DCG Foundry mining pool opens to the public after quietly mining over 780 BTC

Digital Currency Group's mining subsidiary Foundry has announced it is opening up its Foundry USA mining pool after months in private beta mode.

The firm said in an announcement on Thursday that it has signed up its first institutional mining client and is now launching the pool to the public. The pool supports both BTC and BCH using the Full-Pay-Per-Share (FPPS) payout method.

Miner operators who connect their machines to a mining pool using the FPPS mode receive portions of the block rewards and transaction fees based on their hashrate contribution. 

Blockcap, a U.S.-based miner operator, said in the statement that it has already added approximately 10,000 units of its bitcoin mining machines to Foundry USA, a move that added about 910 petahashes per second (PH/s) of computing power.

“We are excited to have Blockcap as the first big customer of our mining pool and look forward to providing our pool’s users with a new mining experience that has been tailor-made to fit the needs of institutional mining companies,” said Mike Colyer, CEO of Foundry.

Foundry quietly went live with its bitcoin mining pool in October and did not reveal itself until mid-December with a coinbase signal "Foundry USA #dropgold" — a reference to a slogan used by DCG's Grayscale commercial line.

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Based on the coinbase transactions to Foundry USA's payout addresses, the pool has mined more than 125 blocks with over 780 BTC since October as block subsidies that are worth about $43 million.

The firm said its mining pool is integrated with various financial services under DCG's Genesis umbrella including custody, trading, lending and yield earning products.

The Foundry pool launches amid growing investment in bitcoin mining from North American institutions. 

The Block reported last month that since October, North American institutions have poured well over half a billion dollars into bitcoin mining hardware purchases.

Indeed, Blockcap has another 10,000 units of AntMiners from Bitmain and 8,400 units from Canaan that are all on order and due for shipment.

Upon full delivery, these machines will contribute additional computing power to Foundry USA's current bitcoin hashrate, which currently accounts for 1.79 % of the network's total. That makes it the 11th largest pool, based on bitcoin's 7-day moving-average hashrate

“Mining on a pool that is made and based completely in the US, and offers institutional miners payouts at par with the world’s biggest pools was an obvious choice on our mission to make North America a global hub for digital-asset mining,” Blockcap’s Executive Chairman Darin Feinstein said in the statement.

About Author

Wolfie joined The Block’s news team in 2020 and switched to the research side in 2021 to focus on crypto mining analysis. Prior to The Block, he had been a journalist at CoinDesk for three years. Wolfie has a background in financial journalism.