On Wednesday, active traders and fans of technical analysis were overjoyed to see Bitcoin bouncing back from the depths of $30,000 to $37,000 in just a few hours. This 20% power surge was a sure sign that volatility has not left the markets in 2021, but there are serious questions regarding the viability of this development. Should we be looking at this spike as a trend reversal, or should we dismiss it as day traders looking to make a quick buck?

While volatility is certainly present in the markets, there are Bitcoin fundamentals that should be mentioned as they relate to mining. There are rumors about Bitmain, the largest Chinese manufacturer of chip and ASIC devices, is building some sort of "rebound device" on which each one of the chips used in Bitcoin mining would be custom designed and assembled according to some new design specs. When Bitmain announced this development, some of the rumors stated that the company could be preparing to sell its own ASIC-based mining devices into the market. The rumors also suggested that these chips could not have mining capability until at least sometime during 2021, though this could be a false rumor.

While these rumors might have been true on Tuesday, they died down on Wednesday. This may mean that there is still some truth to this news and that Bitmain will be bringing new chips to the market during the year. In summary, while there is still some skepticism in the world of Bitcoin mining and its capacity, it appears that the rumors are false and Bitmain may not be planning any kind of hardware update for this year.

In any event, it appears that we are just going to have to wait a little longer for more evidence that this rumor is true. However, rumors of Bitmain working on their own ASIC-based mining device should bring the market closer to the reality and there are at least two possibilities: either Bitmain does not have plans to introduce any form of ASIC-based mining device this year, or Bitmain may be planning such a device, but it has not been officially announced at this time.