River Financial, a San Francisco-based bitcoin technology and financial services company, will enable its clients to buy bitcoin mining machines and start mining without having to set up and maintain the computers themselves.
The company has launched a service called “River Mining” in which customers can buy Bitmain’s Antminer S19j Pro miners and manage the mining process with a mobile app, according to River Financial’s website. The miners have about 100 terahash per second mining power each. Terahash is a measure of the machine’s computational power.
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“With River Mining, clients will own their mining hardware and the bitcoin generated will be deposited directly into their River accounts,” the company said in a statement. The company has started a pre-sale of the machines and set up a wait list on its website. Customers can pay for just one miner to get started.
Once clients buy the miners, they will be responsible for the electricity fees and a monthly hosting charge for the machines.
The first miner will go online in early 2022, according to an emailed statement from River Financial CEO Alex Leishman. The service will be initially available to clients in the U.S., but the company plans to expand the program globally in 2022, he said.
The product comes at a time when bitcoin mining has become a lucrative business with high profit margins thanks to a rally in the price of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency by market value. However, the challenges of setting up machines and the lack of access to cheap electricity have made moving into the sector challenging for new entrants. “Chip shortages, supply chain breakdowns and high residential energy costs have made entering mining more difficult,” Leishman said.
“River Mining removes these barriers for clients by making it easy to own, manage and generate bitcoin with their personal bitcoin mining fleets,” he added.
