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Hi Bitcointalk community!

I was reading on this sub-forum that some people in the US got insurance for their computer hardwares.
Here in Québec, Canada, I had to call more than 10 insurance brokers before I got one interested to hear me out.

In Québec we cannot have professional insurance without public liability so it complicates things.
At first I was looking for an insurance to cover my mining gears against fire and theft.

Finally 2 weeks later, the broker insurance who accepted to look for insurances for my home mining activities wrote this to me:


Translation: Regular insurers have no appetite for mining while wholesalers have no market.

He tried to contact all these insurance companies in Quebec:

https://i.imgur.com/FpYym0v.png

None of them were interested to offer me an insurance premium to cover my computer equipments.
This is crazy! In Québec we have few companies doing cryptocurrency mining in warehouses.

I am wondering if someone who lives in Québec know an insurance company who offers crypto mining protections?

Thank you

I am pretty sure that most miners don't have extra insurance to cover home crypto mining. They assume that if they just have regular home insurance that covers fires that its sufficient. Fires are rare so I don't think there are too many cases where a mining rig burnt down an entire home. Most of the issues I had in the past some cable melted and the rig just crashed, it never started any fires.

If fires were more common I am pretty sure we would have many people on here complaining saying that their mining rig burnt down their house and their insurance didn't cover it since mining is a business and they didn't have supplemental insurance to cover it. Wonder what others will say about this issue.

what the broker is really saying for those that might not know.

There isnt enough of a profit for them to develop a policy thats specific to crypto mining equipment since for GPU mining is the same as a regular computer covered under regular home insurance.

And.  Its Quebec. /flee

I also don't hear that often about miner specific insurance. Profit, as mentioned above, must be one of the reason. In addition to that, regulation might also pose a threat if they dedicate a policy for miners, especially if the state itself is not so open to crypto. So, either move from there or just take the risk.

Yea actually I called my insurance company for my home and I explained to them the whole situation and they told me "What you are doing is considered a professional activity in your house and it's not covered from your residential insurance".

If a fire starts from my kitchen, then I'll get cover up to 5,000 CAD for my computer hardwares which is not a lot. If the fire starts from my mining room then the residential insurance won't pay.

My insurance broker was asking me things like, "who's your client? (many times)" or "can you be sued for wrong activities?"... after I explained all the mechanism of mining more than once. They really just don't get it but it's true that for these people who never heard of the blockchain technology it's odd to imagine a business situation where there's no responsible party, it's so unconventional.

At the end of the day it's all about money, I think you're right Nhazwrath.
But Québec I think is one of the best place to mine in the world because our electricity is 100% green from electric dam, it's mostly cool the temperature not like in Texas and the government is welcoming mining investment in the province and we speak English and French lol.

But yea Québec is more socialist even if it's a free market and property rights are respected. Especially if we compare us to some US states where some sectors are more open for capitalism. We are small though, just 8.5 millions population and even if we are next to the US border my government apply a lot of protectionism policies.

You know the cryptocurrency mining company BitFarm based in Québec, they will soon be drawing 69 megawatts of electricity for their five "data centres", enough to power 25,000 homes in Quebec...crazy!

If it becomes easier for you, then in many countries people do not even think about it. In Russia, insurance usually looks like a very dirty game. Cars are subject to compulsory insurance, so I had to go to court to get my money in 6 months, because the insurance company offered me 5 times less money.
As for non-compulsory insurance, such as home or health, people go to courts for several years to get paid.

Better equip your mining farm as safely as possible!

I spent most of my life in Ontario I'm well aware of the James Bay project. The Quebec comment was more along the lines of I have seen more silliness and bad logic come out of Quebec than anywhere else in Canada.  I'm currently in New Brunswick mining away with cheap nuclear power while attempting to expand my small farm without wrecking the economics of the situation. 

Yea like I wrote in Québec I like to say we are pretty socialist in a well regulated capitalism system. To have lived in Bali, Indonesia for 6 years I sincerely like it.

I remember in Montreal, some contractors wanted to build a new Casino, we did a long public consultation and the project was refused by the majority.

