digitalBTC and Cryptsy are building a new platform called Mintsy that will offer tradable mining contracts as well as mining infrastructure, enabling users to mine with their own equipment as well as the hashing power they purchase.
As part of the deal, Cryptsy will invest $250,000 in the Australia-based bitcoin mining services provider. Dubbed digitalX Mintsy, the project will open for registration tomorrow.
Mintsy will offer mining products and services on a range of digital currency hashing algorithms, including SHA-256 and crypt. Further, it will release its first products during the fourth quarter of this year.
Cryptsy CEO Paul Vernon told CoinDesk that the goal of digitalX Mintsy is to offer the trading community a broad range of investment services. At the same time, Mintsy will aim to provide more affordable access to hashing power, factoring the cost of electricity and labor expenses into the listing price.
Vernon explained:
“The price you pay is the price you pay – there’s no extra cost as you go. You don’t have to pay for extra power – you’ve already paid for the power. It’s not something you have to continuously calculate in your earnings to see how much you make. All of that’s upfront.”
Cryptsy and digitalBTC announced that, in order to help spur enrollment, Mintsy will hold a bitcoin raffle worth $5,000.
Interconnected platforms
Like other applications of this approach to selling mining contracts, Mintsy will make available 1 petahash worth of so-called “hashfracs”, each of which represent 100 TH/s. There will also be “litefracs” and “xfracs” available, representing litecoin and a yet-to-be-selected algorithm, respectively.
Mintsy will also feature mining pools for both bitcoin and a number of other altcoins, including a multi-pool function. This, Vernon explained, was to provide the site’s users with a wider array of mining resources and allow people to mine with their own equipment as well.
Vernon told CoinDesk that the goal is to align the coin offerings on the exchange and mining platforms, saying:
“There’ll be quite a few [coins available]. Basically, everything you see on Cryptsy that is mineable should probably be mineable on Mintsy as well.”
There will also be a degree of interconnectivity between Mintsy and Cryptsy. Similar to the relationship between CEX.io and GHash, users will be able to transfer balances between the two platforms.
Commodification of hash power continues
An increasing number of companies in the exchange and mining industries are offering tradable contracts as the model has emerged as an alternative to traditional cloud mining agreements.
This week, Bitfinex announced the launch of a beta tranche of tradable mining contracts. Cryptsy itself is no stranger to tradable hashes. Earlier this year, the exchange began offering an asset that allowed owners to earn daily dividends.
Despite the rising popularity of commodified hashing power, there are still major players in the space that offer more traditional mining contracts.
KnCMiner recently launched a cloud hashing initiative at its Norway-based data center. At the time, the company asserted that hosted solutions are becoming a more attractive option for miners, a sentiment that has been increasingly echoed by businesses that offer both tradable and traditional mining contracts.
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Original author: Stan Higgins
