Coinmine, a cryptocurrency mining device aimed at the hobbyist market, will now give its users the option to be paid in bitcoin.
The device was able to mine monero, zcash, grin and ethereum at launch, a set of cryptocurrencies that had a low enough difficulty threshold to allow for the average miner to see a minimal return. The addition of bitcoin payouts gives miners more incentive to try the $799 ($699 with a special BTC discount) product.
“To get you the most bitcoin possible from your Coinmine One, we had to engineer MineOS to automatically mine whatever crypto converts to bitcoin at the highest rate and then exchange it to Bitcoin for you and put it in your wallet,” said founder Farbood Nivi. “This way you’re getting way more Bitcoin than if the device was mining Bitcoin directly. ”
The Coinmine box won’t make you a millionaire overnight. Nivi sees it as a testbed and experimental tool for those who want to dip a toe into the mining process. Given the resource requirements of high-stakes mining, however, the Coinmine offers users a less energy-intensive option.
“At today’s numbers, your Coinmine One will generate about $15-20/month of bitcoin in USD prices,” said Nivi. “Of course, that number changes based on the future value of Bitcoin. If the value of Bitcoin appreciates, so will the value of what you made with your Coinmine One.”
Nivi also sees the product as a cheaper and faster way to take part in networks like Lightning.
“The time to build and maintain a comparable device with mining and a Bitcoin Lighting Node is about $400 if your time is worth $20/hour and it takes you 20 hours to research and build the hardware and software,” he said. “The parts for a miner and a Bitcoin Lightning Node could cost you $500 easily. That’s $900, and you still would have to control your DIY device from a command line with a monitor and keyboard instead of an app you can just tap on.”
Coinmine is rolling out the BTC update today and users will be able to mine and even “put their crypto to work,” said Nivi.
“We’re also partnering with services like Compound Finance, Cred, and Blockfi so you can put your crypto to work and earn a return on the crypto that your Coinmine makes. We call it Compound Mining. All of this is possible because of MineOS,” he said.
Image via Coinmine
Crypto mining hardware giant Bitmain Technologies Ltd. is said to be relaunching its initial public offering (IPO) plans, but this time in the U.S. instead of Hong Kong.
According to a Bloomberg report citing “people with knowledge of the matter,” Bitmain is consulting with advisers over a U.S. public listing, potentially in the second half of 2019. The firm – the world’s biggest manufacturer of crypto mining devices – plans to lodge documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in July, according to the sources.
Last September, Bitmain filed to IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX), however that effort looked to have met resistance and ultimately the firm let its filing lapse in March.
According to one of Bloomberg’s sources, Bitmain may be reducing its previous fundraising target to roughly $300 million–$500 million in the U.S. offering, although that figure is not yet set in stone. It had hoped to raise up to $3 billion via the HKEX share offering.
Bloomberg adds that the preparations for the U.S. IPO are still in the early stages and are subject to change.
Bitmain declined to comment on the news, according to the report.
Bitmain co-founder Jihan Wu image via CoinDesk archives
The NEM blockchain project is launching a development studio to support its move towards a major protocol upgrade later in 2019.
According to a press release emailed to CoinDesk, the new NEM Studios is being created by NEM Holdings, the non-profit holding company of NEM Ventures, and the NEM Foundation to help with strategy and backend development for NEM’s planned “Catapult” protocol upgrade.
Catapult is aimed to provide enterprises with a “high speed, configurable and scalable blockchain solution,” the release states.
NEM Studios’ development activities are to be funded by NEM Core, and is now seeking to hire a CTO and a development team to assist with building the Catapult Core protocol and API layer. Chair and trustee of NEM Holdings and chair of the investment committee for NEM Ventures David Shaw – who also advises the Catapult project– will lead NEM Studios as director.
A steering committee comprised of David Shaw, NEM Foundation President Alexandra Tinsman, and Nate D’Amico from NEM’s Project Management Committee will lead the “go-to-market” strategy for the upgrade.
Shaw said:
Catapult is planned to become the core NEM code supporting both private and public blockchains. As per the press release, it will include smart contract plug-ins allowing a range of capabilities such as digital asset creation, decentralized swaps, advanced account systems and business logic modeling.
The news comes soon the NEM Foundation was forced to make major staffing cutbacks following a shortfall in its finances. Tinsman confirmed in March that the foundation had laid off about 100 people – a mix of consultants and full-time staffers – over a period of a month.
The project was also forced to request that around $8 million of NEM reserves be released in stages to support its continued operations.
Tinsman had told CoinDesk in January that the funding issues were down to “the mismanagement of the previous governance council.”
NEM conference booth image courtesy of NEM Foundation
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