Coinmine rolls out at-home crypto mining device

Coinmine
launched a crypto mining device called Coinmine
One.
Coinmine

• Coinmine, a startup backed by Coinbase Ventures and
  other investors, rolled out a new crypto mining device that
  allows users to mint cryptocurrencies at home.
• The device now allows users to mine Ethereum, Ethereum
  Classic, Monero, and Zcash, though not yet
  Bitcoin. 
• 
  The launch comes at a time when mining
  cryptocurrencies at home is difficult to do at scale, in the
  wake of falling crypto prices and
  rising energy costs. 
  

For $799, you can mine
cryptocurrency at home.

Launched this week, a new gadget
called Coinmine One gets rid of the traditionally cumbersome
mining process. 

Instead of manually assembling
multiple computer graphic processors, downloading the software,
and setting up a crypto wallet, all you need to do is power up
the device, connect it to WIFI, and tap your phone to choose
which coin you want to mine.  

For the initial launch, Coinmine
One allows users to mine Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Monero, and
Zcash — but not yet Bitcoin. With further updates, it will
support Grin, Dfinity, Filecoin and Bitcoin Lightning, the
company said. 

Unlike most specially-designed,
unwieldy mining rigs, the Coinmine One device is smaller,
handier, and quieter. The device is the size of a
PlayStation video game console with a sleek Apple-esque design
and comes pre-assembled. You can simply use a mobile app to
control the device, which also doesn’t produce roaming sounds
when turned on.

With a white, transparent cover,
it looks like a compact computer case and is powered by an
operating system, dubbed MineOS, which updates automatically to
support a variety of crypto networks. It also consumes a
relatively small amount of electricity at 120 watts per hour,
according to the company, 

The device is aimed at overcoming
one of the main challenges in crypto mining — the high barriers
for ordinary people to enter, said Farbood Nivi, cofounder and
CEO of Coinmine.

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“Crypto is about decentralizing
information and money with decentralized computing,” he said.
“The more you can support the decentralization, the more people
can support the decentralizing power, the more secure, powerful,
reliable and valuable crypto becomes.”

Nivi likened the potential impact
of Coinmine on the crypto world to the influence that Apple had
on the PC industry. 

“We were like Apple computers
back then, an easy way to access the Internet,” he said. “Easy to
participate. You don’t have to be an expert.” 

The device has a power of 29
megahashes per second(MH/s) for Ethereum, 900 hashes per second
(H/s) for Monero, and 320 solution per second (Sol/s) for Zcash.
To put that into perspective, if turned on for a year, the device
can mint an ether, which is the cryptocurrency powering Ethereum,
up to three Monero, and half a Zcash, according to Nivi.

The company has raised $1.5
million to-date and is backed by Coinbase’s venture arm as well
as angel investors like Coinbase’s chief technology officer
Balaji Srinivasan and Tinder’s chief product officer Brian
Norgard.

The new launch comes at a time
when it’s
harder to turn a profit mining crypto, particularly at home.
According to research firm Diar,
bitcoin miners amassed $4.7 billion in revenue in the first
three quarters of 2018. But with crypto prices falling and an
increase in computing power competing for mining rewards,
profitability has dropped. 

Mining, in general, is a process
of solving complicated math problems to get compensated by new
coins, like bitcoin or ether. Machines run 24/7 to execute a
protocol to resolve those math problems. The first computer, or a
group of computers, that solve the problem can receive slices of
the currencies in return. In the midst of the cryptocurrency
craze, sophisticated investors set up machines at home to mine
those digital assets and sell them, in addition to trading
cryptos on exchanges. 

Whether you can make money
depends on the efficiency of the mining rig, the cost of
electricity, and the price of the cryptocurrency.

In bitcoin mining, the industry
has been rapidly evolved, with miners using gears equipped with
specially designed mining chips, called ASIC, short for
application-specific integrated circuit.

But even with those advanced
kits, it would still be hard for miners to be profitable at
scale, according to Silicon Valley venture capitalist Bill Tai,
who is also a board member of BitFury, which
produces mining hardware.

“You have to be able to source
electricity at scale and at prices of less than 10 cents,” he
said.

According to a report by advisory
firm Fundstrat, the breakeven price for bitcoin mining is $7,300,
assuming that miners are using the powerful bitcoin miner
Antminer S9 ASIC and paying an electricity cost of
$0.06. 

“What’s at the heart of the
crypto mining industry is a hash rate battle and a low energy
consumption battle,” said Martin Leblanc, founder and CEO of
Nuvoo, a Canadian cryptocurrency mining company.

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Get the latest Bitcoin price here.>>