Why not looking to rent small warehouse in El Salvador for your mining next to their new green energy project (volcano, geothermal energy) while paying your bills with Bitcoins (since Bitcoin is legal tender now in El Salvador)?

Nuclear power is not 100% green because of the radioactive waste which remains radioactive for thousands of years.

Since I refuse to utilize a debt structure of some sort.  A good chunk of it I just put back into reinvestment in equipment and upgrades a small amount of it is set aside.   I am getting ready to do a 200 amp panel within the next 2 months I hope.

It's kind of like the reason why I don't buy a backup generator.   The cost and installation of a generator large enough to maintain the farm for the short few hours a couple of times a year that the power goes out would pretty much never pay for the generator.   

I also moved to New Brunswick not just for the power but for the property I was able to grab five acres for a dirt cheap price of $35,000 Canadian with a 2000 square foot house with a view of the Bay of Fundy out of my back window.

I'm kind of unwilling to give up that. 

And nuclear is still the cleanest/cheapest.   There is no such thing as perfectly clean power not even Hydro.  The James Bay project is a great example it was able to be built because of where it's located and the fact that nobody cared about land that far north.

If you were to take all the nuclear waste of every single nuclear power plant on the entire planet and store it in one spot it would take up less space than a football field.  And people seem to think that nuclear waste cannot be stored safely it's actually very easy to store safely.   If people were very very serious about getting rid of nuclear waste there is a very easy way you take your oil drilling platform and you bring it to a location where you've got continental plates meeting and you plant your nuclear waste on the side of the plate that is going to get subducted under the other and the nuclear waste will return to the core of the Earth in a few thousand years no one's going to go digging for that.

I honestly want to see thorium reactors built instead of uranium reactors. Why you might ask? Very simple, thorium waste cannot be turned into bombs through reprocessing.

And solar power is kind of a joke for Canada.   

Usually home insurance never covers anything if its related to a business activity. If you run some shop, and you get robbed then the insurance won't cover it. Same with people who are driving for Uber. Since their car is used for commercial purposes they need special insurance. If you ever tried buying auto insurance in the last 2-3 years, you get constantely asked whether this vehicle will be used for Uber, taxi for hire, delivering packages from Amazon, delivering Uber Eats, etc.

If you are in some accident while you were delivering some Uber Eats and you had regular insurance they won't cover you. So mining activites also won't be covered. I've been mining for years and never had any issues. I haven't heard of any home miner burn down their house. I heard of maybe 2-3 actual large mining farms in China burn down but they had like 1000 ASICs.

I have similar financial strategy, I don't use debt and I reinvest in equipment and upgrade a good portion of my mining revenu.

When I started to do crypto mining I installed a 200 Amp panel but for the money difference I realized I should have installed 300 Amp. Same for the electrical circuits I installed in my garage, my electrician installed 4 circuits of 120V/20A, big mistake I should have installed 240V/20A or 30A like that you have bigger flexibility for later usage (maybe ASICs with a silencer). Haaa this is not so bad, just rookie mistakes.

For the generator or an Uninterruptible Power Supply, I think you are perfectly right. I had one power outage here in Québec for the last year and it lasted just 5 hours. Hydro Québec is pretty stable! Also my bro and I are building a server to have a stacking node to validate transactions on Ethereum 2.0 and we were thinking to buy a generator because if your node have down time periods you get penalized but after few researches we concluded it's not worth it for a home project (maybe if you have 50 nodes in a warehouse).

Five acres of land damn this is a lot, so I guess you're not based in a populated city like Saint John.

For the nuclear wastes it's actually pretty controversial. Hydro too I agree it's not 100% green if you think about the destruction of the environment but for the CO2 it's good compared to coal, gas-fired biomass power plants.

Do you know the Youtube Channel Kurzgesagt? They have made a great video (10:42) about nuclear energy. Here's the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhAemz1v7dQ&ab_channel=Kurzgesagt%E2%80%93InaNutshell

Exactly! Nevertheless I was willing to pay a prime to have a coverage against theft and fire.

