Poolin launches Ethereum hash rate token worth $30 million

Chinese crypto mining pool Poolin has rolled out an Ethereum hash rate-backed token initially worth $30 million in its bid to lower down the entrance barrier for retail investors.

The firm said in a blog post on Wednesday that each unit of the so-called pETH18C ERC-20 token represents 1 megahashes per second (MH/s) of computing power on Ethash that's running on Poolin's facilities with a power efficiency of 1.8 watt per MH/s. 

The move comes amid an increasing level of difficulty for retail investors to participate in the crypto mining space due to what appears to be an unprecedented chip shortage at a global scale that has been having a ripple effect beyond crypto mining.

Poolin said it is selling 1 million pETH18C tokens at a preset price of $30 in USDT with the proceeds to reimburse the cost it prepaid for the mining equipment that's powering up the hash rate.

In total, the tokens represent 1 terahashes second (TH/s) of hashing power on Ethereum, which accounts for 0.2% of the network's total. As of press time, users had bought over a quarter of the supply in two hours since it went live.

The initial price of $30 factors in the base cost of Ethereum miners per 1 MH/s, Poolin's one percent fee as well as a set electricity cost of $0.0750 per kWh.

In a similar fashion to Poolin's recent issuance of 200,000 units of bitcoin hash rate token pBTC35A, the pETH18C can be staked to Poolin's Mars Protocol to directly mine ETH proportionate to the underlying hash rate.

Poolin said it has no plan for a second batch at this stage as the supply of Ethereum mining equipment is running dry, as The Block reported previously.