In GoMining, we’re building the backbone of the Bitcoin mining infrastructure, developing digital miners, working with hashrate, and have served over 5.6 million users over 5 years since launch. And the way we thanked the people who got us there was gift cards and one-off bonuses: tools with no connection to the product, or to how anyone here actually works. One important detail: our entire team is remote, spread across multiple countries, with no central office. There’s no watercooler, no hallway conversation, no shared lunch. Recognition has to be deliberate or it doesn’t happen at all.
At some point we asked ourselves a simple question: why is our recognition system disconnected from what we do every day?
That’s how the Corporate Miners project started.
What if We Paid people in What We Make
A GoMining digital bitcoin miner is a share of the computing power in our data centers. It’s measured in terahashes (TH), and each day it earns BTC rewards in proportion to that power. It’s the product we sell to customers.
Since December 2024, we gave one to every employee, with each new co-worker also receiving a Corporate Miner upon onboarding.
A Corporate Miner is different from a common digital miner, because its mining power grows in a few ways:
- through “kudos,” which are public recognitions colleagues send each other in our corporate Slack
- through referrals, when a recommended candidate joins;
- through tenure, since every Tuesday everyone gets a small increase simply for still being here;
- And through various internal activities.
A one-off bonus is paid and forgotten. A gift card is spent and gone. Bitcoin mining power doesn’t go anywhere. It accumulates, and it keeps earning every day for as long as the person works here.
That changes what recognition is. In GoMining, a “kudos” isn’t just a thank-you, it’s an asset that starts working for the person who receives it from the moment they receive it. Not a one-time payment, but a permanent increase. A year at the company is a miner that has become significantly more powerful over that year.
And everyone sees their miner in the same interface GoMining customers use. No abstraction: real numbers, real Bitcoin, real transparency.
What Came of the Corporate Miner Project
The new GoMining’s employee program has been running since December 2024. In that time employees have sent each other nearly 19,000 kudos, around 1,400 a month. Nearly the whole team, 96%, has received at least one. Referral hires grew 3.5 times. Employee engagement in our spring survey came in at 82%, over a period when the team itself grew 30%.
In 2026, the program won four international HR awards: two Gold from the Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards (Best Employee Recognition Program and Best Employee Engagement), and Gold and Bronze from the Stevie Awards for Great Employers. The judges called it “one of the most original entries in the category.”
The Main Takeaway
We didn’t invent a new motivation system from scratch. We took what we were already building for customers and gave it to our own team.
It turned out to be the most honest way to say thank you.
