ASIC MINERS

ASIC mining is essentially the process of mining cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin using ASIC rigs. 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. It involves making complex calculations to solve a mathematical puzzle, which miners compete in order to earn a block reward.
Bitcoin’s anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, envisioned a scenario of increased Bitcoin mining difficulty when more mining devices plug into the network. With the growing number of powerful mining devices, miners are incentivized to invest in ASIC hardware to give them the highest chance of successfully mining a block.
Note that each ASIC device is designed to mine a particular coin (or rather, a particular algorithm). For example, a Bitcoin ASIC miner can only mine BTC, while a Litecoin ASIC miner only interfaces with the LTC blockchain. This is because each digital currency has its own cryptographic hash algorithm, which ASIC devices are intended to match. Bitcoin, for instance, uses the SHA-256, while Litecoin uses Scrypt.