Points clés à examiner dans les services de minage | Bitcoin 2026

Thank you all for coming. Good afternoon. We are in the final home stretch of the conference. Could be a good thing, could be a bad thing depending on how it's been for you. Um, I've had a great time so far. Uh, and I'm excited to talk about mining services. Um, just to get things started, I'll go down the line. We'll do a little introductions. I'm, uh, Tatum Cave. I, uh, with Compass Mining, and I'm going to be moderating this discussion. Um, let's go down the line. just tell me who you are and what you do and yeah >> uh hi guys Dominic Vansovich is the way to pronounce it. Um I'm with Hashlab/E2C partners. We're a hosting provider um in like four countries looking into the yes now but we are normally in the north of Europe and in Africa. Um yeah and I'm business development guy. Um you go. >> Hey everybody, my name is Matt Weinberg. Um I built and operate a solar mining pool called Atlas Pool. I'm relatively new into the space but I spent my career working on large-scale internet infrastructure and what I wanted to do is apply my knowledge to building a pool. So that's what I did. >> Uh Rams, I'm founder and CEO of Mining Grid. We do community mining ecosystem and we do offer cloud mining for retail clients. >> So uh we got a lot to cover here. Um mining is has historically gotten to a point where one man can't do it all himself. it seems uh they're hot, they're loud, they require special power that most people don't have. So, we look for services for hosting and stuff like that. So, um there we've seen the rise and fall of several hosting companies and and and mining services uh from hosting for for plebs to infrastructure buildouts, but there's a lot of nuance with all of those. uh what what are some if someone were to come to you today and say I want to start mining or switch providers, what's like one thing that they need to you you want them to look for that that's like the main like nail in the coffin for a lot of people that may miss it. You can go ahead and start with that. >> Uh my opinion the main thing to look at even more importantly than electricity rate which everyone is like mainly focused on is the uptime. uh just because you can get the cheapest rate in the world, but if your machines run at 50% of the time, you normally don't have time to actually get the ROI on your investment. So there might be countries that sound great and they look great on paper, but when you actually look into it and see how long your miners run, um it might not be as profitable as you might think. So I think electricity rate, of course, everyone knows that, but the uptime is um next to the same level for me at least. >> Yeah, that's a that's a big thing. everyone's immediately, what's my power rate? And there there's a lot more under that that I think you need to look for. Um, and we'll we'll dive deeper into that in a little bit. Um, Matt, I'm I'm curious about what you have to say because you you run a a pool and he mentioned uptime. You have I didn't realize the that uptime of solo mining pools was like I didn't realize that there was downtime really. So, could you explain a little bit on on the uptime and downtime of things, especially like on the pool side, like what what does that mean for a minor? >> Yeah. So, uh if you're mining, you want your pool to be always available. Uptime matters. And you also want low latency because the higher the latency, the more rejected shares your miners will have. And rejected shares are wasted work. So, uh when I first went down this journey, I bought my first uh solo miner. uh I saw the pools that were out there and I said to myself, I think I might be able to do something differently and better. Um so I deployed it the pool globally uh so that any minor no matter where you are in the world can reach uh the pool very quickly with low latency and 100% availability which is really what matters. Um there's no point in mining if you can't reliably you know rely on your pool. Ram curious, do you have anything else to add on that as far as like what to look for? Maybe even uh red flags. I want to go down the line with red flags as well. >> Yeah, definitely. You know, when you come new to the mining, you know, do you want to start your journey, you know, so definitely you need to look at different things from your operator, you know, people when they come, they don't look at the long term, you know. So as uh you [snorts] know my colleague said you know the electricity rate really important you know what is the hosting but there are a lot of things also behind it cuz even if you fix that rate for one year and lock it for longterm or short-term contract and that unpredictable for following years you know then you can lose you know your investment also the track record you know of the mining operator is really uh important I think we will speak about it in details uh but I advise everyone you know to start before before starting big you know in mining you need to try it you need to try your operator and you you need to experience you need to ask about historical records as well from the operator you know the more they are in the market the more they are secure then you need to ask about many other risk you know what is uh the exit closes if I want to stop mining can I stop mining or not uh what is the risk of changing the prices what is the uptime you know and many other things you know related to the electricity connection redundant system or not is it HA's uh data center or or not so there are many things and very hard for someone to come and really understand the full cycle so if you are uh you know accredited investor and you want to do