DCG Foundry Closes Free Mining Service

Digital Currency Group will be restructuring its Bitcoin mining operations in the face of bigger funding problems, in large part because their other subsidiary, Genesis, went bankrupt as a result of their deal with FTX.

Although Genesis reached agreements with its creditors, including the holding company of the crypto trading platform, DCG, Genesis will be sold as soon as a buyer appears.

The agreement reached by DCG and its subsidiaries is a step in the right direction. However, DCG is still in a bind and appears to be looking for a new revenue stream.

Foundry USA, DCG’s Bitcoin mining subsidiary, will start billing users for their service in mid-April.

To date, use of the Foundry has been free since the service was launched in 2019, quickly becoming the world’s largest mining pool in terms of computing power.

According to btc.com, Foundry currently controls 33.49% of the global Bitcoin mining pool, with F2Pool controlling 14.06% and Binance Pool controlling 11.16%.

Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever, and DCG announced that the service is no longer being provided for free. To be fair, most mining pool services charge a fee – New foundries are now starting to charge like everyone else is doing.

However, the decision has understandably upset some fans of the service.

According to Bloomberg, Foundry’s new business model will be a tiered mining service subscription list, with prices varying quarterly based on the previous quarter’s hash rate.

“As the Foundry USA Pool grows, we are implementing tiered fees which will allow us to expand our feature set while maintaining our FPPS (Full Pay Per Share) payment model.” Each quarter’s price level will be based on the previous quarter’s average hash rate – a measure of computing power.”

While it’s unfortunate that the biggest mining pool would abandon the practice that earned it the title of top dog, it’s not entirely unexpected. For now, it’s unclear what current users will have to pay for the first quarter. Foundry’s new business model will take effect in about two weeks, between April 19 and 22.