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Breaking China’s Bitcoin ‘Mining Centralization’: Japanese Company Budgets Over $300m
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Barely a month since a Russian company made a similar presentation, a Japanese company has announced its entrance into the Bitcoin mining sector and it could mean a huge deal for the industry.
Tokyo-based GMO Internet Group plans to spend more than $320 million to start mining bitcoin in the first half of 2018. The company plans to go about it by developing its own mining chips which will use 7 nanometer nodes - they are expected to be four times more energy-efficient than the current industry standard 16 nm nodes.
The success of this plan could trigger a greater competition within the Bitcoin mining industry as 7 nm nodes may force other miners to upgrade to another. The stiff competition is very likely as GMO plans in its business model for the mining activity to operate its own mines, rent them to others and develop its own chips that it will package and sell as mining rigs just like China’s Bitmain does.
GMO is the second in the last month to come up with a new Bitcoin mining plan. A Russian company, Russian Miner Coin, proposed a plan to start using semiconductor chips designed in Russia for use in satellites to minimize power consumption in computers for crypto mining.
RMC seeks to raise $100 million in an initial coin offering ICO to launch a project that will take advantage of Russia’s 20 gigawatts of excess power capacity and low consumer electricity prices (about $0.013 cents) per kilowatt hour which is less than the price in China.
Aside the pending competition, the interest in large-scale Bitcoin mining by a Japanese company is also spectacular for the fact that Japan’s government has been one of the most friendliest to the top digital currency. This has reflected greatly in the way Bitcoin has moved up several notches in terms of acceptance in the country from being accepted as a legal means of payment to having taxes eliminated from it.
About 5,000 merchants reportedly accepts Bitcoin for payment in the country. In fact, as at this point, Japan is considered to be a key country that influences the price of Bitcoin.
Olusegun Ogundeji is an author and journalist from Africa. He writes mainly on technology-related issues including Bitcoin/Blockchain - usually from an end user perspective.
COMMENTS(20)
Here is the link to the original comment thread. Or you can comment here to start a discussion. Author: 8btccom
Worth checking out
Mining has never made more money than just buying coins.
Eat shit jihan
That would require every mined coin to be sold at a loss?
how about mine’n’hold as opposed to buy’n’hold?
or mine’n’hodl I should say
Sayonnara Bitmain ! Jihan no Baka !
Well, there is the possibility of using the heat from mining to warm buildings. Since they are planning on mining in Europe, they could partner with a large office building and apartment blocks, put the miners in there and provide heating for the whole building. Helps to increase the profit margin.
Mining is always profitable for someone. It’s arbitraging hardware+electricity cost against the price of the mining reward
During downturns or relative stability, mining is infinitely more profitable than holding. During upswings or holding is more profitable. Mining is the “less volatile” way of getting into Bitcoin. Perfect for big money that wants to get involved with far less risk.
The more competition, the better!
Ohw and also a more secure netwerk 🙂
Good.
Chinese authorities aren’t that interested in cryptocurrencies, the more power Japan gets the better!
I know a few people who give zero shits. 🙂
This. In late 2013 and early 2014 I bought antminers, bitfury, etc with bitcoin’s worth > $600.
I made reasonable btc/btc profit from mining
To be fair though, the usd value of my mining revenue (at the 2015 price of $300) was about equal to the usd value of my initial hardware (plus power), so usd/usd it was essentially breakeven.
This assumes prices will always go up. Which I think it still will, but if you mine you are getting in at less of a “risk”.
Jihad Wu shits his pants.
Investment is on the order of $3 M and not $300 M.
From press release: http://ir.gmo.jp/en/pdf/irlibrary/disclose_info20170907_e.pdf
We will not disclose the specific amount due to the non-disclosure agreement with our alliance partner, but it will be more than 10% of the consolidated noncurrent assets as of December 31, 2016 (¥3,489 million).
3.489 Billion Yen is ~ USD 32 M, so 10% means ~ USD 3.2 M.
Nice nickname
fooook yuuuu jihan wuuu
Hold is a misspelling of hodl, clearly
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