Crypto-mining firm Foundry, which is owned by embattled conglomerate Digital Currency Group, is going to start charging users a fee for its Bitcoin mining services.
(Bloomberg) — Crypto-mining firm Foundry, which is owned by embattled conglomerate Digital Currency Group, is going to start charging users a fee for its Bitcoin mining services.
Foundry USA will begin levying a pool fee on members between April 19 and April 22, according to a notice it circulated to clients on April 6. The Rochester, New York-based company has provided its services for free since launching the mining pool in 2019.
“As the Foundry USA Pool continues to scale, we are implementing tiered fees that will further allow us to expand our feature set and continue operating within our FPPS [Full Pay Per Share] payout model,” reads the notice obtained by Bloomberg News. The pricing tiers for each quarter will be based on the previous quarter’s average hashrate — a measure of computing power — the notice said.
When contacted by Bloomberg News, Foundry declined to comment.
Crypto-mining services providers like Foundry typically use software to “pool” computing power from miners and help raise their odds of earning Bitcoin rewards. Most of the providers charge a fee as maintaining the pool generates significant operating costs.
Foundry’s “zero-fee” pricing structure helped propel it as a major Bitcoin mining pool. Data from btc.com peg it as the world’s largest Bitcoin mining pool by computing power, with a network share of about 36%. The company also provides crypto staking services.
Foundry’s parent, Digital Currency Group, came under investigation earlier this year by US authorities over its various internal financial dealings. In January, DCG’s crypto lending unit Genesis filed for bankruptcy with liabilities in the range of billions of dollars, as part of the fallout from the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto exchange.
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