World's First Bitcoin MIning Pool Targets Chinese Market

Slushpool, the world's first Bitcoin mining pool, launched a Chinese-language version of its platform to tap into Asia's mining dominance. SatoshiLabs, the Czech company behind Coinmap and TREZOR hardware wallets, operates Slushpool, a fact many people don't know. Most observers recognized the .cz domain as signaling Czech operations, yet SatoshiLabs' ownership of the pool remained obscure. The company's early entry into Bitcoin gave it the advantage to build the world's first mining pool, but people knew little of the company until TREZOR gained traction.

The company constructed Slushpool in 2010, a year when Bitcoin was barely on anyone's radar. Most people showed little interest in the coin back then. Interest shifted by late 2010, and Slushpool opened its doors to the public in December of that year. Miners extracted 939,000 BTC through the pool by April 2015, representing about 7 percent of all Bitcoin in existence. For years, Slushpool remained the industry's largest pool until F2Pool, a Chinese competitor, surpassed it.

Bitcoin depends on decentralization, and multiple mining pools strengthen the network. When a single pool accumulates too much of the total network hashrate, the risk of a 51 percent attack becomes genuine. Having Slushpool compete with F2Pool and others protects Bitcoin's security.

With most mining hardware manufactured in China and the bulk of hashing power controlled by Chinese operations, opening a Chinese Slushpool made business sense. SatoshiLabs translated the entire platform interface into Chinese and stationed support staff in Beijing and Singapore to provide technical assistance in the local language. Bitcoin adoption in China accelerated week after week. The causes of this acceleration remain unclear, but the momentum motivated SatoshiLabs to serve that market directly. Other mining pools worldwide will adopt the same strategy to compete for Chinese miners.