Depressed area lots of old houses with land.  I also bought it at the bottom of the market in 2015. not near saint john. south of moncton.  while a larger panel is good the space for asics(they are bloody loud cant have them in the house) is not.  that would require another building which i dont have that much money for.  GPUs I can live with in the basement.  they dont run at 160 bloody decibels.

If i get to the point of another building then i would put in its own panel.  Didn't come with a garage it did come with a bloody carriage shed which isnt in good enough condition to store anything but the snowblower and lawnmower.

Cool cool! It must be exciting for you. I see GPU mining like financial freedom.

Yea for the ASICs you are probably right, I was looking for the silencers but even with a silencer it might be too loud. The noise was one of my biggest concern when I dove in crypto mining because my mining farm in my garage is not too far from my bedroom.

Yea GPUs are pretty quiet, it's more the fans like the DC 12V that make some noise but even that it doesn't botter me at all. I bought lately these PWM,PST 120 mm Fan (German design) they are less powerful but less noisy. https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07HC782D5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Anyway, for the temperature of my GPUs I have installed a big commercial Mitsubishi AC in my garage. I like it, it works even during winter, I don't have to manage the ventilation, it's a pretty nice technology. I keep the room temperature always at 23 degrees celsius (73 fahrenheit for ppl in the US) so all my GPUs temperature are around 52-53 °C so they will last mannnyyy years.
At 7.7 cents in average per Kw/h the AC cost me in average 4 CAD/day.

I am really excited soon I will run a node validator on ETH 2.0.
I have been trying to build a server for the last 3 weeks, man I had tons of issues (missing heatsink, CPU doesn't have integrated GPU because I needed a CPU with ECC so I had to buy a cheap GPU, the BIOS version of the motherboard needed to be update for the CPU, I did it remotely and corrupted the motherboard, I just sent the motherboard to the manufacturer AsRock Rack.) Hehe super fun, I learnt sooo much but sometimes it's frustrating and I'm getting impatient.

Peace out!

And you will not be insured against theft or fire until your premises meet all the required standards of the data center.
The insurance company will then sue the fire system installer or security company if something happens to your equipment. It usually works like this.

Probably but I am a small fish (mining in my garage), not sure the same rules apply to me. For big warehouse miners sure.

In my situation they didn't study my case.... next!

After seeing all of the absolute insane covid enforcement in Canada, I am convinced that the country is completely backward.  Though you could say the same thing about many things in the US  ;D ;D ;D

That said, you are probably confusing them talking about mining.  Just say you have a bunch of servers that you use for machine learning projects.  There has to be a way to insure a bunch of computer equipment.

Even in my country, only certain types of garages are insured. The garage should be made of concrete or brick, have a concrete roof and a metal door. Garages made of wood or iron do not provide insurance or security because they are very easy to break into.
If mining becomes unprofitable, it will be easier to burn down your garage :)

No. There are many small miners and several big miners. With the big warehouse you have money to be insured from everything, and to fulfill the conditions of insurance. And with small miners it`s easy to sent them off. They have no big opportunities to protect themselves.

Do you know a small miner who got insurances?
If yes, please let me know what insurance company he/she is using.

I have 7 locations and i think that i am small miner. I`m not insured and cant say how to do it. In my situation i cant win anything against insurance company.

Thank you for the information but the point of this topic is to find out a company insurance who offers coverage for crypto mining.

Is somebody can name me just one insurance company? I don't care if it's in Europe or Asia or elsewhere.

if your country goes crypto mining rogue like china...THIS! hehe

mak013 from Russia ;D
Nothing has been banned in Russia yet, and it is impossible to do this. If you are a small miner with a consumption of 5-20 kilowatts in various locations, then you cannot be found.
I'm not sure if the small miners in China have stopped mining because they are also hard to find.

