Shipping a container of ASICs to a facility you have never walked through is an act of trust. The contract you sign decides how much of that trust is actually backed by engineering. These are the seven questions we would ask any hosting provider — including us — before a single miner leaves your warehouse.

1. What exactly is included in the quoted rate?

A headline number like $0.068/kWh means very little on its own. Ask the provider to break it down in writing:

• Energy cost at the meter, and whether it is fixed, indexed, or pass-through.
• Facility overhead — cooling, ventilation, PUE losses, security, insurance.
• Management fee, and whether it is per miner, per rack, or a percentage of revenue.
• What is billed separately: receiving, racking, repairs, shipping back, decommissioning.

Two providers quoting the same rate can differ by 15–20% on the invoice once pass-through demand charges and monthly management fees are added. Always ask for a sample invoice from a live client, redacted.

2. How is uptime measured — and what happens when it is missed?

“99% uptime” is meaningless without a definition. Insist on clarity:

• Is uptime measured per miner, per rack, or facility-wide?
• Are curtailment hours, scheduled maintenance and grid events excluded from the calculation?
• Is the number self-reported, or pulled from a monitoring system you can log into?

Then ask the harder question: what is the remedy? A credible SLA has teeth — a credit against the next invoice, calculated automatically, not an apology email. If the provider will not put a remedy in the contract, the uptime number is marketing, not a commitment.

3. Who pays for power when the machines are off?

This is the single most expensive clause in a hosting agreement. Facilities in ERCOT and other curtailment-heavy markets will shut hashboards down when spot prices spike. That is a good thing — it is often how the low rate is funded — but the contract must say who absorbs the downtime.

A well-written agreement states plainly: during economic curtailment, the client is not billed for energy, and curtailed hours do not count against the uptime guarantee.

If curtailment is billed as consumed power, your effective rate is nowhere near the quoted one.

4. What does the repair workflow actually look like?

Miners fail. Fans seize, PSUs die, hashboards drop chips. What matters is the loop between failure and restart:

• Is there an on-site repair bench, or does everything ship to a third party?
• What is the median time from detected fault to a machine hashing again?
• Is there a spare-parts inventory for your specific models on site?
• Who pays for parts, and at what markup?

A facility with a bench and a stocked parts shelf will return a unit in days. One without will quietly leave 4% of your fleet dark for a month, which costs far more than the labour rate you were negotiating.

5. Can you see your own machines?

You should have, at minimum: per-miner hashrate and temperature telemetry, a live power draw figure, and a monthly energy statement you can reconcile against your pool payouts. Read-only pool access and a dashboard login are table stakes in 2026. If a provider offers only a monthly PDF, assume you will not find out about a problem until it has been running for weeks.

6. What happens to your hardware if the provider fails?

The unglamorous legal questions matter most in a downturn:

• Does the contract state that you retain title to the machines at all times?
• Is there a lien clause allowing the facility to hold hardware against unpaid invoices — and how many days before it triggers?
• What is the notice period and the process for retrieving your fleet?
• Is your equipment insured, by whom, and for replacement or depreciated value?

7. Can you visit?

The simplest test. A provider confident in their build will schedule a site walk-through: transformer yard, switchgear, containment, repair bench, security. If site visits are “not possible for security reasons” without any alternative — no video walk-through, no client references, no third-party audit — treat it as the answer to all six previous questions.

A short pre-shipment checklist

• Signed rate sheet with every line item, plus a sample invoice.
• Uptime definition, exclusions, and a written remedy.
• Curtailment billing terms in plain language.
• Repair SLA with median turnaround and parts pricing.
• Dashboard credentials issued before the machines ship.
• Title, lien and retrieval clauses reviewed by your counsel.
• Site visit completed, or a scheduled date in writing.

Hosting is a multi-year relationship with a facility you rarely see. The seven questions above take an afternoon to ask and can be the difference between a predictable margin and an expensive lesson.