Japanese banking giant, SBI Holdings Inc, and Japanese internet-service provider, GMO Internet Inc, have come to an agreement to begin mining Bitcoin. They’ve agreed in principle to partner with Whinstone Inc, subsidiary of German-based Bitcoin mining company Northern Bitcoin AG, which will allow both SBI Holding Inc. & GMO Internet Inc. to begin mining Bitcoin at the company’s facility in Rockdale, Texas. The facility is said to be the world’s largest crypto mine, and will have an initial capacity of 300 megawatts when it begins operating in Q1 2020. In addition, Whinstone and Northern Bitcoin previously announced that the facility will reach 1 gigawatt of power when the last phase of construction is completed by the end of 2020.
Northern Bitcoin will be renting out capacity to SBI Crypto, the crypto mining subsidiary of SBI Holdings and GMO, which could enable Northern Bitcoin to attract additional large institutional investors. Over the last few years, Northern Bitcoin has pivoted away from mining Bitcoin itself, and now focuses on planning and operating Bitcoin mines while leasing them to large investors. The Rockdale mine is said to operate at a capacity three times greater than the world’s current largest Bitcoin mine that is being operated by Chinese miner Bitmain Technologies. This mine is also located in Texas, which has become a mining hotspot due to its abundance of cheap energy and renewable resources, with wind power generation being the most notable.
This investment made by SBI and GMO is a great representative of further institutional capital being deployed into the digital asset sector as we kick off 2020. We wanted to leave you off with a quote from Mike McGlone, a senior commodity strategist at Bloomberg, “Bitcoin is attracting more institutional investors and with the notion of limited supply and mass adoption — Bitcoin is winning this race.”
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