that's is why i don't care about insurance-more reason to be hidden..and even if i'm the insurer i wouldn't approve any mining farm for insurance. mining is a business of extracting as much electricity as possible to earn as much as possible, how would you know that these "farms" are not pushing the limits of the electrical lines that "may" cause fires? compare that to a normal pig farm where the risk of the users of a building are not capable of pushing the limits of the building (including electrical), and the risk is more about natural disasters(in which the insurers already did the math).

insurance is also a business of "numbers" like, if they get 1000 clients that are low risk of getting "insured" then it is pure profit.

for me i do the electrical, everything is calculated, measured, double checked, and has allowance. i am the the insurer, i insured the lowest risk for my mining operation hehe.

yes there are people who needs to rely/delegate some task to others(things they don't know, can't do, don't understand)...they would really feel the need for insurance.

stay small, decentralized and hidden. that is always been the way i mine  ;)

If there's small miners in the Chinese regions with now prohibition law against crypto mining and are still mining, in their place I would be scared.

The insurance company will not compensate for losses if the mining farm catches fire due to improper hardware settings or increased load on the wires, and so on. To pay, you need the equipment to be stolen by thieves or other people to damage the equipment.
If I insure the house against fire, and then forget to turn off the iron, then the insurance company will not pay for the burned down house.

I confirm that it's accurate. The insurance broker told me something similar yea unfortunately.

I'm glad you think about improving the security of your mining farms instead of wasting time looking for insurance companies. The best security in russia is when no one knows that there is a mining farm in your house, garage, shed. If someone finds out about this, then security and signaling will not help. Until you or the security service arrive, everything will be stolen, and the thieves will run away.

Allo
Est-ce que tu as trouvé un assurance pour ta maison finalement?
Le post est pas récent mais encore d’actualité!
Il semble que depuis 2021 octobre les assureurs refuse du au risque.

J’ai quelques téléphone de fait et c’est tout juste s’il raccroche pas la ligne. Malade!!!
Un broker travaille à me chercher qqc.

Si je trouve rien , il faut que je sorte ça de là maison! Comme vous avez dit, si il y a feu du au minage de cryptomonnaie l’assureur ne payera pas!!
Guillaume

you said computer hardware so I am assuming it is GPU mining. for insurance you don't tell them it is for mining you tell them computer hardware. Most businesses in the financial sector will turn you away because of mining. They see the crypto space as a threat to there existence.

It's risky if you don't tell all the truth then the insurance could decide to not cover your lost in case of a sinister. I won't play that card.

Then that's a crap insurance and legislators in your country should look into it. Most fires are started by negligence, if insurances didn't cover that, then there would be no point in having an insurance !

What shouldn't be covered is arson by the insured person, or if you do something that is clearly not a regular use of a house, like what we're talking about here, having a mining farm in your house. Or let's say growing cannabis with tons of halogen lamps etc.

That's where insurance companies get you both ways. If you disclose too much you pay super high premiums if you can get
any coverage, but if you don't disclose they'll cover you based on your disclosure. There's almost an incentive for insurance
companies to play dumb so they can collect premiums knowing they can claim failure to disclose and deny any pay out.

What it comes down to is do you want real insurance or just a piece of paper that says you have insurance?

Then this is a very good opportunity for scammers to make money. Even if such insurances exist, the presence of the insured's fault will greatly reduce insurance payments. In Russia, in order to receive an insurance payment, you need to prove the damage in court, otherwise the payments will be minimal.

(French below)
Mind blogging to me that a 2 page worth of chats for not a single answer....
Do we have an update, anybody?


FR: Ça me sidère de voir 2 page de tchats pour aucune réponse sérieuse à part celles qui ne fonctionnent pas....
On a une mise à jour quelqu'un?

Si je peux résumer, à moins d'avoir un entrepôt avec plusieurs centaines de milliers de dollars en équipements (plus souvent des ASIC pour miner du Bitcoin) et des revenus dans les millions de dollars par année, tu n'es pas un client intéressant pour les assurances.

Alors ce n'est pas possible pour un home miner au Québec de se faire assurer. À tout de moins, pour les compagnies d'assurance que j'ai contacté (une vingtaine) et j'ai même fait appel à un courtier d'assurance.