Marco Streng’s company, Genesis Mining, became the largest Scrypt hashpower provider this spring, just a few months after its launch.
Now, the team has re-launched their website and tweaked the company’s offer. We reached out to Streng to get more details on what is going on with the company.
Cointelegraph: Genesis Mining launched just a couple of months ago. How has the reception among customers and the community at large been?
Marco Streng: The reception of the community was immense! We literally launched in the middle of the Litecoin hype, when everybody was trying to get some graphic cards to start mining Litecoin at home, which was extremely profitable By that time, AMD graphic cards were completely sold out in America, and also in Europe it was difficult to get some.
We were pretty lucky that we had some good connections to various manufacturers to fill our mining facilities. We were working day and night at our first facility to get everything up and running as fast as possible. It helped that it was freezing cold outside and in the warehouse, so we worked extra hard to not freeze to death.
As we went live, users directly saw the opportunities of our service and we received massive requests so that we had to hold our sales shortly afterwards. The advantages were obvious:
Users could start mining immediately without having the hassle of buying hardware (which was not even available that time) and assembling everything.
Due to economy of scale, our prices were much better than building a mining rig themselves.
Users could sleep well without the noise and the risk of down time of their rigs. Larger investors were especially happy since they could not get such high amounts of hashrates so fast.
Also, we had lots of requests from people who rented Amazon clusters and recognized how much more efficient our service was.
CT: What was the process like putting together a company like Genesis Mining, especially one with three mining farms around the world?
MS: It was a very special experience for all of us. Although we already had experience in larger scale Scrypt mining before, the massive scale of this project was also new to us. It was exciting from the beginning of shipping the hardware to the right places to fine tuning the performance of the infrastructure after the miners had been pieced together.
Our initial plan was to only operate one location, but after optimizing everything we discovered that we can be faster up and could save a lot of money if we operate three locations. The logistics were a nightmare, though. I once got a phone call in the middle of the night that a few thousand Riser cables were stuck in customs (and could potentially be held there for weeks). You literally see your cryptocoins disappearing in front of you. After a few phone calls, we found someone who knew someone in the customs office, and the whole thing was quickly resolved. Having excellent contacts all over the world is the most important thing.
CT: What new features is Genesis Mining offering now that the new homepage is live?
MS: The most important thing is the new and unique user interface, which gives users the opportunity to distribute their hashpower over all altcoins as they desire.
The whole process of altcoin mining requires some technical knowledge: Setting up the miner, optimizing hardware / software, maintenance work, etc. We from Genesis Mining want to make altcoin mining as easy as possible, and our new interface is a big step toward this goal. We hope this sparks even more interest in the community for altcoins, which is a dynamic and very innovative field. We strongly believe that our clients and the whole altcoin community will benefit from making this market more easily accessible.
Also, our users will be able to use the GM Autotrader. The program uses advanced trading algorithms and portfolio optimization to mine the most profitable coins and exchange them to bitcoin for the best prices possible.
CT: What did you take away from attending the Bitcoin conferences in Texas and Amsterdam?
MS: I was amazed by the variety of visitors! It was not only that the number increased much relative to the past years, it was also that they came from various other fields of interest. Also, it is amazing how much networking is going on there, and nobody wants to miss the chance of a potential new big joint venture with other companies. I am looking forward to the Bitcoin 2014 conference in Amsterdam on May 15-17, where we will also be present in the mining panel and as a contributing sponsor.
CT: You told us previously you got into Bitcoin back in 2011, when you started mining from your laptop. What was that initial attraction to cryptocurrencies, or what about Bitcoin first got you interested?
MS: As a lot of early adopters, I read about Bitcoin in an online article. My first thought was, “It is impossible for someone to create a currency,” and then I learnt it is possible. That is pretty amazing! Every single day I wake up fascinated by what this community has achieved already in such a short amount of time. And I want to be part of it.
How the ”Impossible” Became the Future: A Talk with Genesis Mining’s Marco Streng
Marco Streng’s company, Genesis Mining, became the largest Scrypt hashpower provider this spring, just a few months after its launch. We reached out to Streng to get more details.
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