bulk deals maybe you can't get that details but reality on the market when people want to enter a mining they cannot get all these details you know because that mining farms interested on bulk deals not in small retail clients you know so recommendation start small try to do do your due diligence about the company and the history then definitely select the best uh provider based on uptime based on electricity cost and you know the outcome and also the pool plays another part because also you need to know which hardware you want to use which operator you want to use then which pool better for you to connect then you can reach the maximum outcome from uh that experience >> yeah there's definitely a lot of uh a lot of factors that have to like line up for you to it's it's a lot of trial and error. That's just kind of the nature of the industry. Um I want to go into some red flags because that's a I mean there's there's often something that you see that's like oh wow I can't believe that they're offering it this at like one cent a kilowatt hour or something. That was exaggerated. No one I hope no one's offering one kilowatt hour. But uh what are some red flags that you've seen in other operators, other mining services that maybe you like for one, what should we look for and two, how what's the reality of that? Uh I think a good example is this hosting rate like whenever companies have a 6.5 rate, six rate, 6.5 rate and then one has a 5.5 uh kilowatt hour rate. Sometimes they have a three-month deposit or they they make you pay a year in advance for the electricity or they have a 400 bucks handling fee per unit. So there's certain companies that are really good at marketing and getting you into the door, but like looking at these hidden fees, so to say, is actually more important than most people think. We try to be no hidden fees. So all all you have is machine price and that's it and maybe shipping cost if it's a new machine. Uh others are looking cheaper even though they might be not. Um it's one way to do it. Uh some people get into their door first because it looks cheaper, but um yeah, looking at the deposit prepayment structure and these kind of things is actually more important than most people think. >> Ramy, I'm curious on your side. Have you would you say the same thing as far as like like the hosting rate is a big one that people obviously like are attracted to because that's your monthly cost. Um would you resonate with that saying like you know those hidden fees are something that is common that people mis misunderstand upfront? Yeah, I will copy that you know if you will look at the wider picture you know not only in US so there is when you fix the rates normally you fix it in local currencies you know in many countries and when you convert it to dollar you know then the exchange rate you know also impact the hosting price you know that's a major factor or risk you know when people select where they want to mine now we saw also there is another major risk that the security of these farms and the country's regulation changed, you know, and if you want to mine for one year or two years, maybe that risk is low. But if you are capitalizing in your investment and mining the devices and you want to run it for four to five years, you know, then the regulation change or the government change or they shut down location or they change the power plant supply ratio to this farms, you know, becomes a major issue and unfortunately many retail clients, they face this risk because once they enter, they cannot get a visibility on where which country I need to host my devices. then which farm you know as second and as we said you know higher price at the beginning for hosting is better than unpredictable price because unpredictable price of year two with 20% plus then it waves all the mining outcomes you you did in year one so I I see it you know one of the major risk you know to uh uh the rates of electricity the uptime and contracts with the uh power plants you know this is another major thing uh people need to to consider >> yeah the The geographic part of that is also really big. Um because every country has different regulations and different relationships with with Bitcoin miners and large infrastructure like that. And it is it gets shaky whenever there's there's no like okay you may be getting a ridiculously cheap power rate but also what's going to happen with the geopolitical sphere you know in the course of two to three years. And Matt deploying your pool globally I'm curious how how you've with the redundancy that you have set up, are you is that something that you looked into? >> Uh, definitely. But I want to get back to your red flag question. >> Yeah, please. Please. >> Yeah. So, when I first built the pool, one of the things I wanted to prove out was that if someone min paid the way I advertise as going to work. Um, so I built some tooling to verify the block templates that any pool hands out. Not just the pool that I built, but any pool. And you can examine the block template. you can see what the payout structure is. And that way I could prove that I was paying people the way I said I would would. Uh when I tested some other pools, I discovered that they didn't necessarily do that. Um there were some pools out there that didn't pay out the way they would advertise. And even worse yet, there were a few solo mining pools that literally would take your hash rate, proxy it back to another pool for their own profit, and you would never ever have a chance of mining a block. and most people just don't realize it until they examine the block templates. So, with regard to red flags, um I published some work. I did some original work