VICTORIA, British Columbia, Aug. 8, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Today Blockstream revealed one of its biggest product launches to date: Blockstream Mining. Providing mining equipment colocation in purpose-built data centers based in the US and Canada, Blockstream Mining is tailored to meet the needs of institutional and enterprise customers. Blockstream's facilities enable the fast deployment of virtually any type of Bitcoin mining equipment and provide customers with complete control over their mining operations.
After joining Blockstream from BTCC, the operator of one of the largest Bitcoin mining pools in the world, Samson Mow took on a role on the executive team as CSO to focus on launching the Liquid Network as well as a new mining initiative. Blockstream went on to secure a power deal with Hydro Quebec, becoming one of the first major Bitcoin mining companies to enter the Quebec hydropower market, long before the recent "energy gold rush."
"We began self-mining back in 2017 after being motivated by widespread concern that mining decentralization was declining," said Samson Mow. "At the time it appeared that parties involved in ASIC manufacture, hosting, and pool operations were becoming a centralising force and holding back Bitcoin from reaching its full potential. We figured we could use our Bitcoin expertise to improve the situation."
Blockstream's own self-mining operation, which represents less than 1% of global hash rate, is running a combination of hardware from Bitfury, Ebang, MicroBT, and other manufacturers.
Since then, Blockstream secured power and expanded its services to provide enterprise hosting to clients that include the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. Today, Blockstream is continuing to scale colocation facilities to meet growing demand.
"There is rapidly growing demand for secure and reliable mining facilities from financial institutions and other large enterprises, but until now there have been very few providers equipped to support them," said Chris Cook, CIO at Blockstream and head of Blockstream Mining. "With the addition of our latest facility in Adel, Georgia, USA, Blockstream has secured over 300MW of energy capacity for use by our colocation clients, with more sites on the way."
Currently, Blockstream Mining is tailored to enterprise and institutional customers, but new options to support small businesses and individuals will be coming soon.
Blockstream also revealed the upcoming Blockstream Pool, the world's first production mining pool based on the BetterHash protocol. BetterHash is a mining protocol that emerged out of the OpenHash project which started at Blockstream in 2014. The Blockstream Pool and BetterHash provide individual miners with full control over the transactions included in blocks, improving the overall decentralization and censorship resistance of the Bitcoin network. 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.
Blockstream Mining is continuing to expand its capacity, and enterprises interested in launching a Bitcoin mine should contact the Blockstream sales team to learn how to get involved: mining (at) blockstream (dot) com.
SOURCE Blockstream
Share this article