A miner that earns about $4 of bitcoin a day while its owner pays about $6 to host it is losing money, and Arshed Gulshan says the $2 gap goes to the electricity company, not to the host or the miner. In a fireside chat at Mining Disrupt Miami 2026, recorded July 21–23, 2026, Gulshan of Equalizer walked through how his company's software lets a hosting center split, reassign and resell the hashrate of the machines it already runs.
The session ran just over ten minutes and followed a set of questions from the moderator: what Equalizer does behind the scenes, a worked example, how operators can check the numbers, why cloud mining has a poor reputation, and how Equalizer differs from NiceHash.
What changes behind the scenes
The moderator opened by asking whether turning a traditional hosting center into a cloud mining facility "in just a few clicks" was too easy. Gulshan said the conversion is simpler than it sounds and does not require new equipment.
You don't need to change any of your existing infrastructure or amend your operations
Arshed Gulshan · 0:48
He explained it with ordinary cloud computing. Google Cloud and AWS, he said, buy regular computers and install virtualization software on top. A machine with 10 CPUs and 100 GB of RAM can then be leased in pieces: two CPUs to one customer, three CPUs and 10 GB of RAM to another. The provider controls each computing unit and each block of memory. Equalizer, he said, does the same for mining machines: the operator controls the individual hashrate and can point each piece of it at the pool of their choice.
Two S19s, 200 workers
Asked for a practical example, Gulshan described a facility with two S19 machines at 100 TH/s each. Normally the operator configures two workers, and the pool shows two workers at 100 TH/s. After migrating to Equalizer, the operator sees 200 TH/s as one combined unit that can be distributed however they want.
That could be 200 workers at one terahash per second each, all visible in the pool, or 50 workers at 4 TH/s each. The moderator summed it up as breaking the hashrate up and segmenting it however you want. Gulshan added that Equalizer does all of this without changing anything on the mining machine itself.
Built for hosting margins
The moderator asked whether cloud mining was the only way Equalizer improves profitability. Gulshan said it was not built as a tool for selling cloud contracts.
we made equalizer to improve the efficiency of the [hosting] centers to increase their profit margin
Arshed Gulshan · 3:08
He tied that goal to competition from AI data centers, and said the product has several features beyond cloud contracts. The one he described in detail is called the virtual miner.
According to Gulshan, it came out of a survey Equalizer carried out in hosting centers across Abu Dhabi. The survey found that almost 15% of the miners running in those centers were in negative revenue territory: the coin they produced was worth less than the hosting fee their owners paid.
He gave two reasons owners keep such machines running. In some jurisdictions, he said, people can write the electricity cost off against tax. In other cases the customer has prepaid three or four years of hosting and the contract obliges the host to run the machine anyway.
The virtual miner
His example was an older machine that makes about $4 of bitcoin a day while the client pays about $6 for hosting. With the virtual miner, the host unplugs that machine and buys the same hashrate from Equalizer, which he said costs about $4 for $4 worth of coin. The host still meets its contract with the client.
The unplugged machine also frees a slot. The host can install a new machine there and collect a new installation charge and another deposit. In his words, the host solves the slot two times.
How operators check the numbers
On how an operator can judge the financial impact before signing up, Gulshan said Equalizer is transparent and "not a Black Box". Before onboarding, operators can run its simulator with their own parameters, such as the total power of their system, and connect an API key so the data is pulled in automatically. The system then estimates the credits or extra profit the operator can expect.
He stressed that this is a calculation, not a hopeful product, and that the result should hold from the start.
what you see in simulator is what you get at the end from the day one
Arshed Gulshan · 6:39
Cloud mining's reputation
The moderator noted that the cloud mining industry is often associated with scams and a lack of transparency, and asked why. Gulshan first pointed to cloud computing, where he said Amazon makes more money selling cloud services than through e-commerce, and cloud is stable and widely used.
Cloud mining is different, he argued, because most companies selling it are in his view accounting companies rather than cloud operators. A buyer pays for an amount of hashrate, gives a wallet address and starts receiving payouts the next day, but cannot choose the pool or the coin.
I own my hashrate but I don't get any control on that
Arshed Gulshan · 8:11
That lack of control, he said, is what makes such contracts easy to fake. With Equalizer, a hosting company that sells hashrate can let each buyer point it at any pool they choose, which he said is what makes the arrangement transparent.
Virtualization versus aggregation
The last question was about NiceHash, which already connects sellers and buyers of hashrate. Gulshan said a hosting center could use Equalizer to behave like NiceHash, but that NiceHash itself does aggregation, not virtualization. On NiceHash, he said, you cannot buy a small amount of hashrate; it combines many machines to fill a larger order.
you can actually split the hashrate you want in any arbitrary number
Arshed Gulshan · 9:24
He closed with three pitches: miners who want total control of their operation, buyers who want fractional hashrate, and hosting companies that want better profit margins. The full session is embedded above.