TSMC breaks sales record, boosted by Bitcoin mining

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has reported strong financial growth in the first quarter of 2018, driven by increased orders for its cryptocurrency mining chips.

At its shareholders meeting on Thursday, the world's largest independent semiconductor maker said first-quarter revenue was NT$248 billion (US$8.5 billion), up 6.1% from the same period last year. Net profit was NT$89 billion (US$3 billion), up 2.5% year-on-year.

It is worth noting that revenue in March alone accounted for 41% of the total revenue in the first quarter - NT$103 billion (US$3.5 billion). According to the financial statement submitted on April 10, March was TSMC's highest sales revenue month. CC Wei, co-CEO and president of TSMC, said:

This is mainly due to strong demand for high-performance computing such as cryptocurrency mining.

However, he did not disclose the percentage of orders for mining chips.

In addition, President and Co-CEO Mark Liu also said:

In the first quarter we saw strong demand for cryptocurrency, and in the second quarter while we did see some defects in 28mm chips, demand for other technologies remained strong.

The sales figures follow a similar trend to last year, when the company reported revenue of $8.32 billion and $9.2 billion in the third and fourth quarters, respectively.

The news comes after mining hardware giant Bitmain controversially released the Antminer E3, an ASIC mining machine dedicated to Ethereum, after being confirmed by CoinDesk as a TSMC customer in early April.