Tech Taiwan covers the Taiwanese and Chinese semiconductor industry, including TSMC, Foxconn, and Chinese chip policy.
HN commenters link it for context on Chinese chip equipment and Taiwan's chip industry, though it is mainly cited as a news source.
TSMC has Bitmain as a low-priority client, and the first one to be cut when demand is high like earlier this year[0]. Bitmain itself is having even bigger reduction in orders to TSMC currently[1] so again, that's the wrong place to look for increased chip demand.
At any rate, I was mostly responding to claims about 'GPUs are profitable for mining' in the parent.
0. https://www.chinamoneynetwork.com/2021/03/05/tsmc-reportedly-limits-supply-to-bitcoin-mining-players-as-demand-surges-amid-crypto-frenzy
1. https://techtaiwan.com/20210628/bitcoin-mining-rig-bitmain-tsmc/
Hypothesis: there's a correlation between shortage of chips made with cutting-edge processes and chips that are not, because a lot of them are made by the same companies (and the supply-chain issues are impacting companies not just product lines). For instance, in addition to having the bleeding-edge 5nm node, TSMC has a lot of larger nodes and specialty non-digital-CPU nodes, too[1].
[1] https://techtaiwan.com/20210816/tsmc-speciality-technology/
The "geopolitics" is played up as the US now needs an excuse for aggressive industrial policies aiming to move jobs from "allieds" such as South Korea and Taiwan and back into the US.
Pat Gelsinger panders to this as he eyes a windfall for his business, so much that it is getting harsh reactions from Taiwan:
Intel CEO: Taiwan Isn’t a Stable Place. TSMC Founder Has Other Concerns
https://techtaiwan.com/20211207/gelsinger-intel-taiwan/
China has one of the older ASML DUV machines, they got it thru a scam :o) and proceeded to pawn it for $90mil to a local bank for a quick scam exit https://chinatalk.substack.com/p/billion-dollar-heist-how-scammers
https://interconnected.blog/chinas-semiconductor-theranos-hsmc/
but even non scam Chinese initiatives are failing https://techtaiwan.com/20210714/tsinghua-unigroup-bankruptcy/
This is just a redirect on facebook, the actual URL seems to be https://techtaiwan.com/20210910/andes-luxembourg/ (facebook tracking removed)
More context:
https://techtaiwan.com/20210609/huawei-duv/
https://inf.news/en/tech/ede38b11c0c375aee90b2451f5c0da3e.html