Hosted Bitcoin mining

Hosted mining is simple. You buy an ASIC. A company puts it in a hall, feeds it power, keeps it cool, and watches it. You still own the box. The pool pays you. The host bills you for the room and the electricity, on whatever terms you signed.

That is colocation. Cloud mining is something else: you rent hashrate, and you never get a machine back if the seller disappears.

Why host

An air ASIC is loud all day. It dumps 3.5 kW of heat into the room. A house breaker and a house electricity tariff are built for lights and a kettle, not for a rack pulling 16 A continuously. Hydro machines need a water loop no home provides.

You host so someone is there when the unit freezes, and so the heat has somewhere to go.

What you usually pay for

Power to the PSU, a slot in a rack or a container, cooling, a network path to the pool, and a reboot when the software hangs.

Billed on top, and only if the contract says so: firmware, filter cleaning, RMA freight, repair after warranty, insurance, and shipping the box home when you leave.

Some hosts meter every kWh. Some sell a flat rack with a power cap. Some mix a setup invoice and a variable line. The number that matters is the one on the quote, not the one on a homepage.

Two hosts

Blobb (blobb.io) runs a turnkey path: the machine, the freight, the install, the hall, and a dashboard so you can see the box. Partner pages describe halls with Mining Delta, in Kazakhstan, Texas, and Iceland among the names they use. Ask which room your serial number will sit in.

Gwensas Mining (gwensas.com) is a Bordeaux operator. They take the machine through to a site and pay the wallet on a monthly rhythm. They talk about green power, and Virunga is the site associated with their name. Their homepage shows a euro-per-kWh figure: that is a commercial claim, which becomes information once it appears on a quote.

Read the contract

Ask whether the kWh is fixed or indexed. Ask how long you are locked in, whether the term renews by itself, and what an early exit costs. Ask who pays when the hall fails, and who pays when a hashboard fails. Ask about theft and fire cover. Ask how the machine comes home, and in which currency they invoice.

If the company fails, you only get the ASIC back if the paper keeps it out of the bankruptcy pile and says how you collect it. That is the one clause that matters on the day it matters.

Tax

Bitcoin received from a pool is usually income when it lands. Hosting fees and depreciation may be deductible depending on how you file. Ask someone who files in your country.

The Bitcoin Bay explains the setup. You sign with the host.