Bitcoin Forum

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138.91.94.19 shows up lately as one of the top three or so "unknowns" that have won recent blocks (from blockchain.info's "Mining Pool Stats").

A Google search shows that is owned by Microsoft.

blockchain.info shows that they have won 20 blocks recently (just past noon US ET Sunday).  That puts them in first place among the "unknowns", those 20 wins beat both Slush and Eligius (19 and 16 blocks, respectively).

https://blockchain.info/pools

Maybe somebody is just running a pool on Microsoft Azure?

Yeah, the azure platform would be my guess as well.

Maybe its someone at their office :P Now he will be caught and fired for mining bitcoin at work.

Pretty much count there :o
will a microsoft company open cloud mining service? lol

I am not suprised Microsort start to mine bitcoins. They are smart and realise if there is some computing power idle it would be waste not to mine Bitcoins lol.

It is obvious staff can't bring in miners into office premises for free electricity. The coins mined are not worth loosing his job. Running a pool on Azure platform is most likely. Bandwidth is huge, well connected to other nodes could prevent mining orphaned blocks.

Microsoft is several billion dollar corporation, bitcoin mining isn't even peanuts for them...

Yeah, but u dont know do they have some intentions in participating on bitcoin scene.
I doubt its someone from their offices mining bitcoins there, but i guess its possible :]

cheers

perhaps bitpay is not cheap ... easy to install. a mining process to accept bitcoin ... on hotmail/xbox payment. ;D

It's a natural move for Microsoft since they have accepted it as a payment system, Bill Gates knows about it and understands that its a focus, google has backed ripple. Bitcoin is a next step.

Whoa, that explains a lot!

maybe they just testing some new asics of their own build for private use or something.

it's not like they cant afford to make some.

what reason would they have to mine? the economical is obviously not

this wouldn't make sense at all,it must be the azure mining pool for sure

Bill Gates mining hard before the halving.

Got to be Bill Gates, he is testing next generation hardware/OS.

138.91.94.19 is a known Azure IP (https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/azure/dn175718.aspx) located in Us West. Case closed.

Very true, but they may want to test mining on a new operating system. Maybe they will market their new OS with a "ready-to-mine" label. That would be hot!  :)

Pretty cool!
But does Azure allows this if they get to know?

This is not necessarily true. Yes the mining revenue would mean close to nothing to them however they could potentially use their own miners in order to confirm their own transactions and transactions they receive from customers.

No one decides which miner confirms a transaction, it's a lottery.

Not true. Independent miners (or pool operators) can include transactions that have not been broadcast to other miners, if they so choose. Or, they can broadcast the transactions with no fee, which many miners will ignore, then include those transactions in blocks they mine.

Pool client miners, however, generally have no choice (nor do they usually get to see what transactions are included).

Is mining with Azure can worth?

They still have to find a block to confirm the transaction and that's a lottery...

they don't have computing power to mine.  asics made cpu and gpu mining obsolete and i highly doubt they bought any mining equipment.  they would more likely just sell some products for btc and keep them rather than convert to cash.


this is most likely 99.9999999% answer

Bill Gates has said, they are looking into the technology.

My guess is, this is a operation to test the mining aspect of the protocol and to find a way to change the protocol to create a NEW alt coin, that would suite their needs.

They will most probably go for a protocol where they have centralized control of the mining and something with NO anonymity. {Fully compliant with the KYC and AML requirements}

Do not be amazed, when you see a NEW alt coin coming from them, with these features. 

Looks like some inside staff is trying to earn side income. Mostly these are done by the IT staff having administrator access

Why wouldn't they?

That is pretty cool! though it's not actually microsoft but atleast the name's coming :-\

People are saying , if an employee is doing so , they will fire him then why would they allow it on azure?

Anyone can buy Azure cloud computing, so I don't get why people think it's a Microsoft employee (although even an employee could buy it for their personal purposes). Unless it's prohibited in their Terms of Service, I don't see any reason why they wouldn't allow it.

Do you have more information about that?

https://www.ripplelabs.com/investors/

Google Ventures invests in a lot of companies...

Thanks