So you’d like to start mining Bitcoin but it’s just not feasible where you live. Electricity is too expensive, you don’t have a place to put the noise and hot miners, or you’re just not sure how to get everything set up and optimized. One popular solution is hosted mining – for an agreed upon fee a mining host will set up your equipment in their operation, keep it cool and monitor it 24/7 to ensure maximum uptime.
When evaluating the feasibility of Bitcoin mining, as with any other mining operation, the key to profitability lies in the cost of electricity. Any country with cheap electricity, no matter how remote, is going to be attractive to miners and mining hosts. That, and one other important consideration, are why operations are springing up all over an Eastern European country not typically associated with cutting edge technology: Kazakhstan.
Electricity and Cooling
According to Coinrate.com, as of publication Kazakhstan has on average the third cheapest rates for electricity of any country in the world. At an average cost of just over $0.03 per kilowatt hour only two countries are cheaper: Venezuela and Argentina. Politics aside, the difficulty with mining in these two countries is the weather. ASICs running at full capacity generate heat. A lot of it. And Venezuela and Argentina are warm already. That means mining operations in these two countries have to spend extra to keep their operations cool. Not so with Kazakhstan.
The average summer temperature in northern Kazakhstan is only 19 degrees Celsius (66 Fahrenheit). That means that miners, particularly those located in the colder northern regions, may not need to pay for cooling at all. When the margins are tight, as they are now in the bear market, that alone can mark the difference between profit and loss.
It’s also worth noting, land is cheap in Kazakhstan. Mining hosts can build large buildings, or renovate existing ones for less than what it would cost in other countries. Many mining hosting companies are taking advantage of this to build their operations close to existing powerplants, further reducing the cost of electricity.
Finding the Right Operation
One example of a Kazakhstan hosting operation is Xive which promises turnkey hosting advertised at $0.045 per kilowatt hour. Their website promises to set up your equipment in their center, as well as helping with ASICs shipping to clear customs quickly. They also offer the option of purchasing the equipment through Xive. For those that desire to see their ASICs in action, they purport to also offer a 24/7 live webcam feed.
