How Nangeng Zhang Started Canaan and Changed Bitcoin Mining
When most college students struggled to keep their computers working, Nangeng Zhang was busy building an early Bitcoin mining setup in his dorm room. He did this by putting together a homemade computer using GPUs (graphics cards) to mine Bitcoin.
What started as a small project soon grew into Canaan Inc., a company that created the world’s first Bitcoin ASIC miners. ASICs are special computer chips built just to mine Bitcoin faster and more efficiently than general GPUs. This invention helped move Bitcoin mining from a hobby into a big industry.
Today, Canaan runs mining machines with a total speed of 8.25 exahashes per second (EH/s). The company also holds over 1,600 Bitcoin in its treasury. Canaan continues to build and ship ASIC chips worldwide. But this success began years before the company appeared on the stock market or built very fast machines.
The Beginning: Discovering Bitcoin’s Power
Zhang explains that he fell into Bitcoin mining after reading the Bitcoin white paper while studying computer architecture at university. He said, “I was amazed. A system that works only by computation and agreement, without any central control, is a smart design.”
He built a GPU miner in one week. Then he switched to FPGA chips, which are more efficient but still flexible. Soon, Zhang realized even those were not efficient enough. This led to the Avalon Project.
On January 31, 2013, Canaan shipped the first commercial ASIC miner to Jeff Garzik, a Bitcoin core developer. Zhang said, “That day changed the entire industry. We grew from a tiny team to a public company.”
How Bitcoin Mining Helped AI Chip Development
Zhang believes Bitcoin mining technology paved the way for today’s AI computing. He said, “Mining showed us the future of chip design for the next decade.”
The mining industry improved chip technology from 110 nanometers (nm) to 2 nm in about 10 years. This progress gave engineers a head start on designing chips for AI since AI hardware needs very powerful and efficient chips.
Zhang also said Bitcoin gave freedom in money, and AI will give freedom in creativity. AI will help people create and code even without special skills. He sees AI as the next step in making the internet truly free for everyone.
Canaan’s newest product is the Avalon A16XP, a miner that runs at 300 terahashes per second (TH/s) with high energy efficiency. Zhang emphasized, “It’s not made to break records in labs but to run stable and profitably in real mining farms.”
Making Mining Cleaner and More Decentralized
Zhang’s big goal is for 20% of Bitcoin mining power to come from home miners someday. He said, “It’s a hard goal, but if people can mine quietly and cleanly at home, Bitcoin will be truly decentralized.”
Canaan has already made a home miner designed to be quiet and reuse its heat for warming homes. This device connects traditional life, finance, energy, and computing all together.
On the industrial side, Canaan works with power companies to add miners directly into the energy grid. These miners help balance the power load and support renewable energy. Partners include CleanSpark, Soluna, and projects in Japan and Canada.
Zhang calls Bitcoin mining a “financial battery.” Mining machines use electricity when power is cheap and stop when it’s expensive. This helps energy companies save and make better use of electricity. This idea can also help build more energy infrastructure, lowering energy costs for everyone.
He points out that the mining industry uses less than 1% of global power. Meanwhile, a lot of energy is wasted through transmission losses or not used (curtailment). Bitcoin mining uses energy more efficiently than many think.
What Zhang Sees for the Future
Zhang has worked through many Bitcoin price cycles and still sees huge opportunities. He said, “Energy demand is growing fast, and AI data centers add stress to the grid. The challenge is to meet this demand in a sustainable way.”
He expects renewable energy and better cooling systems to make mining cheaper and easier to maintain. This creates fast returns on investment.
Canaan wants to lead the way as Bitcoin mining, AI computing, and renewable energy come together.
What Zhang Would Ask Satoshi
When asked what he would ask Bitcoin’s creator, Zhang answered, “I want to know the real story behind Bitcoin and
