Equipment Hosting
Hosting is placing your asic at somebody else's site for a monthly fee. Noise, the power feed and extraction become somebody else's worry, and you lose control over the site.
What equipment hosting is
At home an ASIC gets in the way of living: an air cooled asic makes about 75 dB, and two of them need a power feed that no apartment has. Hosting removes both problems at once: you send the hardware to a site and pay for kilowatts and maintenance.
The economics change shape. Buying the asic stays your CAPEX, while electrics, cooling and the rack turn into somebody else's CAPEX and into your monthly payment. The math has to run on the final price of a kilowatt hour at the site, not on the site's own rate from its supplier.
Prices get quoted in different ways: per kilowatt hour, per kilowatt of capacity per month, or per asic. Offers can only be compared once you bring them to one measure, otherwise the cheap looking one turns out dearer.
The main risk sits in the contract rather than in the price. Downtime at the site is income you did not get, and who answers for that downtime depends on what is written about uptime and about repair.
Quick reference table
| What it is | placing an asic at somebody else's site |
| What it takes off you | noise, the power feed, cooling, the rack |
| How the fee is counted | per kilowatt hour, per kilowatt or per asic |
| What stays yours | the asic and the downtime risk |
| What to look at first | the contract, not the price |
What to ask before you ship the asic
What the price includes: electricity only, or maintenance, cleaning and fan replacement as well.
What is written about downtime: whether uptime is promised and what happens if the site stands idle for a week.
Who pays for repair and whose stock of spare parts is used. Separately: whether the asic gets taken away for repair and how long that takes.
How you see your own asics: your own access to the interface, or only the site's report. A key with read rights settles this without extra rights.
How to take the asic back: the notice period, who pays for delivery and what happens if the price goes up mid term.
An example of the logic
At home the rate is 0.135 euros per kilowatt hour, but you can install one asic and listen to it through the wall. A site quotes a price above the home one, yet it takes on the power feed and the cooling, and ten asics can stand there. What you have to count is not the difference in rate but the monthly total: the payment to the site against revenue and against how many miners you can physically fit at your place.
Related terms
Where to go next on the site
Numbers
Hardware
- ASIC Miner knowledge base
Guides
- ASIC Manufacturers knowledge base
Questions and answers
Is hosting cheaper than at home
By the price of a kilowatt hour it is almost always dearer. The point lies elsewhere: at home you physically cannot fit more than one or two asics.
Who answers for downtime
Only whatever is written in the contract. Without a clause about uptime, downtime is your own loss.
Can you watch the asics yourself
At decent sites yes, through your own access or a read key. A total lack of visibility is a bad sign.
How does a mining hotel differ
It is the same thing, a word out of casual speech. The conditions get judged by the contract rather than by the name.
How the terms connect
Every link in the chain is clickable. Orange marks where you are now.
Looking for an ASIC miner
The catalog holds 212 models. You can compare them by hashrate and by joules per terahash, then plug your own rate into the calculator and see what stays in your pocket.
Page written and checked by Denys Klimchuk. Updated .