Cryptocurrency Miner Maker Coinmine Raises $2.5 Million
Coinmine, Inc., the creator of the Coinmine One cryptocurrency mining device, has raised $2.5 million in a funding round led by Los Angeles-based M13 Ventures with participation from Republic Labs, Gumi Crypto, Canaan Beta and early Uber investor Shervin Pishevar, the company’s CEO and co-founder, Farbood Nivi, told Bitcoin Magazine.
The new funding round brings the total amount raised by Coinmine to $4.5 million. Early backers of the startup include Coinbase Ventures, Social Leverage, Wonder VC, Arrington Capital and angel investors including Balaji Srinivasan, co-founder of Earn.com, and Brian Norgard, chief product officer of Tinder.
Launched in November 2018, California-based Coinmine is the maker of the Coinmine One, a cryptocurrency miner targeted at mainstream users. The miner has an accompanying mobile app which allows users to set up, control and keep track of their miner’s activity.
At launch, the Coinmine One was able to mine monero, zcash, grin and ether, and in June 2019, the company added the ability for users to receive payouts in bitcoin. The device doesn’t mine bitcoin directly but instead algorithmically selects “whatever converts best to bitcoin.” These bitcoin payouts are calculated based on “current market prices,” Jinny Kang, head of public relations and partnerships at Coinmine, told Bitcoin Magazine.
Since April 2019, the company has been growing over 50 percent month-over-month only from word of mouth, Nivi said. He declined to share specific sales or revenue figures but said that the company was on track to beat its 2019 sales targets.
Nivi also said that the company will use the capital injection to expand the cryptocurrencies available through the device, add new services and ship over-the-air updates with improvements like increased hash power and energy efficiency.
The Coinmine One Cryptocurrency Miner
Coinmine claims its Coinmine One miner is the world’s “first all-in-one crypto device” made for the average consumer. The device isn’t meant to get users rich overnight, but rather to help them get started with cryptocurrencies, and allow them to mine new tokens and run a full node on the network.
Users don’t need to have any previous experience or expertise with cryptocurrency mining, and the set up is relatively easy and straightforward: just plug the miner into a wall outlet, install the mobile app, connect the Coinmine One to WiFi through the app and select a coin to start mining. The cryptocurrencies mined are then immediately stored in the in-app digital wallet.
All devices come with a full version of the Bitcoin blockchain and a Lightning Network Daemon (LND). Nivi said that Lightning functionalities should be turned on and available later this year with another wireless update.
“You’ll be able to send and receive bitcoin directly from your Coinmine One — instantly and for free,” he said. “You’ll also help Bitcoin succeed by helping other people route bitcoin payments through your Coinmine One and you’ll even earn a little bitcoin for doing that.”
The MineOS Operating System
The Coinmine One miner is powered by a proprietary operating system called MineOS, which the company started building internally in 2018.
Some of MineOS’s unique features include automated overclocking and undervolting hardware on the fly, as well as automated updating and upgrading over the air.
Updates so far in 2019 include the reduction of the Coinmine One energy consumption by 30 percent, the addition of bitcoin payouts, support for grin mining and the increase of ether hashrate by 5 percent.
Moving forward, Nivi said that Coinmine plans to add support for handshake (HNS) mining as well as new services and features such as the ability for users to earn interest on their cryptocurrency.
“There are decentralized finance services like Compound Finance that let you earn interest on your crypto and you can take your principal out whenever you want,” he said. “So we can invest the crypto your Coinmine One is making into a service like that and earn you interest. We plan to launch it this year.”
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