Blockstream & Fidelity announce environmentally disastrous Bitcoin mining pool

Today we’re excited to reveal one of our biggest product launches to date: Blockstream Mining! Blockstream Mining provides mining equipment colocation in our purpose-built data centers designed to meet the needs of institutional and enterprise customers. Our hosting services support the fast deployment of virtually any type of Bitcoin mining equipment and provide customers with complete control over their mining operations.

Time for a Change

We firmly believe that bitcoin holders and businesses involved in Bitcoin should take part in mining themselves, to help maintain the decentralized security of the Bitcoin network.

However, Bitcoin mining has high barriers to entry. Prospective miners have been faced with two options: 1) build their own complex and expensive mining facilities, including specialized power infrastructure and cooling systems; or 2) select a professional hosting provider where they face a range of issues, including inexperienced teams, limited control over miners, and unpredictable pricing.

Blockstream Mining addresses these issues by providing a turnkey, enterprise-class colocation service enabling the customer to monitor and control their mining equipment with complete transparency.

Started in 2017

We began our Bitcoin mining operations back in 2017 motivated by widespread concern that mining decentralization was declining. At the time it appeared that parties involved in ASIC manufacture, hosting, and pool operations were becoming a centralizing force and holding back Bitcoin from reaching its full potential.

Since then we have scaled up our operations, secured additional sources of power, and expanded our service to provide hosting to clients that include the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.

We were one of the first Bitcoin mining companies to enter the Quebec hydropower market, long before the recent “gold rush” began, and together with our facility in Georgia, USA, we now have over 300MW of energy capacity secured (with more sites on the way). We also have a self-mining operation, which represents less than 1% of global hash rate, running on a combination of hardware from Bitfury, Ebang, MicroBT, and other manufacturers.

Enterprise Colocation

The Blockstream Mining colocation service provides a turnkey solution for businesses to operate and remotely manage their mining equipment:

1. Logistics: Our experienced team can help arrange the international logistics to ensure safe shipment of mining equipment to our facilities.
2. Installation: Our facilities’ power and networking infrastructure have been custom-built for fast deployment and maximum reliability.
3. Operation: Miners can be managed remotely via the Blockstream Mining control panel, delivering real-time analytics and control over each device’s operation.
4. Support: On-site technicians will keep your miners running and promptly deal with any updates or maintenance when required.

Currently, Blockstream Mining is tailored to enterprise and institutional customers, but soon we’ll be expanding our options to support small businesses and individuals, along with additional services – keep an eye out for updates!

Blockstream Pool

Alongside the Blockstream Mining colocation service, we’re excited to reveal Blockstream Pool, the world’s first production mining pool utilizing the BetterHash protocol. BetterHash is an improved mining pool protocol that gives individual miners the ability to control which Bitcoin transactions to include in their newly mined blocks. As a result, the Bitcoin network becomes more decentralized and censorship resistant as operators of large pools no longer centrally determine which transactions to include into blocks.

The Blockstream Pool has been running on Testnet for over a year and is initially available to Blockstream Mining customers. We will expand to a wider audience over time as we continue to work towards further decentralization. We look forward to open collaboration on pool protocol standards.

How to Get Involved

We are continuing to expand our mining capacity, contact our sales team to learn how to get involved.

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