TLDR
We at HashPlex are building a new kind of datacenter designed from the ground up for bitcoin miners. Our prices have already set a market low at $99/kw-month, and our services and automation will set a new industry standard (we provide space, power, cooling, internet, and automated miner management). We’re on track to have our first HashCenter in Q2 of 2014, and we will be opening limited availability in our interim space in a few weeks. We’re accepting reservations for space in our HashCenters at https://hashplex.com. We pledge to forever remain a positive force in a vibrant, decentralized bitcoin mining community. Come check us out!
Our Genesis
HashPlex was a glimmer in my eye (some might say a tear) while setting up various bitcoin miners (mostly BFL and KNC) as they arrived.
“Couldn’t this be easier?” I asked myself, exhaling mumbled expletives through acidic, cold-press-infused spittle. I had quickly exhausted all the power in my apartment and my sister’s garage, and I was looking for more. I had what I thought was a great setup: several raspberry pi’s running ArchLinux with a simple cron for cgminer. Gradually I learned just how far from automated this setup was. CGMiner would segfault, my raspberry pi’s would crash, my GFIs would trip from bad power supplies. With my girlfriend’s various pained expressions weighing on my mind as our electrical panel buzzed like a pack of Asian hornets, I remembered the old adage, “some find opportunity in adversity.”
I went looking for larger venues to put my miners. “You want how many amps!?” was a common response from leasing agents. Even those that did have the electrical capacity had nothing near my required thermal capacity.
I went looking at datacenter space. Certainly they must have solved this problem. Oh, they had solved it (in the most inelegant, massively brute-force way possible), and boy would I pay for it out the nose. At the end of the day, even if I paid their exorbitant rates, I still didn’t receive any automated miner management.
I went to my friends and described our opportunity to build HashPlex. They were excited (a rarity for my ideas).
The Pitch
We’re offering full-service miner hosting at a 2-3x discount of what’s on the market, and we provide all the services not typically provided by the other guys. Our entry-level plan is $99/kw-month, and we drop to $89/kw-month if you can bring us 30kw or more of mining power. How many gigahashes is that? Here’s a handy lookup table:
Butterfly Labs Mini-Rig: 0.5TH/s, ~2.2kw → $297 / month
KNC Miner Jupiter: 0.55TH/s, ~600w → $99 / month
Coincraft Rig: 2.8TH/s, ~3kw → $297 / month
Cointerra TerraMiner IV: 2TH/s, ~1.5kw → $198 / month
HashFast Sierra: 1.2TH/s, ~800w → $99 / month
BlackArrow Prospero X-3 (@1.56GHz): 2TH/s, ~1kw → $99 / month
Our $99/kw-month rate comes out to a price of ~$0.1375 / kw-hour (and that includes power, internet, space, cooling, security, and automated management). Many miners pay more than that for power alone while mining at home. Do you have a solution for security at home? Will you have enough cooling when the summer months come? Are you tired of worrying about miners crashing while you’re on a trip? We at HashPlex pledge to be a ship-it-and-forget-it solution for the rest of the life of your miner.
How do we do it? We could never offer you this service and pricing while leasing existing spaces. Our custom HashCenters will enable new, unrivaled levels of productivity per dollar.
Who We Are
I’m Bernie, the founder and CEO of HashPlex. I studied Electrical Engineering at Stanford through 2009. I’ve worked at Better Place, Apple Computer, and Microsoft (where I spent my last 4 years).
While at Microsoft I helped with the video-input-processor and ambient light cancellation algorithm in Sensor-In-Pixel based Samsung LCDs which went into Micosoft PixelSense. I later tinkered on a few small inventions and worked on bringing an accessory for Microsoft Surface (the tablet) out of the labs while in the Microsoft Applied Sciences group.
I met Jason Prado (Advisor, SW Chief) at Stanford in the LaIR, a space for entry-level CS students to work and get help. Though not on duty, he volunteered answers to my questions all while his hands furiously thwacked the keyboard of a 12” PowerBook G4 in their own self-governed other-world of LateX.
cmd-tab … thwack-click-click-click … cmd-tab, compile … cmd-tab
“So you see” … “when you reach” … “the end” … “of a linked-list”
Jason would go on to work at Meebo, Apture, Microsoft, Plannr (acquired by Google), Google, and Facebook.
John Stockdale (Advisor, HW Chief) and I met during Stanford’s prospective freshman weekend. We both ran our own FTP servers and drooled over cars and computers. That weekend John took me to a (then mystical) burger place called “In-N-Out” in a Mitsubishi Evolution tuned to run on race gas. Both have had remarkable staying power in my still boyish subconscious.
After graduating, John went on to VW Research, Videosurf (acquired by Microsoft), and Facebook to work on their Open Compute Project. John is now an active angel investor, skydiver, and hacker of all kinds.
George Schnurle (VP Engineering) and I met through Jason in 2010. Shocked that somehow we had not crossed paths during school, we immediately hit it off, discussing our various clever mechanical inventions and apparati (both real and serial-day-dreamt). We’ve been burner & engineering buds ever since. George has done mechanical engineering for SLAC, WhereNet, and Paramit.
Why We’re A Great, Positive Force For The Network
We at HashPlex want to re-empower entry-level miners and help maintain healthy decentralization in the network. Sure, the era of GPU mining (for bitcoin) is forever gone, but the era of ASIC mining is actually still very young. Companies like CEX.IO have massive, centralized hashing power that is mining for a single pool. At HashPlex, customers will always have a choice for what pool they use, and they will always be given all available facilities to participate in the network in the manner that they would like.
Interested in hosting / partnering / working with us? Drop us a line.
