The world’s largest crypto exchange by volume, Binance continues its push into the embattled crypto mining industry with a plan to begin offering a crypto cloud mining product next month.
Crypto miners have had a tough year, with the price of bitcoin having hung around $20,000 for months, a far cry from its peak above $68,000 in November 2021. Other cryptos have faced similar or even worse declines. One of the largest mining-related firms in the U.S. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late September.
Other companies, however, are seeing opportunity from this crisis, with CleanSpark going on a buying spree of mining rigs and data centers, and DeFi platform Maple Finance starting a $300 million lending pool.
Binance Pool announced its own $500 million lending fund for bitcoin miners last week and said it would enter cloud mining, a service that allows investors – who otherwise might not be able to buy and operate their own equipment – to rent crypto mining machines. The official launch of the cloud mining service will come in November, a Binance spokesperson told CoinDesk via email on Monday.
The move opens a front of competition with Jihan Wu’s Bitdeer, a cloud mining operator that also launched a $250 million fund to buy distressed assets in late September. Wu is the ousted co-founder of Bitmain, the largest manufacturer of crypto mining machines in the world. Another big player in the cloud mining space is BitFuFu, backed by Bitmain’s other founder, Ketuan “Micree” Zhan.
Bitdeer and BitFuFu sell a mix of their own and others’ self-operated computing power, or hashrate. In its blog post announcing its own move into the business, Binance Pool said it would be buying hashrate from third parties, likely meaning that it wouldn’t be operating its own infrastructure.
“As one of the top mining pools in the world, Binance Pool will not only operate as a mining pool but also will take responsibility for contributing to building a healthy industry, especially during an uncertain market conditions,” the Binance spokesperson said.
Read more: Bitmain Redux: Bitdeer and BitFuFu Are About to Test US Stock Market’s Mining Appetite
