Chinese bitcoin mining giant Bitmain has revealed the total hashrate of all its cryptocurrency mining hardware. This was done as part of a larger push towards greater business transparency by the company ahead of its rumored massive IPO. 

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Bitmain Transparency Policy

Bitmain Technologies Ltd., the Beijing-headquartered bitcoin mining machines (ASIC chips) producer expected to seek a $12 billion IPO in the Hong Kong stock market, has enacted policies meant to increase transparency. The team stated: “To put it plainly, we believe that communities served by Bitmain and its products should be supported and served as transparently as possible. Recent measures have included restricting order quantities, ensuring a first-paid-first-ship order of fulfillment, blocking IPs that we suspect to be hoarding, and publishing detailed shipping updates openly. Based on the encouraging results from these early efforts, as well as our continued dialogue with the broader cryptocurrency community, Bitmain is redoubling its commitment to business transparency.”

The first of these new efforts is a disclosure policy on self-mining. The company will publish monthly data on which algorithms it is mining for itself and the total hashrate of Bitmain-owned hardware.

No to ‘Secret Mining’ and ‘Empty Blocks’

Bitmain also proclaimed it will maintain its “long-held zero-tolerance policy” against ‘secret mining’. This is when a manufacturer would mine for itself with newly developed equipment prior to selling or distributing it to customers.

Additionally, the company promises to never seek to mine ‘empty blocks’. The team explained that: “While often described as the result of sinister intent, empty blocks often occur because of issues in block propagation at the protocol level rather than active decision-making by mining pool operators. We are actively working towards mitigating these issues. However, should there occur any unusual or excessive rate of empty block mining by a mining pool owned by Bitmain, we will seek out the cause and disclose the reasons why.”

Lastly, Bitmain will publish the shipping and volume information for the first model of all new miners, tweeting the quantity and payment timestamps via the official Antminer Twitter account. This will be done for all rounds of shipments within the first batches of those models.

Which other companies should adopt a more forthcoming transparency policies? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Tags in this story

ASIC Mining, Bitcoin mining, Bitmain, crypto mining, cryptocurrency mining, Empty Blocks, hash power, Hash rate, Hashrate, mining hardware, N-Technology, SHA256, Transparency

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Avi Mizrahi

Avi Mizrahi is an economist and entrepreneur who has been covering Bitcoin as a journalist since 2013. He has spoken about the promise of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology at numerous financial conferences around the world, from London to Hong-Kong.