and I published it out there and and it was uh kind of like a um building trust with with people moment because when I did this, people realized that not only could you trust the pool that I built, but you could trust the tooling and and it opened people's eyes about things that they should look for when they're looking at other pools as well. And I'm happy to answer the latency question too, but like does that answer your question about >> that's great. Yeah. >> Yeah. In terms of availability. Yeah. So most pools out there, many pools at least especially these solo pools usually deploy a server at one location in the world or maybe they deploy it at two or three locations in the world and you have to manually set up your minor to point to that particular server. So if I'm in the United States, I'll point to the server in the US. If I'm in Europe, I'll point to the server in Europe. Um, the problem with that is that if there's ever an outage, then uh you have to have at least a fallback set up in your your binder to go to a secondary pool. But there are outages out there. And again, remember the story about latency. The the the less latency, the faster your minor gets to the pool, the less rejected shares you have, which is wasted work. So to answer your question, what I did is I employed a technology called AnyCast. Um, it's a networking protocol that allows anybody, no matter where you are in the world, to connect to the pool as fast as possible. So, someone who's in South Africa will connect to an endpoint that I have deployed in South Africa. If they're in Brazil, they'll go to Brazil and so forth and so on. Um, I don't have to manually set up my minor to go to just the US server or the European server. You just point to one location and no matter where you are, you always get routed to the right place. Um, so that's something that I worked really hard on and proud about with the pool. Yeah, that's really awesome. And I do want to kind of keep focusing on like latency brings up my next question. The there's actually stuff on the infrastructure side that matter when when you're hosting a minor of you know the the rigidity of your containers and uh how everything's set up and as far as like the phys the physicality of it. But as a person who's looking for a service who may not be like front lines on the in the containers and stuff like that, how do you as a company try to convey all of that in that infrastructure information that matters when picking a service? How do you uh portray that to a customer or how should customers look at that and try to figure out the you know the actual nitty-gritty details of the infrastructure? To be honest, I don't think mining customers really give a what container you use. They want the miner to run. They want their sads to be there. So, it's I think the I mean the topic is key things to look for in a mining service. Electricity rate, yes. Geography, yes. But it's a lot about trust. You will most likely never see your miners. You will not fly to Ethiopia. You will not fly to Finland and see the container. At the end of the day, you trust us. And if you meet us at the conference, that's fine. Most clients never meet the teams. you have a couple a couple Google meetings if you can and that's what our company or in this case Yadam sitting front row is doing quite well he's writing research papers and like actually like writing about the topics and trying to have some extra information to read at that is one way to do it but at the end of the day what a container and what the infrastructure is like they don't really care often the only thing that we do quite well is we have in Finland we have a heat reuse site so for us it's easier to explain why it's useful it's we We have water cooling the chip, the water gets hot and we sell that to the government and they heat cities. So we have like 100,000 people in Finland that shower that cook with our heated water and that is easy to convey. But the in infrastructure and the the pipes and all of that, I don't think that's the transformers that y'all are using. There's always that one guy. Um but that is a big thing about it is trust. And of course the ethos of don't trust verify like there there are levels to that in in Bitcoin especially with Bitcoin mining cuz you're paying someone for a service of hosting a minor. How do you build that trust with the with your customers and establish I mean obviously track record goes goes a long way but with someone especially like a new company because we're we're in a very young industry. Um, how do you how do you bring that trust up to a point where it's like, yeah, I'm I'm ready to host with you because I know like what you're doing. Maybe you want to take that. >> Uh, I will take it from our angle because you know we uh we are aggregator layer and we work with different mining farms and operators. So we are not operators ourselves you know. So uh what I experience from uh being like uh dealing with multiple operators across US uh and globe uh the trust comes with the supplier from multiple aspects. Definitely historical data you know gives uh the way they monitor their uh hash rate you know the way they uh charge for consuming electricity you know and the efficiency overall you know the ultimate efficiency goals you know compared to the actual uh efficiency of the fleet you know so this data when you run it for some time historical data if they give it to you it gives you indication that they can when they say 95% or 98% uptime time then the efficiency comes you know like 80% then you understand they cannot meet that meet that efficiency later on but they don't we don't really uh because we are not expertise on