Bitcoin mining just got a lower barrier to entry.
Sazmining announced Thursday that it is now selling Proto’s immersion hashboards directly to individual and institutional buyers through its mining-as-a-service platform. Previously, the hardware was mostly in the hands of large-scale operators.
Each hashboard delivers roughly 200 TH at around 15 J/TH, and buyers own them outright while Sazmining handles deployment, monitoring and maintenance at a US facility. Mining rewards go straight to the owner’s wallet.
The move follows a multi-megawatt supply deal between Sazmining and Proto — the bitcoin mining arm of Jack Dorsey’s Block (NYSE: XYZ) — which both companies expect to expand as demand grows.
“Because of our aligned-incentive model, Sazmining only earns when we produce bitcoin for our clients,” said Kent Halliburton, CEO and co-founder of Sazmining.
He also pitched mining as a form of bitcoin acquisition diversification: rather than paying the market price on the day of purchase, a miner’s costs are spread across the machine’s working life.
Wyoming-based Sazmining, founded in 2018, operates renewable-powered facilities across the US, Paraguay, and Norway. It says its fleet runs more than 20 percentage points ahead of the Bitcoin network’s carbon-free share.
Proto is Jack Dorsey’s Block’s bitcoin mining play. The Twitter founder has spent years arguing bitcoin is the foundation of “a more open financial system,” funding everything from Cash App’s buy-and-send rails to the Bitkey self-custody wallet, and he framed mining as the obvious missing piece back in 2021: “Bitcoin mining should be as easy as plugging a rig into a power source.”
Block formally announced it was building an open bitcoin mining system in January 2022, with the stated aim of making mining “more distributed and efficient.”
Mathew is a reporter who’s covered the space since 2019, reporting on everything from Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele’s Bitcoin bet to crypto exchange FTX’s bankruptcy.
