What is an ASIC miner?

An ASIC miner is a piece of equipment that is purposely-built solely for mining. Unlike other types of mining devices, ASICs can only be used to mine cryptos and nothing else. Mining is an activity that is required by a proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain to carry out its operations.

Why is ASIC mining more competitive than GPU mining?

ASIC mining gets more competitive as more people start their own mining operation, so your hash rate continues to decline. They're more energy efficient than GPU/CPU miners — greater hash rate for electricity used. They still consume a lot of energy anyways. ASIC miners are more competitive than GPU or CPU mining.

What is ASIC mining Litecoin?

In Bitcoin and Litecoin, ASIC mining is just about the only way anyone mines those cryptocurrencies. You can now get Ethereum ASIC miners too, like Bitmain’s Antminer E3 that’s already out of stock. How much does an ASIC miner actually cost?

Do I need an ASIC miner to mine Ethash?

For example, Bitcoin is mined through the SHA-256 algorithm and Ethereum is mined through ETHASH. So you'd need an ASIC miner for SHA-256 and a separate rig to mine ETHASH if you wanted to mine both. The cost of ASIC miners rise and fall with the fluctuations in cryptocurrency prices.