designing the infrastructure but we rely on the suppliers to to do that uh structure for us uh the other thing uh the repairs you know because you know in our industry is not really mature like data centers you know it's been there for a while so the manufacturers they they have a schedule of release you know and they have let's say 99% of the stock they ship to you is working but in the mining is not the same or maybe the shipping conditions also differs and uh the insurance of assets uh also is different from normal data center to mining. So good operator always knows how to manage this, knows how uh to get replacement time, you know, if there is repairs required, you know, the time to uh submit the repair request, uh diagnose the repairs, then uh what is their technicians on site, you know, what is their uh repair time, replacement time and all of this comes as major factor. Uh what I saw also hidden on that domain is the repair costs, you know. So the repair cost for the same item for the same uh uh default you know might vary 40 50% from operator to operator and repair time you know sometimes in in days and some other operators in uh in weeks. So from our aspect as a client not as operator you know we really trust uh majority of big ones big operators because they have flexibility to move between their fleets. They have bigger uh repair centers and more technicians on side you know the small ones still they are good but they are evolving you know so they are trying to be better but as we said the industry is not not much mature yet you know so uh they don't have very high standards for monitoring yet or repair yet you know so it runs more like uh uh the server if you are doing normal data center or AI data center you pay 70 or 100k for minor you pay much less so maybe the repair uh is not part of the strategy. Just get it out, get another miner and do it. So we saw this mentality and across a lot of mining farms and you don't have really tracking uh with 100% visibility to the end user. So we are trying to tell end user uh try there are very good software for monitoring very good software for tracking. So try when you whenever you want to do a mining directly look for this aspect. It will help you also to understand what is the performance of your devices are uh are are they online or not what is your after service cost you know after sale cost you know to maintain this for the farm. >> Yeah and you heard him he said he mentioned also that the industry is very it's not mature and like that's something that you always have to remember when you see something that's a little off or something like that like there is no industry standard. We're creating the industry standard as we speak. So, it it's it's very there's a lot of trial and error going on in this industry. Um, and it's teaching us. And curious if you have any more on to add on your side of things of like building that trust with with clients and and making sure that they're secure, they feel secure with you. What what I always like to tell clients is Bitcoin mining is not a get-rich quick scheme, right? Like you're you're not going to triple your money. your or in rare cases you you might but Bitcoin mining is a long-term thing where you most or your goal is to have more sats in four years then you could buy today and this is only possible with a long-term project that will take time and that will run stably if someone promises you to double your money within one or two years that is >> run that do not talk to them anymore >> exactly like to be honest I also think most companies are happy to uh give their opinions Like if you know a minor and you want to work with them, ask another company about them. Like they is it's not a normal thing to badmouth people in our industry. Like we don't do that. But we will definitely say something positive about the people we know if you ask us about them. So I think that trusting is people are honest. Most people are honest. That's why if you ask enough and you do enough research, you should be able to find a reliable partner that at least will communicate problems with you if they have any. Do you have something Matt? >> Yeah, sure. So, I talked a little bit about building trust about the payout scheme, but another value proposition of the pool that I built was really low latency. That's going to be faster than most pools out there, if not all. Um, but don't trust me. You verify yourself. So, I ended up building some tooling that anybody can run. It's open sourced from their own home network, and they can test the latency of the pool that I built against any other pool they want. And it doesn't have to be a solo pool. can be any pool. Um, so that you can see both the ping time and the stratum connect time. Um, also you can see how long it takes to negotiate a TLS connection if the pool supports TLS. Some pools don't. That TLS is an encrypted pro encryption protocol. Um, if you do IPv4 or IPv6 uh connectivity, you can do the testing that way as well. So the whole point is one way I've tried to build trust with people who use the pool is to provide tooling to allow them to verify that when I say it's really fast, they can see them for themselves. That's really fast. >> Welcome to predict. The world is a market. Everything is a market. Every headline moves the line. Every moment is your market. Call the moves. Bet on your instinct. Your prediction, your edge. Dual bits. Predict where everything is a market. >> Yeah, it's a big thing of you [clears throat] could say don't trust verify all day, but it's like if you're not helping someone learn how to verify, then they just have to fall back on that trust. But um well, we're getting close to