ViaBTC is a mining pool based in China. It was launched in 2016 by Sarah Ouyang and since then has become one of the largest mining pools in the area. The pool supports 14 currencies including Bitcoin, Bitcoin SV, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Monero, and other coins.
History
In May 2016, the company gained investments through angel funding. The next month the Bitcoin pool of ViaBTC was launched. In 2017, the platform added ETH, Dashcoin, Zcash, and LTC mining pools. The same year, ViaBTC launched the very first Bitcoin Cash mining pool in the world. Bytom, Monero, and Ethereum Classic mining pools were launched in 2018. The next year, the company released a ViaBTC wallet. DCR and BSV pools had followed.
The mining pool dev team is made up of established fintech professionals. Currently, the CEO of ViaBTC is Haipo Yang.
Main Features
The website supports 6 languages: Chinese, Korean, Japanese, English, Russian, and Spanish. It has four main services: a wallet, a block explorer, a cloud mining platform, and the mining pool. ViaBTC users can access the partners' services via the pool website. CoinEx exchange, CoinEx public chain ecosystem, and a decentralized exchange OneSwap are featured on the ViaBTC website.
The homepage features the list of all currencies available for mining with the stats that can help the visitor quickly understand what to mine. The list shows the daily profit (USD/Th/s). the current exchange rate of the currency (in USD), the pool hashrate, the network hashrate, the number of miners, and difficulty. The numbers are clickable. Tapping on them opens more detailed info, including the mining algorithm, the block reward, payout threshold, profit calculator, and so on.
More than that, on the homepage one can estimate the future profit using the mining profitability calculator. One needs to choose the currency, insert the energy costs, coin price, mining difficulty, fees, and choose the mining devices she/he is going to use.
ViaBTC offers a feature called Smart Mining. It has two options: One-click Switch and Smart Mining. One-click Switch is available for Bitcoin and Ethereum pools. It allows miners to switch to mining a different cryptocurrency without wasting time on the configuration of the mining process. The Bitcoin pool allows switching in one click between BTC, BCH, BSV, and FCH. The Ethereum pool allows switching Ethereum to Ethereum Classic and vice versa.
The smart Mining feature is the automated switch to the most profitable coin that can be mined with the current miner's preferences. The algorithm considers the relevant market data, the miner's hashrate, and other factors to maximize the profit automatically.
The Auto Conversion feature if enabled automatically converts all the earnings into BTC or USDT every hour.
Another feature that makes the use of ViaBTC more comfortable is the opportunity of creating mining sub-accounts. There can be any number of subsidiary accounts associated with the same user. Each sub-account has its own separate income and hashrate. Sub-accounts can be used for automatic withdrawals to different addresses. Each account can be associated with a different email address. It makes reviewing the notifications more convenient. This feature is especially useful if the miner has several mining rigs or farms.
Among the other notable features, there is a cloud mining service BTC-360, a 360 days long rent of a certain amount of computational power used for the mining of Bitcoin. The only fee charged during the cloud mining is a hashrate fee which is not constant and depends on the current BTC price. The contract price is not constant, either. It depends on the prices, mining difficulty, mining electricity costs, and other factors. The rewards are sent daily after 0:00 (UTC). According to some user reviews, the maintenance fee charged by ViaBTC is relatively high.
The less standard features provided by ViaBTC are the hedging and loan services.
Available Payment Methods
The pool supports the following reward algorithms: PPS+, PPLNS, and SOLO.
PPS+ stands for pay per share plus. The standard PPS algorithm means that the miner gets a certain reward for each valid share she/he sends. PPS+ is a somewhat upgraded version of PPS. PPS is usually considered as one of the best models for those who mine with gaps or from time to time. Unlike PPS, PPS+ allows miners to receive additional profit via allocating mining fees through the PPLNS reward algorithm.
PPLNS means "pay per last N shares". When a miner uses the PPLNS algorithm, the reward size depends on the number of submitted valid shares in the last N difficulty round when the block is found. The platform charges smaller fees if miners use PPLNS. To maximize rewards when using PPLNS, it is recommended not to stop mining. The gaps can cause a loss of profit.
The SOLO payment method supposes that the miner who mines the block independently receives the entire block reward. The platform charges a fee for daily operation and the maintenance fee.
Fees
The fees on ViaBTC are frequently criticized for being high. The block reward fees are 4% for the PPS+ payment method and 2% in the case of PPLNS mode. The SOLO miners are charged with a 1% fee both while mining and withdrawing. Withdrawals for the PPS+ and PPLNS miners are charged with 2% fees. In the case of merged mining, the second currency comes for free.
Is It Safe to Use ViaBTC?
Mining will make no sense if all the coins will be stolen due to weak account protection. Considering the number of active thieves hunting for money in the crypto industry, it is really important to make sure that the platform provides enough protection features. Users shouldn't hesitate to enable them all before starting to use the platform.
First off, it is great that ViaBTC is providing such a popular (and for a good reason) measure as 2-factor authentication (aka 2fa). This feature creates an additional security layer aside from the password. To enter the account or withdraw the funds, one will need to provide a one-time password that can be retrieved only from the account owner's mobile device. The TOTPs are generated in the Google Authentication application. Each password keeps its relevance only for 30 seconds. This feature makes theft almost impossible. Another available protection feature is quite similar but the code is sent via SMS, not generated in the special app. Sign-in Notification is very useful, too. It lets users know when someone enters the account. All the account activity can be tracked on the ViaBTC website. In the case of suspicious activity, users can terminate the sessions and are recommended to change the password.
More than that, the website provides a number of simple recommendations on how users can enhance the safety of their funds. For instance, it is recommended to whitelist all the email addresses used by ViaBTC namely [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected].
There are little to none accusations against ViaBTC of being a scam over the web. That's quite a rare situation for the cryptocurrency industry. Most complaints are rather related to high fees, lack of anonymity, and some other drawbacks. All in all, it is safe to say that ViaBTC is a legit operation with strong security.