ASIC hosting

ASIC hosting is the honest end of mining infrastructure: you buy the machine, a datacenter runs it for a published rate, and the hardware remains yours to resell. The ranking above weighs what the rate card hides - curtailment clauses, SLA credits, intake queues, and retrieval terms - as heavily as the per-kWh number, because those four decide whether the year works out at your contract size.

The hosting cost stack

Only one layer of the stack is advertised:

1. Power per kWh - the headline. Documented market rates run $0.05-0.085/kWh, with volume tiers moving several cents between small and large deployments [1].
2. Uptime and curtailment - hours or days of mandated downtime during grid stress. The clause decides whether those hours cost you output or the operator credits them [2].
3. Setup and logistics - one-time intake fees, rack setup, return shipping at term end [7].
4. Queue time. Intake queues are longest exactly when hashprice spikes - ask before buying hardware, because an idle miner earns nothing.

Live from our database - caveats and sources in each linked review.

With the current break-even power price near n/a per kWh, a $0.06 contract keeps roughly 40-45% of hashprice as margin. That thin but real margin is the structural argument for hosting over contracts: the machine is an asset that outlives the deal, and the used-S21 market prices that [1].

Curtailment: the clause that decides your year

Curtailment season is when grids mandate downtime - hours or days at a stretch, concentrated exactly when energy is expensive. Your hosting bill does not stop for it [2]. When comparing providers, convert SLA claims into money at your size: at 20 machines and 3.5 kW each, one month at 95% versus 99% uptime is about 28 miner-days of lost output. Ask for the credit mechanism in writing before signing, not after the first outage.

The shape of a hosting year follows the hashprice, not the calendar: with BTC hashprice at n/a per TH/day and the trend at n/a, the margin cushion a $0.06 contract carries is thin enough that a bad curtailment month erases it [1]. Operators below break-even power - visible in the rate column above - survive those months; operators above it shift the loss to their clients.

Logistics: where hosting contracts get ugly

• Intake time. Documented queues range from same-week to multi-month. Queues are longest exactly when hashprice spikes - ask before buying hardware, not after.
• Retrieval. The end-of-contract return leg is where weak operators stall: unclear shipping responsibility, "processing periods," storage fees for machines you own. The documented providers list retrieval terms in their rate sheets [7]; the ones that do not are telling you something.
• Clean power and IP reputation. Ask what the exit-node and abuse policy is before connecting anything from your home address to their network.

How to verify a site before you ship

Shipping a $3,000 machine to an unknown warehouse is the leap of faith in hosting. Five checks make it survivable:

1. Live rack video - a call where an employee walks the aisle; not a brochure render.
2. Serial-tagged photo on arrival - your miner on their rack with the serial visible, before the first invoice lands.
3. Pool-side hashrate within 48 hours - the proof ladder from the mining hub applies to hosted machines identically: your pool account, your rejected-share count [4].
4. A physical address you can look up - corporate registration and an actual site. Anonymous registrations are a pattern with a graveyard.
5. A reference client you can talk to - one operator who has shipped machines there and will answer a message. Small ask, high signal.

Jurisdiction and grid reality

A hosting site publishes a location and rarely the grid behind it. Both matter: curtailment season, grid-stress events, and local energy policy determine how often your machines actually run. The EIA industrial price data shows how wide industrial-rate spreads are across regions [1] - a farm's survival in a bad hashprice year depends on where its rate sits relative to break-even, and that number is visible in the rate column above for every documented provider.

For the trading side of hashrate - renting per period instead of locking terms - see the hashrate markets hub. For fee and proof mechanics from the contract angle, the mining hub covers the same population from the other side, and the beginners hub shows the first-hosting loop for new operators.