time. I want to just go down the line and and as a final thought, just what would you say to someone who is interested in mining but hasn't taken that leap? They see they've been in the space maybe a couple of years and they just see the machines getting more intense and more power hungry. What would you say to that person who has that itch but doesn't know where to start? What's what's the best tip of advice for them? >> I think mining has three main parts why it makes sense. Some people like one part more than the other, but it's KYC free Bitcoin if you use the right pool. It is a leverage bet on Bitcoin and it's emotionless. Like I pay I have my mining bill and I mine every 10 minutes without thinking oh maybe the price will go up or down tomorrow because it doesn't matter like I'll >> revenues in Bitcoin. >> Exactly. I always also tell people if you start mining be sure to be able to pay the bill in fiat at prices like this. You don't want to pay your your your bill in Bitcoin just because you will lose so much of the ROI that if you have one Bitcoin and you spend it all and then you want to pay the bill in the Bitcoin you've mined, you will most likely not come out with more sats than if you would have just bought. If you have a business or if you have a salary that can pay the bill in fiat, that's the one way to do it. Otherwise, I don't think it makes sense to otherwise I don't think it makes sense to mine at all at that point. Just buy spot and you'll be good. If you are interested in it, it's also like having some skin in the game. It's nice to have a minor. I don't know if uh people here solo mine. Of course, it's a little bit of a gamble. We had in our location, we had one guy that in two weeks found two blocks, but he was uh of course in a mining pool, but like it's it's a gamble. It's cool. Um but it's not risk-free. So, be careful and don't think that you'll get rich doing it. Yeah. >> Yeah. It's definitely not biggest thing is it's not a great rich quick scheme. Matt. >> Yeah. I would say if you if you haven't dabbled in mining, get yourself a small home solo bit mine bit miner. They have them here. You can buy one right now. Uh you can order them online. But the point is is it's a great way to learn more about Bitcoin, the Bitcoin protocol, how mining itself works. Um it's just a great way to to learn about the protocol and and how it all and you can contribute to it as well. Just by even buying one little device, you're playing a very small role in helping the Bitcoin um network work. So, take a look, try it out, and if you do solo mining, consider the pool I built, Atlas Pool. >> Just be warned, it is a gateway gateway drug. Um, I I got my first minor. It was an S7. Just to see what like how it works. And now look at me. It's all gone downhill from there. No, I love it. But Remy, any last words? Uh I would say first you know it's very important to simplify it for people because the strength of bitcoin network is not the value of bitcoin is not the exchanges is not tradable you know the value of bitcoin comes of being decentralized people send it from a person to person so I we impress always solo mining we impress also the decentralization and avoid concentration of mining you know across same location same country or same operator you know so that's how the bitcoin is built so simplifying the entry is important Because mining uh with farm there are still right partner there are still right technology which simplify this for people you know and give accessibility without really having bad experience you know we highlight in this uh panel is the risks you know on what you need to avoid but what you need you need to start you know because if you believe that bitcoin is the future of decentralization and you want to do peer-to-peer transactions why you need to rely on uh a business or mining farm or uh just to process your transaction and it's built that you can own a small portion of power and start that that journey. So from my point of view I I think Bitcoin mining is a must for every person in the world and we are still below one 1% of people understand what is mining and the more we see solution and company try to simplify and bridge that gap without knowing the infrastructure layer uh complexity without going also to the how I configure my pool but they need to get you know allin-one solution to get that accessibility and unlock that uh there is a fairness index for bitcoin mining if you hold one bitcoin and you have zero contribution to mining then you are relying on others to process that transaction and that mentality should change because if we all believe in bitcoin we need to believe in bitcoin miners bitcoin miners is not only in industrial product that everyone need to know the dynamic how it works but they need to know that if I do mining you know through different ways you know either through owning devices renting it or solo miners still you know I'm contributing to the bigger direction of Bitcoin. >> Very well said, guys. Thank you so much for being here. Give it up for our panelists. They've they've done amazing. Find any of them after around. I promise you if you find someone who's excited to talk about Bitcoin, you you'll it's very easy to talk about Bitcoin with someone who wants to talk about Bitcoin mining. So, uh thank you all so much for coming and I will turn it back over to our stage host. [music] Every year this community comes together to [music] celebrate, to debate, to build what comes next. [music] And every year the stage gets bigger. [music] Sound money center stage. [music] So where do you go to celebrate the next chapter in Bitcoin history? You come home. Nashville. [music] July 2027.