There’s no cheap supply of good chips…

I might be wrong but open source doesnt make it so cheaper as you need stuff to produce it. Open source makes code available for you to see what it does

For bitaxe, both are true. Open source didn't cut the silicon — the ASIC comes from a fab, and you still pay for it. What open source did buy: the board is a known quantity, multiple shops can build it, nobody gets locked to one vendor's markup, and the firmware is readable. The price drop people ...