Compass Mining Launches Bitcoin Miner Protection Plan

Compass Mining, a firm that brokers bitcoin mining machines and hosting services primarily to retail clients, said it is offering its first protection product so that customers can safeguard their bitcoin mining machines.

Insurance options for miners are severely limited, in part because traditional insurers have had a hard time coming up with plans for the nascent industry. The new "low cost" plans protect in case of fire, theft, government action and electrical damage, said Will Foxley, director of content at Compass and a CoinDesk contributor.

"Bitcoin mining is a burgeoning, young industry. Simple protection products like this should be considered a financial primitive," Jameson Nunney, the company's chief strategy officer, said in the statement.

The newly launched product is available to customers hosted in Texas, South Carolina, Nebraska and Oklahoma partner sites. Compass will expand it to other sites after completing the initial rollout to its core clients.

Compass doesn't own the facilities where its clients plug in their machines. It acts as a broker between customers and facilities owners.

"Our protection plan is one step downstream of an over $75 million insurance policy we've created with our brokers," Foxley said.

The mining firm has seen its fair share of trouble in the past few months. CEO and co-founder Whit Gibbs resigned in June amid a series of "setbacks and disappointments," including severe delays in deploying equipment and having thousands of machines stranded in Russia.

Read more: After Countless Bungles, Compass Mining Tries to Change Course