The world’s biggest Bitcoin mine is on the verge of starting operations after allegedly signing up two huge corporate clients. Bloomberg reports that Northern Bitcoin AG subsidiary Whinstone Inc., which is in the process of creating a 180,000-square-foot data center in Rockdale, Texas, has recently signed deals to rent mining capacity to SBI Holdings Inc. and internet company GMO Internet Inc. This will allow the facility to fire up the ASICs and get the mammoth operation going.
Whinstone Moves Quickly
Whinstone has moved quickly to get their mining facilities up and running – they only secured permission for the build in November last year, and yet already they claim they will begin operations with a 300 megawatt output, rising to 1 gigawatt by the end of 2020, which is the same amount of power generated by a typical nuclear power plant.
Were they to achieve this output, it would dwarf that of current largest operator Bitmain, whose nearby facility in the former Alcoa Corp aluminum smelting plant only produces around 330 megawatts.Texas is favored by Bitcoin mining groups because of its bountiful cheap energy and renewable sources, notably wind, which accounted for 20% of the state’s electricity last year.
Japanese Companies Betting Big on Bitcoin
Whinstone was bought out by German company Northern Bitcoin just before the Rockdale announcement in late November. Northern Bitcoin has recently shifted from mining its own Bitcoin to leasing out its mining facilities, including those located in its abandoned metal mine in Norway. Two of these clients appear to be SBI, a major financial services company, and internet behemoth GMO Internet, both Japanese companies, who both clearly feel the time is right to be venturing into the Bitcoin mining game.
At a time when interest in Bitcoin is still flagging in the general population, it’s interesting to see huge companies taking the risk of ploughing millions of dollars into the mining process. Clearly they see a big future in the cryptocurrency, and have put their yen where their yappers are.
