even bet on the right horse and not on one of the many ventures that failed to deliver. Friedcat and Avalon having specifications as of September / October 2012 means they still had to get the chips produced, as from my little understanding of the chip design workflow you're still working with simulations at that point (either software simulation or hardware-based using FPGAs). So at least according to the public record there were no (SHA256) ASIC chips until December 28, 2012: And even then the chips were still to be tested. So in conclusion -- Am I missing something or does it seem unlikely that someone was mining Bitcoin with ASICs as early as 2012? Because given the technical challenges and capital requirements it seems weird for someone to produce ASIC chips without scaling production for either themselves or for sale to the public, either of which should have made a splash back then.

Unless they were early prototypes that never made it into production or, something made privately that was never marketed. Then as far as I remember, or can find, all of the 1st real production ASIC miners that people could buy came into being in 2013. -Dave