How the mining tools are funded

As of today the mining tools carry display advertising and clearly labelled sponsored placements. We hold no affiliate agreements with hardware retailers, no referral arrangements with mining pools, and no paid listings from hosting providers.

That will change as the product develops, and this page will change with it. Where a revenue stream is live, it is named here. Where it is not, it is not.

• Advertising placementsClearly marked ad units in defined slots, in the same style used across the publication.
• Sponsorship of a tool or sectionA named, visible association with the calculator, a hardware category or the newsletter.
• A directory listingInclusion in a provider directory, once one exists, on the same verification terms as every other entry.

These are the rules that make the rest of the site worth reading. None of them is negotiable, and we will decline the money rather than bend one.

• The calculationNo sponsor influences a formula, an assumption or a default value. A sponsored machine earns exactly what the maths says it earns.
• The rankingHardware is ordered by break-even electricity price. Pools are ordered by blocks found. Neither can be paid for, and affiliate commission never determines a default order.
• The verdictEditorial judgements about hardware are written independently of any commercial relationship, and are labelled as our view.
• Removal of an unflattering figureA sponsor cannot have a poor efficiency rating, a short warranty or an empty terms cell taken down.
• Editorial coverageSponsorship buys no article, no mention and no influence over how a company is reported on elsewhere in the publication.

When we do introduce affiliate links to hardware retailers, or referral links to mining pools, they will be marked as such at the point of the link — not only in a policy page you would have to go looking for.

Commission will not determine which retailers appear, what order they appear in, or which machine is presented as the better buy. If a machine we earn nothing from is the right answer at your electricity rate, that is what the page will say.

Outbound links to pool operators today are plain links. They are not referral links and we earn nothing from them.

Anything paid for carries a visible label — “Sponsored” or “Advertisement” — in the same position and style everywhere it appears. Our own assessments appear under headings such as “Our view” and are written by the editorial team.

If you ever cannot tell which is which on one of our pages, that is a failure on our part and we would like to know about it.

Listing in a comparison is not something we sell. A pool, retailer or hosting provider is included because it is relevant to readers, and its figures are recorded only when we can confirm them against the operator's own documentation, with the date we checked.

A provider who declines to publish a term does not get it filled in with a favourable estimate. The cell stays empty and the page says it is not published — including where that reflects badly on a company we might later want as a partner.

Hosting providers will additionally need to confirm their location, rate basis, contract terms and curtailment policy before appearing as verified, and will be re-checked periodically.

If you operate a pool, retailer or hosting business and a figure of yours here is wrong or out of date, email info@miningpool.co.uk with a link to your own documentation. We will verify it at source, update it, and record the date.

We will correct a figure whether or not the correction favours you, and whether or not you are a paying partner. Corrections to commercial listings follow the same corrections policy as the rest of the publication.

We do not promote opaque cloud mining contracts, guaranteed-return products, or any arrangement whose economics we cannot verify. We will not present a projection as a promise, and we will not run a placement whose claim we would refuse to print as editorial.

How the figures themselves are produced is set out in the mining data methodology. The publication's wider positions are in our ethics and standards and disclosures pages. To discuss a partnership, see advertise with us.