At Inside Bitcoins Berlin last week, Bitmain was the sole mining company on the exhibitor list. Yoshi Goto, representing Bitmain, detailed the company's new cloud mining contract and explained how it
At Inside Bitcoins Berlin last week, Bitmain was the sole mining company on the exhibitor list. Yoshi Goto, representing Bitmain, detailed the company's new cloud mining contract and explained how it addresses an industry in crisis.
Cloud mining operators face a structural pricing problem. They need Bitcoin to trade at $320 per coin for their customers to earn a profit from rented hashpower. Market rates have fallen well below this threshold, making nearly every cloud mining service unprofitable for end users. Bitmain's new Hashnest contract targets this gap. Users rent 1 terahash per second of mining capacity for 1 BTC.
Competitors charge substantially more. Genesis Mining asks $469 (about 1.59 BTC) for the same terahash per second capacity. ZeusHash demands 1.5828 BTC per terahash per second, then layers on additional fees for electricity and maintenance. Bitmain charges nothing beyond the upfront contract cost.
The company achieves these prices by controlling its entire supply chain. Bitmain manufactures Antminer hardware, deploys machines to its own data centers, and sells the equipment once contracts expire. This vertical integration enables bulk electricity purchasing at lower rates. While China's labor expenses have climbed steadily, electricity prices remain competitive. Remote monitoring of the S5 chips allows Bitmain to maintain hashpower with a lean technician workforce.
Contracts last 120 days. Customers receive daily payouts proportional to their investment. Bitmain estimates users will break even within 90 to 120 days and generate 6 to 7 percent profit thereafter, contingent on network difficulty and total hashrate. Customers may rent the same hardware again once a contract expires.
Goto summed up the company's advantage: "Because we can create a bigger volume of mining devices in our data center, our Bitcoin cloud mining contracts are cheaper compared to other companies. In the end, both the company and the consumer win, which can only be beneficial to Bitcoin in the long term."
The service is available at hashnest.com.
